> But eventually, someone needs to do the work to convince people "science is trustworthy."
It's harder than that though.
Science is complicated, frequently messy and often adversarial, and that is how science makes progress.
There is no single narrative for scientific truth -- even when there is overwhelming consensus, science places high value on the coherent arguments at the margins.
This scientific embrace of complexity has been weaponized against us.
"Society" prefers a clear narrative they can comprehend, and science does not always provide it.
The media used to be relatively responsible stewards of the narrative, but that is very much no longer the case. (not the blame the media -- the media is us)
For an example of how science can end up with competing ideas and differing conclusions from experiments, see the little battle between Steve Mould and Mehdi "ElectroBOOM" Sadaghdar. They each made a few videos trying to explain the Mould effect (the effect where a chain dropped from a jar rises up from the lip as it falls). Each of them make compelling arguments as to why they're right and the other is wrong, but if not for them competing we'd just be assuming that Mould's original explanation was correct.
It's harder than that though.
Science is complicated, frequently messy and often adversarial, and that is how science makes progress.
There is no single narrative for scientific truth -- even when there is overwhelming consensus, science places high value on the coherent arguments at the margins.
This scientific embrace of complexity has been weaponized against us.
"Society" prefers a clear narrative they can comprehend, and science does not always provide it.
The media used to be relatively responsible stewards of the narrative, but that is very much no longer the case. (not the blame the media -- the media is us)