Thread by @mloxton

Twitter and other #SoMe are a fecund source of examples of scientific illiteracy.
There are a lot of people whose understanding of science entails two opponents slinging examples at each other. Examples of papers, websites, news articles that were cherry-picked to confirm a view

Antivax vs vax, climate change deniers vs agreers, etc.

They start with an opinion, then look for confirmatory evidence.
They think that this is how science is done, and that"looking for evidence" is the essence of science.

Mostly what it does is entrench false beliefs, bias

This is partly caused by straight forward ignorance of science and lack of training in research techniques, but also fed by the myth of the "lone genius"

In this view, a rugged individual is the only font of knowledge, and the epitome of science rigor is solitary research

What it ignores is complexity and communities of scientific socialization.

In most cases, unless one is an expert in a field, and often a sub speciality of a field, much of the content of a paper is inscrutable. One doesn't know the issues, language, or methods in use

Eg. For me to judge between 2 papers on climate change is practically impossible. My low expertise hinders knowing if they disagree, whether any disagreement is significant, or what the implications are.

I could explore the text in a Gadamerian sense, but not which is correct

It then comes to knowing how the industry of science works, how consensus is generated, what it means, and what it's limits are.

So how do I know if climate change is real?
Comparing papers and speakers is of little use. Becoming expert in the field is too costly. Who to trust?

Luckily there is a monstrous industry of science, that funds, performs, and reports research.

Thousands of research projects funnel up through a clunky selection and review process, and get published in myriad journals, colloquia, conferences, etc

These are aggregated at national level by science bodies, for example in the US by the National Academies of Science, and those in turn often aggregated at international level in global science bodies.

The results are the best guess on any scientific question available bar none

This is the solution to what one must do if faced with a question from a scientific speciality in which one is inexpert.

The efficient and effective method for me to know the answer to "what's up with climate change" is to ignore papers, speakers, etc, and go directly to NAS

It avoids inadvertent selection bias, reduces wasted time, and yields a more accurate & precise answer than I could ever muster by Googling, browsing, or even asking.

As clunky, leaky, and creaking as the industry of scientific knowledge is, it is still far superior to mine

The answer to "well what about this article that says climate changed stopped" is not to counter it with another cherry picked article, but to point at NAS

Its the Science Zen thing to do