Should We Trust Scientists Oreske Summary

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Why believe in science? Naomi Oreskes talks about why we should in her T.E.D. talk titled “Why We Should Trust Scientists.” A basic synopsis of the talk that follows, reveals Oreskes’ opinion on why we should trust science. She begins by addressing the issues of how many U.S. citizens do not believe in the agreed upon scientific communities consensus about(maybe use of) the facts of climate change or the effectiveness of vaccines. She states that believing in science is more of a faith than belief and likens it to Pascal’s wager. Pascal’s wager concludes that in the belief or disbelief of God, one would assume either an eternity in heaven or hell, so any sensible person would believe in God for the infinite gain of an eternity in heaven if God exists, or just a finite loss in life if he does not exist. Her argument of why one should believe in science is parallel with Pascal’s wager because one could only suffer a finite…show more content…
One should not believe scientists not because of the scientific method (hypothetical deductive method) but for other reasons that she addresses later. Oreskes argues that believing in science, because of the scientific method, is wrong for three main reasons. First it is wrong because of the fallacy of affirming the consequent, or that even false theories can make accurate and true predictions, as demonstrated by the Ptolemaic model of the solar system. Though it was wrong, it gave accurate predictions. Next was the case of auxiliary hypotheses which are assumptions that scientists can make that they might not even be aware that they are making. Her example was the attempts to debunk the Copernican model with the stellar parallax being unobservable due to the scale of Earth’s orbit in comparison to the distance of the nearest

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