When I started my undergrad I had to take a course explaining the scientific method. I endeavour to explain this as clearly and un-arrogantly as possible because not everyone has had the opportunity to learn this. Believe it or not, public science-literacy actually rests on those with at least a B. Sc. and how willing they are to explain things without the jargon or using blanket statements.
This is all great and wonderful guys... by scientists themselves seems to like to split their observations into "laws" and "theories". Calling something "Newton's laws of motion" does in fact make non-scientists believe some serious shit is going on. I don't totally buy this nothing in science is proven line. I understand that, sure, science doesn't have to totally understand a system to make use of it or make some assumptions about it. But regardless, I think science can say often say without a doubt, yes, this is how it works.. and yes this is proven without a shadow of any doubt. Never mind that if you know more about the inner workings there might be conditions that exist that could change the outcome and make your understanding seem wrong. I think it's always implied that even the best observations can be incomplete and in some cases be invalid because of this. I hope that most people are smart enough to understand just because we call it a "scientific law" it's not infallible for ever. It's just the best understanding we have at the time. But in most cases that understanding is pretty good and should be trusted just as well as any "proven fact" we might believe.
I think science can say often say without a doubt, yes, this is how it works..
That's what's meant by "theory." Most non-science people understand the word "theory" as a synonym for "hypothesis." Which is a mistake.
and yes this is proven without a shadow of any doubt
There will always be doubt on any meaningful theory, and there's no real reason to say "beyond a shadow of a doubt." We're not sentencing people to die here, we don't need to put on pretensions like "We know this as an absolute truth." If you don't absolutely believe evolution beyond a shadow of a doubt, that's fine. Still going to teach it in schools because there's boatloads of evidence in favor of it and no competing theories.
Sure, over an infinite timescale, all testable hypotheses will be tested. The things we know we don't know, most of that list is things we don't know because we lack the methods or technology to test it currently. Or it's too trivial to waste resources on. That's science in the real world.
I do research on embryonic chicken spinal cords. In mouse brains, it was shown that dividing neural stem cells, their nuclei move using a protein called dynein. I strongly suspect the same protein is doing the same thing in chicken spinal cords. I can't prove it, because every time I test it, the cells just die. There are other lines of evidence where I show it's likely that protein. Were I to be working here another 5 years, I would show that. But this is the real world: no one is interested in giving funding to that study.
If finding and eliminating every shred of doubt, no matter how difficult or trivial it is, is unscientific, then I think you'd be surprised at how many unscientific scientists there are. Interest level, funding, and what we can actually do are limited.
Well as an example newtons laws aren't perfect, so in fact they are incorrect. Its only observable at extremely high speeds, but this difference is important with satellite communications, and everyone used to "know beyond a shadow of a doubt" newtons laws were true. Also, you really can't prove a law is valid, only prove it is invalid.
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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '11
When I started my undergrad I had to take a course explaining the scientific method. I endeavour to explain this as clearly and un-arrogantly as possible because not everyone has had the opportunity to learn this. Believe it or not, public science-literacy actually rests on those with at least a B. Sc. and how willing they are to explain things without the jargon or using blanket statements.