Science is wrong. An antiscience message (that’s wrong).

Text art about the notion that science isn’t to be believed.

The wording of this piece is “Science is wrong if it thinks that it can topple people’s faith in the irrational”.

Science is by definition the seeking of truth through experimentation and the study of the material world. Using observations gleaned from these studies and experiments theories are propounded that propose an explanation of a nature of the world around us, of how it works and what lies behind its surface manifestation.

Science is at its essence a method of seeking the truth.

By definition scientific methods are the best way to seek explanations for the working of the world and the universe beyond. After all, what other methods are there? Guesswork ? Making things up? Interpreting dreams? Intuition?

People who dispute scientific findings point to erroneous conclusions following scientific investigations as proof of the falability of science. However, false conclusions in science are usually a result of human error in the pursuit of science. For instance a scientific experiment’s methodology may be flawed. An example could be when experiments fail to take all factors into account, possibly because the experimenters are unaware of what all of the factors are (unknown unknowns). Another example could be to do with the personalities of the experimenters themselves, resulting in the experimenters unconsciously devising biased experiments that give the sort of results that they are expecting.

These are not flaws in science though – they are flaws in the pursuit of science, the result of the fact that human beings and their thought processes are flawed.

Fortunately, as part of the scientific method for the pursuit of truth, when flawed scientific theories are proposed other scientists would do other experiments (different experiments) in order to test the theories and to either reinforce or question the conclusions.

Any criticism of science and the scientific method can equally be applied to any other method of the pursuit of truth, so in many respects criticism of science it’s also a criticism of all methods of the pursuit of truth. 

People sometimes don’t like the scientific method because they see it as being cold and inhuman. But in fact that’s one of its strengths – it tries to be dispassionate and analytical (although sometimes it’s criticised for not being dispassionate and analytical).

For some people the problem with science is that it comes to conclusions that they don’t like very much. Some religious people for example have a problem with the theory of evolution, preferring to believe that humans were created fully formed by a god rather than being the product of endless eons of gradual change.

Some people have a problem with western medicine. This often focuses on the large drug companies that produce medicines, the argument being that the companies are only interested in making huge profits, and that they do this at the physical expense of the patients. Critics see this as science being used for profit and they may then be tempted to turn their backs on it and to embrace alternative medical practice such as homeopathy or herbalism which are seen as being untainted by financial greed (although you may disagree when you consider the tactics and the balance sheets of high street health outlets).