Hacker News Reader

> If half the population needs a reminder on why science is good I guess they'll get it.

I don't know if you looked at science lately, but the majority of the science published is actually not-that-great, if not bad. The public SHOULD distrust scientists - as well as most else.

View on HN

OK, I'll bite: who should the public trust when it comes to science then, if not scientists?

The question is whether they should trust scientists about policy decisions, not whenther they should trust scientists about science. Political/ideological decisions don't have to rely on science, this "political scientism" is a very recent thing. The entire 60s revolutions for example were primarily anti-technology, anti-corporatism and anti-established science. Part of progress is breaking up with established ideas, and that includes bad science (e.g. the neoliberal economic approaches). This applies of course mostly to social sciences, it's pretty pointless to fight the laws of physics

Examples?

too many to list. see here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2014/01/09/the-l...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com