Sunday, April 9, 2017

Science As Uncertainty Reduction

Sunday reflection:

“It feels like there are two opposite things that the public thinks about science: that it’s a magic wand that turns everything it touches to truth, or that it’s all bullshit because what we used to think has changed… The truth is in between. Science is a process of uncertainty reduction. If you don’t show that uncertainty is part of the process, you allow doubt-makers to take genuine uncertainty and use it to undermine things…
“And it’s absolutely crucial that we continue to call out bad science. If this environment forces scientists to be more rigorous, that’s not a bad thing.”

— Christie Aschwanden (of FiveThirtyEight )


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