> Educated" people can say what they want about how important it is to believe in the science and have faith in our researchers and the institutions they work for.
This comment shows the problem in the argument. Science does not require belief or faith. In fact the idea of faith is the antithesis of science.
Science is about the hypothesis supported by evidence and remains current knowledge until a hypothesis that is better supported by the evidence.
Questioning is required, inquiry is required, not faith.
The problem is when you would expect someone else to to have faith just because you do. Or equally, that you would expect someone to find an explanation compelling just because you did.
People who don't understand speak with conviction as if they do, but then resort to this chained together appeal to authority as their reasoning.
Yes, I'm sure everyone has a home lab that they go to to verify when they read the newspaper. I'm not being snarky - these illustrates a core problem in epistemology, trust and social systems (in case the NIH/Fauci/Wuhan debacle already hasn't).
Witch exactly illustrates my point. You need to intelligently reason about what you have been told, understanding that you may not be a domain expert and that your conclusions will almost certainly miss something that the domain experts have taken into account.
When presented with a claim by authorities about a new virus and say it's going to be dangerous, do you think, authorities always lie about everything or do you think well virus are a thing, I know they can mutate because I know that if I get the flu this year, it's no guarantee that I will be immune from the version that will come around next year. You also have seen evidence that vaccines are generally safe and work because most people have had them and for the most part don't have people suffering from polio in the western world because of that.
You could say, nah, they lie, this is plot to force us to have genome altering vaccines that will install mind control chips that kill kittens. (yeah, over the top I know)...
Most people have a degree of trust (not faith, very different) until proven wrong that public health figures are actually their trying to improve public health.
This comment shows the problem in the argument. Science does not require belief or faith. In fact the idea of faith is the antithesis of science.
Science is about the hypothesis supported by evidence and remains current knowledge until a hypothesis that is better supported by the evidence.
Questioning is required, inquiry is required, not faith.