Furthermore... they love to throw the word "Science" out there when they are not even remotely following the scientific method:
You have hit the nail. the problem lies in a society that still does not understand what science is and believes that the scientific method is a way of obtaining the "absolute truth of things", when in fact it is the only method we have found to prevent our infinite stupidity takes the reins when describing the world around us.
As a scientist, I can tell you that the work consists of creating models, basically mathematical, that describe "what is observed" within certain parameters and very particular conditions. Once this model has been built and accepted by the scientific community, the next step is to demonstrate where the model fails, because the only thing one hundred percent certain is that the model is incomplete and wrong. it is always possible to create a model that better describes what is observed around us.
There are serious limitations in scientific models, and we consider them scientific precisely because we accept that they are imprecise from their origin. One of the greatest limitations is precisely what we define as "what is observed", that when our capacity for observation becomes extremely faithful to reality, we are only evaluating or capturing a tiny portion of the essence of what is happening or of the object.
thus our models in the best of cases end up describing more or less in an acceptable way that one percent of what we are able to "observe".
human stupidity makes us believe that we are capable of "observing" the object one hundred percent of its nature, and also that models are capable of describing what is observed one hundred percent. That's what social media does today, magnifying its stupidity with "the facts." that is, what they are capable of observing.
Society needs to be trained with a scientific mindset, recognizing that scientific models are fallible, and that a 60-year-old model of how a pathogen is distributed is just that, a model that must be improved, and that is surely insufficient to explain what is observed with new technologies.
I do not even want to imagine how limited a vaccine model can be that does not have any data or "observables" beyond what a group of "scientists" (vendors) have been able to imagine on their own for their clinical trials. .
And we constantly question our own models in the hope of finding a model that explains even more of what we observe.
Question everything. There is no CONSENSUS in the scientific method. Usually a discovery happens with a single person.
There can be no PEER REVIEW if you are on the cutting edge of science because you'll have no peers in what you study.
We simply use the model that best explains the most observations until we find another one.
We use Newtonian Physics for example because it is easy to understand and does work for most things ON EARTH. It falls apart in space and such with things like the three body problem.
Einstein provided a model that handles the three body problem nicely. Yet there were still things about his own models that he knew were flawed.
ALso one thing I said about Experts and Scientists in other posts. If you are following the scientific method. You are a scientist. If you are not following the scientific method then you are not a scientist.
You can flip that off/on with your choices.
Same is true of experts. If a person is an expert that does not mean they may not instead let their own biases override the expertise from time to time.
Question everything. At some point you simply have to go with what is most probable for your own needs.
Great reply... thanks.
Questioning everything is the best advice I have ever received. The path to becoming an expert always involves understanding what others think and have done, to the point that one ends up being contaminated with those ideas and ways of conceiving the world. It is not easy to have that clarity of mind to remember that everything must be questioned.
I write about what you have described almost once a month or once every other month because so much of what we see called "science" these days is not.
It is a label they use to shut down discussion, challenge, etc. That is more of dogma and religion than it is science.