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Why Trust Science?


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1 DST Year of Science Chair Professor, Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 560 012, India
 

Why should people trust science? Science, we claim, is a work in progress; any fact or theory can be called into question by anybody at any time, as long as they are using the scientific method; science can only falsify hypotheses and not prove any hypothesis correct. Scientists can make mistakes, sometimes inadvertently and sometimes by fraud. Many scientific findings turn out to be irreproducible, leading to the so-called replication crisis. Why then should the public and policymakers trust science? What arguments can we make to per-suade people to trust science?
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  • Why Trust Science?

Abstract Views: 245  |  PDF Views: 119

Authors

Raghavendra Gadagkar
DST Year of Science Chair Professor, Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 560 012, India

Abstract


Why should people trust science? Science, we claim, is a work in progress; any fact or theory can be called into question by anybody at any time, as long as they are using the scientific method; science can only falsify hypotheses and not prove any hypothesis correct. Scientists can make mistakes, sometimes inadvertently and sometimes by fraud. Many scientific findings turn out to be irreproducible, leading to the so-called replication crisis. Why then should the public and policymakers trust science? What arguments can we make to per-suade people to trust science?


DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv118%2Fi9%2F1464-1466