This was not what I expected. I expected the standard line about how the general public should trust scientists, and a fight for a greater role of scientists in decision-making.
It was a good read.
I think the pieces I would add are a clear understanding of the flaws of scientific processes:
* Circle of mutual adoration hiring processes
* Cursory-at-best peer review in many disciplines
* Impact over integrity in hiring
* Selection biases in science reporting (and more generally, the pay-per-click incentive structures places on games-of-telephone)
... and so on.
As well as a clearer understanding of how we go from hypothesis to fact. In many policy discussions, I see individual scientific papers cited which is a nonsense way to use science. One can find a paper which says anything and most results are false. That's still part of the process. Once a result has been poked at from enough directions, it becomes a theory and then an fact. Connecting the hypothetical process to empirical process would be awesome to see in schools.
It was a good read.
I think the pieces I would add are a clear understanding of the flaws of scientific processes:
* Circle of mutual adoration hiring processes
* Cursory-at-best peer review in many disciplines
* Impact over integrity in hiring
* Selection biases in science reporting (and more generally, the pay-per-click incentive structures places on games-of-telephone)
... and so on.
As well as a clearer understanding of how we go from hypothesis to fact. In many policy discussions, I see individual scientific papers cited which is a nonsense way to use science. One can find a paper which says anything and most results are false. That's still part of the process. Once a result has been poked at from enough directions, it becomes a theory and then an fact. Connecting the hypothetical process to empirical process would be awesome to see in schools.