By "scientific literacy," I do not mean advanced knowledge in one or more areas of science. I mean an understanding of the scientific method, and of its strengths and limitations.
Put simply, the scientific method is just a means of objectively answering a question using a certain set of steps. First, the question is asked -- for example, does reducing the amount of cholesterol in one's diet reduce the chances of having a heart attack? Next, a hypothesis (a fancy term for a guess at the answer) is generated -- yes, reducing cholesterol reduces the chance of a heart attack. Then an experiment is thought up to confirm or refute the hypothesis -- this group of a thousand people will eat one diet, this group of a thousand people will eat that lower-cholesterol diet -- and carried out. Next, the results are analyzed -- the lower-cholesterol group had the same number of heart attacks as the regular-diet group. Last, the conclusion is drawn and the question is answered -- a diet that is lower in cholesterol does not reduce the chance of a heart attack. (That's actually true, as dietary cholesterol is broken down before it reaches the bloodstream, so it doesn't affect the arteries very much at all.)
That's the scientific method right there: question, hypothesis, experiment, results, conclusion.
That's it.
In the real world, designing and carrying out the experiment such that "confounders" are accounted for can be tricky. A confounder is something that was not accounted for in the experiment that impacted on the results and might affect the conclusion -- for example, what if half of the low-cholesterol-diet group were smokers, while almost nobody in the regular-diet group smoked? That would definitely impact on the results, and you could come to a totally wrong conclusion!
It can also be tricky to figure out exactly how to collect and analyze the data. How do you know that someone had a heart attack? Ask them? Check their hospital records? How did the hospital know whether or not they had a heart attack? And what statistical method do you use to compare the results?
So yeah, the practical aspects of the scientific method can be difficult to deal with. But that doesn't change this: the scientific method is the best method ever identified in human history for answering questions and advancing our understanding of the natural world.
We sometimes laugh at other methods used in the past, like reading tea leaves and relying on "everybody knows it" reasoning. And in the real world, we often have to rely on plain ol' common sense and our own experience because not everything we encounter in our daily lives has been subjected to rigorous investigation. But there are all kinds of examples of how conclusions based on those systems of answering questions are completely wrong. A few examples include the idea that the sun orbits the earth, and that white people are superior to black people, and that it's a good time to buy Company X's stock.
Many things have been subjected to rigorous investigation, and while there is always the possibility that in the future more information may come to light and change what we think we know, in these cases we at least have some empirical evidence (ie. we didn't just assume or guess, but actually checked) that a particular course of action is a better choice, or at least no worse, than another.
It is not okay to bury one's head in the sand and pretend that just because I don't know something, nobody else does either. The body of human knowledge is so vast that it's just not possible for one person to master it all, but that's okay. One person doesn't need to know it all -- they just have to know who to ask when they need to know about something that's outside of their area of expertise. You can get into issues of what an expert's motives and influences are, but it's important to differentiate between one's desire or need for a particular piece of information, and one's actual knowledge. It takes humility to see this in ourselves, but it's true. (A case in point: a parent passionately wants to do the right thing for their child, but that does not in and of itself make them knowledgeable about whether or not that vaccination is a good thing.)
Judging from the media, there are a lot of people who fall into the "I don't know, so nobody else does either" trap. Look, I'm not advocating blind faith in anyone. I think it's perfectly all right, even a good idea, to not just take someone's word for it. But we need to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. And when we are up against these limits, we need to recognize that someone else might have the answer.
How do we find someone with the answer? That's an art, but for what it's worth, here's my approach. First, it needs to be someone with motives in line with mine; even if my motivation is not the same as theirs, it should not be at odds. I may want information about what stock to buy, but asking a broker who benefits more if I choose Stock A over Stock B is probably not as reliable as the broker who gets paid the same regardless of what stock I pick (better yet, who gets paid the same even if I choose no stock at all). Here my motivation is a return on my investment; the broker's, I hope, is to impress me with his or her knowledge so much that I seek their advice again next time. Those two motivations, while not the same, are not mutually exclusive. On the other hand, if the broker's motivation is to earn a better commission, then our motivations might very well be in opposition to each other -- he might get make more money if I pick the stock that's going to tank next week.
Second, they need to be knowledgeable. Generally I think it's reasonable to accept that if someone has the proper credentials, they can be thought of as knowledgeable. That's not foolproof (it depends on what it takes to earn those credentials), but practically speaking it's probably the best we can do in an area that we are not experts in ourselves.
Third, and most importantly, we can ask them to show us the evidence, to ask why they recommend one course of action over another. Ideally, there's a formal experiment following the scientific method that they can refer to. There are some areas in which it's more realistic to expect solid experimental evidence (like medicine) than others (like the stock market), and in those cases, we should expect to receive concrete answers, or at least an admission of a gap in the knowledge base.
I'm not saying this is easy. There are a lot of questions out there that haven't been examined properly, and as I said we often are stuck with nothing more than our common sense. But our own personal experience is a form of evidence too; it's the lowest form of evidence (meaning that it's the most likely to lead us astray), but it's sometimes the best we've got.
The key is to recognize the limitations of relying exclusively on our own experience, and recognizing that more reliable information might be out there somewhere. And then having the humility to go and find it.
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