Quote:
Originally Posted by theact
I always understood that to be what 'reviewed by your peers' insinuated. That it would be reviewed by your scientific peers or religious peers or.. I'm sure you get the point, reviewed by a group of people capable of making informed decisions and fully understanding how you came to your conclusions.
However for the sake of devils advocacy, it must be remembered that many theories are on shaky ground, not evolution or gravity etc, but there are many that do have conflicts and shouldn't be taken as the closest thing to fact.
|
All science is theory and the testing thereof.
It starts off with one experiment backing up a prediction and theory. It ends with all the scientists in the world agreeing with it and you learning it, but the process itself takes place like this:
1 The scientists publish their works in scientific journals after peer review has taken place.
the process of peer review is used to ensure the integrity of of published scientific work. The pre-published work is sent to experts in that particular field so that they can assess the quality of the work.
This means the scientist can't "sex-up" the results because it wont pass mustard with your peers.
It helps to validate conclusions meaning that published theories,date, and conclusionsare now trustworthy. It cannot however guarantee that the conclusions are 100% right more rounds and predicting have to be done before they are taken as fact.
It's not perfect as sometimes mistakes are made and bad science is published, but it is the best way for scientists to self-regulate their work and ensure reliable scientific work is published.
2 Other scientists read the published theories and results, and try to repeat them- this involves repeating the exact experiments, and using theory to make new predictions that are tested by ne experiments.
3 If all the experiments in all the world provide evidence to back it up, the theory is thought of as scientific "fact" (FOR NOW).
4 if new evidence arises that conflicts with the current evidence the THEORY is questioned all over again. More rounds of testing will be carried out to see which evidence, and so which theory, prevails.
sooooooo
our currently accepted theories have survived this "trial by evidence" BUT they never become undisputable fact. Scientific breakthroughs or advances could provide new ways to question and test a theory which could lead to changes and challenges to it. Then the testing starts all over again.
All that is from one of my psychology textbooks which talks about the nature of science at the start.
so evolution is a theory just like anything else, and seeing as scientists cannot really "test" it because it is on a massive timeframe it is hard to prove. Yeah sure you can create computer models but they are imperfect as well and each computer model can be improved on and is based upon certain limitations.
Such as using a computer model to map human responsive such as in Cognitive psychology the computer models leave out factors they cannot compute readily such as human emotion and influence from other people.
So yeah unfortunately those people who say that are right it may piss off a scientist just like a dancer being told that any movement is technically dance or a musician that any random notes are music.
To look for undisputable facts in science is a waste of time and if you pursue that desire it will lead you to that greatest of all oxymorons. Faith in science
