It is very good that the general public is less believing in science.
I remember well when the public was very believing, including me, and in hindsight it was always undeserving of such faith.
It was a very misguided thing to take a conclusion as fact, so long as it be called “science”, for often upon closer inspection the methodology was dubious, and it was never attempted to be reproduced, so even if the methodology were sound, the data could either be a fluke, or outright fabricated.
This is not a new development; if anything, the critical stance is the new development. It has been going on for centuries most likely that completely fabricated data stoot the test of time because no one bothered to replicate it. When I was at university in the 2000s, we were already told of respected researchers that fell from grace as it was found they had been fabricating data for decades and it took this long for someone to catch wind of it, as no one bothers to replicate research in this world.
The only new development is that now, some are starting to.
“Science” is not enough to believe it; the methodology must be inspected and found to be salient, and the data must have been replicated at least once, præferably more, by another independent group.
To be credible does not require infallibility. The broader social consequence of the general public losing faith in science is not that they will suddenly become enlightened in the nuances of the scientific discovery process -- it is that they will turn to alternative sources of truth. Science isn't a perfect source of truth but it is a heck of a lot better than seeking truth through mythology, tribalism and the opinions of ideologues. Scientific literacy is the ideal state, but the world is not that.
I find that much of the newly inspired criticism on science after the appearance of the replication crisis did not go to alternative source of truth but started to admit that there is much that men don't know and won't know.
The problem is man's arrogance that it knows, that it can find a solution to every quæstion it asks.
“science” is also not even close to “not infallible” it is a complete coinflip whether any peer-reviewed result is even worth the paper it's printed on.
Dare I say it's under that, because it's a coinflip whether the data are even reproducible, but the conclusions derived from the data, even if they be reproducible, are almost invariably involving bigger leaps of faith than making data up.
I remember well when the public was very believing, including me, and in hindsight it was always undeserving of such faith.
It was a very misguided thing to take a conclusion as fact, so long as it be called “science”, for often upon closer inspection the methodology was dubious, and it was never attempted to be reproduced, so even if the methodology were sound, the data could either be a fluke, or outright fabricated.
This is not a new development; if anything, the critical stance is the new development. It has been going on for centuries most likely that completely fabricated data stoot the test of time because no one bothered to replicate it. When I was at university in the 2000s, we were already told of respected researchers that fell from grace as it was found they had been fabricating data for decades and it took this long for someone to catch wind of it, as no one bothers to replicate research in this world.
The only new development is that now, some are starting to.
“Science” is not enough to believe it; the methodology must be inspected and found to be salient, and the data must have been replicated at least once, præferably more, by another independent group.