I'm at the point in my life where I treat 99% of studies with a grain of salt. I've seen studies that we've held up for 45 years to be completely toppled. Even studies that are holding in the last 5 years where our current generation is "perfect" and doesn't make the same scientific blunders of yesteryear. Our stories in science classes of how "bad scientists" that ended up being right were killed is no different today. It's just that instead of the king calling for an execution our own subjects dismiss them.
If you watch things carefully in the scientific world you'll notice that there are actually really just a couple people holding up claims and making millions of others follow suit. Even in the face of challenging data, we wait for the so called thought leaders to either embrace or reject the new information. If they reject it, so do the hordes. Yet how do we know these few are willing to take on the new information, and actually take it seriously, especially when so much money might be on the line for them.
Humans keep saying they learn from their mistakes, but we don't as it always looks different. Instead of a king's desk it's now an iPad and online forum.
It really takes generational shifts for our science to move. I think too that the reason pop-science and alternative medicine is so successful is because regular science is too quick to hold the wrong things up - they are holding up people not results. And that's our failure.
If you watch things carefully in the scientific world you'll notice that there are actually really just a couple people holding up claims and making millions of others follow suit. Even in the face of challenging data, we wait for the so called thought leaders to either embrace or reject the new information. If they reject it, so do the hordes. Yet how do we know these few are willing to take on the new information, and actually take it seriously, especially when so much money might be on the line for them.
Humans keep saying they learn from their mistakes, but we don't as it always looks different. Instead of a king's desk it's now an iPad and online forum.
It really takes generational shifts for our science to move. I think too that the reason pop-science and alternative medicine is so successful is because regular science is too quick to hold the wrong things up - they are holding up people not results. And that's our failure.