mastodon.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit

Administered by:

Server stats:

380K
active users

@arstechnica What if science wasn't subject to being vibe checked by the dumbest people on Earth?

@gooba42 @arstechnica "thinks" scientists are smug. They probably do not know any scientists. 🤔

@arstechnica@mastodon.social I call bullshit. The "I don't trust science" crowd, along with the MAGAts, are not salvageable.

@arstechnica

Humility is _so_ necessary to being believable and opening trust. The truth is that the smartest among us is still ignorant of many things (and let's be clear, I'm far from the smartest). I think that our educational system needs a lot of improvements

* critical thinking in middle & high school
* effective communications for technical types

are near the top of my list.

@Impish4249 @arstechnica Science is best when it presents objective facts. And by objective, I mean there are no feelings involved. Except, of course if you study feelings themselves.

@nakal @arstechnica

Totally agreed.

Facts should be portrayed as facts.

Here's one of the challenges. In the scientific community we have ethics and standards that have us use, for good reason, terms such as "theory" which people lacking a sold education can easily misinterpret and educated people with an agenda can use to manipulate the aforementioned uneducated voters.

So, sadly, scientists need to be able to talk compelling and humbly to those uneducated and probably innocent folks.

@arstechnica Maybe this says more about them than the scientists.

@arstechnica How to say "science illiterate" in 'murican used by the (southern? bible-thumbing? pastor-financing? trumptard cultist?) half of US populace? 🤔

@arstechnica No. No more appeasement. Scientists are not smug. They really, truly are smarter than nearly half of the US, and then some. The humility needs to come from the people who cannot state their beliefs in such a way that they could be proven incorrect and be retracted.

@arstechnica Let me guess. Someone couldn't convince a scientist to fix their printer.

@arstechnica That’s because half of the US are stupid hunks of trash.

@arstechnica of course there are smug scientists but they are vastly outnumbered by anti-science know-nothing reactionaries. “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” - Issac Asimov

@arstechnica actually what I’m seeing here is that it’s not science but journalism about science that’s creating the problem, if there even is one. It sounds like what’s being asked for is that when we present the findings of a study, we should always cite the author as adding, “of course, it’s possible that your aunt’s neighbor’s son’s YouTube channel about UFO sightings might be correct about COVID instead.”

@arstechnica

The tone of a lot of these comments seems to be proving the point.

@arstechnica
Look. Most people in the US do not interact with scientists. They do not interact with the direct work of scientists. On a good day, they read or watch the work of reporters who spoke to scientists and talk about their findings.

More often, people interact with media lauding fringe studies or lampooning actual academics to make a point they were going to make regardless of where the facts pointed.

Scientists don't need humility. They just need better communication channels.

@arstechnica if they would not have elected Trump this could have been believable but please be serious now. It is just an excuse. They are rejecting reality and facts and they are not even honest.

@arstechnica I'd be interested to hear what those people think "smug" means, because I'm pretty sure they have a different idea than I do.

I suspect that any statement that follows the general form "...and that's why you should get vaccinated" is going to be tarred as "smug" by a pretty specific group of people.

Somehow when a chronic screwup with a comical hairdo stands in front of those same people and says "I alone can fix it," though, that doesn't register as "smug." When it absolutely is.

@arstechnica

The Best scientists are not arrogant. They are comfortable in their own skins. Read a little about Einstein. And have known a number of "real" scientists who are like that. You can actually carry on a conversation with them.