There is only one reality for all of us. Science is the study of reality. Because science is a human endeavor and hence prone to error, science has developed methods to reduce theses errors. as there is only one reality, different (independent) methods should result in the same answer. By way of examples
- you can’t have measurements on radioactivity pointing to a young earth while geology (sedimentation) and paleontology point to an old earth. Unsurprisingly such a mismatch doesn’t exist.
- the theory of evolution was well established by factual evidence and an understanding of genetics decades before DNA sequencing came along. This new, powerful and completely independent method then validated what had already established by the study of fossils.
Scientists are drama queens. They love to say that new discoveries require the text books to be rewritten. In reality we already have a great (but indeed incomplete) understanding of the natural world. We are honing in on the truth. Einstein showed Newton was completely wrong, didn’t he? Well, completely? Newton‘s laws were only wrong for extremely high velocities. In practice Newton’s laws work fine for most practical engineering calculations. It is more a significant digits thing than that science was completely wrong and things actually fall upwards.
Scientists build a career by showing other people are wrong, or by adding more data or better models to society. As a scientist, you don’t want to be found wrong, so you look careful at your own work. And you’d better do that because you know that the peers that review your paper will do the same.
As a scientist, you are well aware of the fact that you CAN be wrong, and that you should watch out for confirmation bias/wearing blinkers for facts you’d prefer not to be there. Scientists are forced to be honest, if it didn’t already come naturally. We could use something like that in society (Politics, etc). This forum is good bc we value good data, good reasoning and critical self-reflection here. Pooh poohing science without evidence and logic based support doesn’t reflect well on the person who does that.
. But gosh I love working from home.
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