Nature of Science

Science is never fully right, but it is the best bet. Greg Craven states a very valid point with this statement. In the discussion around climate change it should be considered that science, although it is never completely certain, it has always proven to have the best chances of predicting future events. Especially the first part of The Nature of Science deals with this issue. He stresses multiple times that scientists constantly revise theories and try to improve the precision and accuracy of the measurements to decrease the uncertainty but also acknowledge the fact that an absolute certain measurement is impossible to achieve. Since there is always an uncertainty this leaves room for argument, unfortunately also for climate critics. As the physics teacher argues, this allows the unreasonable scepticism that is in the world right now. Instead of holding this uncertainty as a flaw, it rather should be acknowledged that the scientific predictions and theories have the lowest uncertainty out of all claims. For that reasons science is usually well trusted and itself very picky about the measuring methods and claims. Some of the predictions made by scientists about the climate destabilisation might turn out to be wrong; however this does not prove the whole theory wrong, since it was clear from the beginning that there would be uncertainty in the predictions.

Consequently one of the most vital actions to take is revising and editing the theories. Greg Crave states two important aspects in connection to this, trying to disprove an argument makes it stronger, such as the theory of gravity (video 2, 1:50) and admitting that one was wrong makes the argument more reliable. When looking for the evidence for a particular theory it is important to try to prove it wrong and look for counter arguments to the point one is making. If trying to disprove a theory consistently does not work and the counter arguments, such as those to climate change, come from non reliable sources, then it only strengthens the point. If it indeed can be disproved or there are found flaws that do not mean the theory is disproven, it just needs to be revised. Admitting into the mistakes and changing them makes the source more reliable and that constantly happens with the climate theories. He makes an excellent point that is not only relevant on the big scale and in science, admitting in to the mistakes allows improvement.

Modern society is a society of specifying, there is a huge supply of people and necessary to specify in order to make a living. There are specialists and experts for almost any topic in the world and when help is needed people trust these experts. As Craven correctly points out, many people have doubt in the scientists, the experts; because they think they know better than the experts. However the situation is very complex and climate change a severe topic, therefore it is vital to rely on the experts and almost all reliable scientists confirm climate destabilisation. Not relying on the expert opinion counters all logic thinking and Greg Craven is trying his best to open people’s eyes.

One reason why there are so many sceptics is that everybody has some sort of bias. As the physicist demonstrates in a row of examples, that can be seen in Part 1 and the beginning of Part 2, we all have assumption we make. He quotes Douglas Adams on “Assumptions are the things you don’t know you have” and those assumptions make us unconsciously bias. When humans have an opinion or a believe about a topic they look for evidence to back it up. Since they already have an opinion they are valuing the evidence that speaks for their opinion more than other evidence although that might be stronger. This way individuals think that their believe is true, although based on the real evidence is not. Assessing data is critical and therefore it is necessary to know the assumptions one has in order to draw the right conclusions of the evidence. It needs skill as well as experience, both factors that science and scientists have developed and therefore are better analyzers of the situation.