tallguywrites

Good comic, but... it seems a bit contradictory. You start off criticizing those who don't trust scientists, and then you give us a good example of a scientist we shouldn't trust. Maybe science is perfect, but we're mere humans, prone to error and capitalism. Facts and evidence are fine, but we're always going to receive them through the imperfect filter of human understanding.

In any case, I agree that it's shameful how the media is so ready to poison us with lies and misinformation if it'll get them more revenue.

One anecdotal failure, eventually corrected, among huge numbers of apparent successes? Nope, don't feel especially chastized here. Especially given my exact words were the less than sweeping "as a whole is pretty good." If I'd said "is absolutely infallible because the Mighty Hand of Our Almighty God Science" you might've had something there. ;p

Huh, apparently you realized that too. ;)

There is some irony in that the anti vaxxers have that same fear of science, as global warming denialists, and the creation museums.

The systematic dumbing down of the US over the last 50 years hasn't helped either, with a lack of emphasis on science, maths, etc. Some people are trying to bring it back, but that still leaves a 30 year gap, a whole generation, that's been cut off.

And they're exactly the sort who buy into those conspiracy theories.

You start off criticizing those who don't trust scientists, and then you give us a good example of a scientist we shouldn't trust

IMHO the problem is selective, unthinking distrust. I've met plenty of people who were extremely sceptical of the benefits of vaccination because "Big Pharma just wants to make money", but they completely failed to apply the same level of scepticism to Wakefield.

I think TallGuy's idea is that people won't trust the scientific process, and what Wakefield did was follow anything BUT the scientific process.

The general public has no way of knowing that, thanks to the media's distortions and incompetence. I don't think most non-scientists are able to tell the difference, so it's hard to decide what we should ignore as fake science and what we should embrace to avoid sounding like we're from the Middle Ages.

You have it backwards. He criticized those who don't trust Science. Science is the process by what we discover the truth about things, by means of formulating hypothesis, testing them, publishing them, and reviewing the process to draw conclusions, submitting them to peer review.

The 'scientist' began formulating a conclusion, drawing the hypothesis for it to be true and faking the tests to agree with his conclusion. This being Science, he was caught in the act thanks for the peer review step of the scientific method. If anything, this shows that Science works, even if some 'scientists' are bad apples.

It's interesting that you argue "Science is the process by which we discover the truth about things"

Karl R. Popper said:
"I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a "body of knowledge", but rather as a system of hypotheses, or as a system of guesses or anticiptations that in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know they are "true" . . ."

and Dr. Steven M. Holland said:
"We [scientists] wouldn't know truth if it jumped up and bit us in the ass. We're probably fairly good at recognizing what's false, and that's what science does on a day-to-day basis, but we can't claim to identify truth."

my thoughts exactly!