Belief has nothing to do with science.
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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I think you mean faith. Faith has nothing to do with science.
But belief absolutely does. Science is all about convincing people (scientists) to believe or disbelieve some idea.
One of the first things I learned in bio lab in college is that you never believe anything in science. You accept or reject based on evidence.
Accept or reject, are just different words for believe or disbelieve. The evidence guides your belief.
Maybe to you. Scientific terms often include terms that have other connotations elsewhere, for example, significant or correlation.
Nothing in science is based on belief.
Do you accept that, or believe it? What is the difference scientifically?
Webster definition 3C of Accept "to recognize as true" seems to be what I'm talking about here. Is that different than what you mean?
3C then points to Believe as a synonym. The transitive definition 1B, or intransitive 1A, seems to correlate with what Accept definition 3C means, hence the synonym nature of them. Can you clarify exactly where I'm wrong?
Beliefs are subjective. They can be held without evidence.
Scientific acceptance is the opposite.
I likely won't be able to change your mind because you believe they mean the same thing. I assure you they don't. You can't come to a scientific conclusion based on conviction. You have to accept or reject the null hypothesis based on evidence which even then doesn't necessarily verify your hypothesis. You also have to run everything through statistical analyses to be sure that the results couldn't occur randomly. Everything can change with new evidence and stronger tests (larger sample sizes, double blinds, etc.) Webster's won't teach you that. It records vernacular.
Vernacular is literally what we're talking about. The definition of words.
You seem to be wrapping a number of ideas around the word Believe. Most notably the idea that a belief is fixed. When I say believe, I literally mean only and exactly "Accept as true", or "To hold as true", nothing more. It's literally the 1st definition. And more or less what all the other definitions are wrapped around.
What we hold as true can change at any time, and for a number of reasons. The study of them is called Epistemology. Yes. It's a real branch of science.
It's possible what you're trying to get across, is the idea that science accepts nothing as "true". It can only reject ideas as "false". And the ideas that remain un-rejected as false, are accepted, not as true, but as the best explanation we have so far. In which case I can see your point. However, remember that beliefs aren't fixed. They can also be rejected when new conflicting data is collected. That still sounds like what you mean by accept. Am I wrong?
I think you've missed some of what I'm saying. Vernacular changes through common (popular) use of a word. I'm referring to strict definitions that are found in science.
I never indicated that beliefs are fixed, only that they are subjective and not based on evidence. That is by definition not scientific.
You're starting to get it in the third paragraph, but you're holding on to this idea that beliefs and acceptance are the same. Again, nothing in science is based on beliefs.
Good scientists look for ways they are wrong; people holding onto beliefs look for ways to back up why they're right.
Edit: I should also add that Webster's adds words every year based on popular usage. That's vernacular, common usage. That's why it also lists the word literally as also meaning its antonym, because people commonly use it incorrectly.
I’m referring to strict definitions that are found in science.
Where exactly are the strict scientific definitions you're using for Believe and Accept? Do you have a link?
I showed you the strict definitions I was using.
Good scientists look for ways they are wrong; people holding onto beliefs look for ways to back up why they’re right.
Both of those are epistemologies. One good, and one bad. But epistemologies are only ways to reach a belief. They aren't part of the belief itself. Much like the road isn't the destination. You're including in the definition of Belief, a pattern of behavior, a specific epistemology. But it doesn't have one. Not even in common vernacular. In some specific religious contexts it might, as you say. But Belief is used in vastly more contexts than religion. Someone who believes it won't rain, isn't obligated to hold that belief when they see dark storm clouds approaching. Or are you saying they they'll have to make excuses for why it won't rain? Else they didn't actualy Believe, and just Accepted that it wouldn't rain?
Like I said, I likely won't be able to change your mind because you're holding on to a belief of what that word means in regards to scientific acceptance. I don't expect you to go in search of how you're wrong because it seems like you're holding on to ways that make you feel right. Either way, I've said all I can. Good luck to you!
Here are some links:
So you can't actually support your position, only point out I'm supporting mine. That's... Interesting.
I did support mine, and never said you're not supporting yours, just that you misunderstand.
I didn't say you said I wasn't supporting mine. Now I'm not sure you've really read carefully anything I wrote.
And you simply keep asserting your idea. Ignoring most of my arguments, examples, and questions. For instance, when I asked for the actual specific definitions you claim you and science use, you didn't provide them. Instead you ignored the most basic request for evidence possible, and suggest I'm being dogmatic in my belief, instead of you. As I said, that's interesting.
I figured that was a typo because I wasn't pointing out that you were supporting your point. I did provide the links you asked for. I didn't even derail the conversation to point out that you think philosophy is a science. It's not, in a traditional sense. But it does highlight some fundamentals of why these concepts are difficult for you. You'll want to see or believe what you want, even if it's to intentionally miss the point apparently. Like I said, good luck to you.
Ah! Admittedly I didn't look at the second two links. You gave no description of what they were. I simply looked at the first and assumed the others were in the same vein.
And I was essentially correct in thinking you included the epistemology in the definitions of Believe and Accept. You could have simply said as much. And with those definitions you are correct.
I also didn't realize Epistemology was considered an area of philosophy, not science. Thank you.
Now I see where you're coming from and I appreciate that. Thank you.
You still have to believe the author and the peer reviewers did the correct thing through the process. You have to believe the results presented are real and accurate. Etc, etc.
For example, one of the many scandals of recent times is Franchesca Gino at Harvard publishing false research papers that present false data. People believed it was all real and genuine until a group of people started to do a deep dive into her research.
Ah yes. I often use the two interchangeably.
You shouldn't. They're entirely different.
There are many paths to believing something, or accepting it as true.
The least reliable is faith. It's just "wishing makes it true." Another, is personal experience. But that's easily biased, and even fooled by our limited and faulty senses. Actual repeatable evidence is the best we have so far.
The evidence should convince people.
Scientists are failing to adequately communicate with the public.
There is only so much "dumbing down" you can do to scientific research about topics until you lose all contextual nuance or become too long winded for a layperson to understand without being overloaded with information.
Then there is the issue with secondary and tertiary sources using simple language that causes confusion because it lacks the contextual nuance necessary to convey the correct interpretation.
Clickbait popsci sites don't help either.
That's the point of the second half of my comment.
Clickbait popsci sites are called "secondary sources".
Agreed. There's definitely a gap in how conclusions are communicated to the public.
It's crazy to me that so much of the general public don't understand that science is just a protocol of observing, recording, testing, and analyzing results.
Eh, mostly not the scientists' fault but the media sensationalizing the data in secondary and tertiary sources.
And, as you said, general ignorance of how science works internally. That is a problem with education though, again not the fault of the scientists.
True but the public is also being willfully ignorant
Then said public should not reap the benefits of scientific research.
Ship them off to an island and let them live without science.
It's like vaccines. Sure it sounds nice to say that, but denying it to these dipshits is going to get me hurt
Not of they're isolated away from the rest of society.
Send them to St Helena?
I don't care where.
Chances are that a lot of religion will disappear if wr get rid of them. Win/win.
Yes it does. Most people can't read a case study, and fewer can understand it.
To them, science requires trust in humans and faith that no one is lying.
Most people can't read a case study, and fewer can understand it.
This is the problem.
Eh.. yes and no. I've got an engineering degree, I've learned how to design studies and do science properly, and I still struggle when a study is on topics I'm less familiar with. I can't imagine most people going through these. They're not accessible.
And if you're just reading the abstract and conclusion, or worse a science article, you've got to hope they've interpreted things properly. Which articles are particularly bad at because they need to sound like news.
Or they need a competent journalist to translate the findings without being sensational.
But then they still need to trust the journalist. And considering how much crap science gets published even in supposedly high quality journals, and how little quality peer review happens, even the journalists don't have a scientific basis for much of science reporting.
Part of the problem is the "publish or die" mentality.
Personally, I think the Journal of Negative Results needs more love.
Yes, that's a huge issue. Another issue is that the reward for doing peer reviews is far too low, and publishing negative peer reviews comes with the risk of making an enemy in the same field, who might do your next peer review. So you only call out egregiously bad science or just rubber stamp every peer review, because there's nothing in it for you to publish a negative peer review.
I've read meta studies that said that huge amounts of published scientific studies cannot be reproduced. I can't remember the exact number, but it was >30%.
So if the published science itself is already full of garbage, how is a journalist (who is themselves not a scientist or at least not a scientist in the specific field) know what study is good and what is garbage? And even then, how many people read science journalism compared to boulevard media?
John Bohannon comes to mind, with his purposeful bogus study that claimed that eating chocolate can help with weight loss. He used overfitting and p-hacking to create a study that was purposely garbage and got it published. His goal was to show how easy it is to publish a sensationalist-but-garbage paper. This went so well that every trashy boulevard paper but also many major newspapers ran it, often as a title page news story.
In an interview he said that he got hundreds of calls, all on the level of "Which brand of chocolate helps best?", and only a single serious inquiry doubting his methods.
He published his own debunk shortly after publishing the original story, it it got pretty much no media attention at all.
He basically couldn't even recall his own bogus study, and to this day many people worldwide still believe that chocolate can help with weight loss.
The reproducibility crisis is a huge issue - there's even a whole movement now called "registered reports" where journals accept studies based on methodology before results are known, which helps prevent p-hacking and publication bias that leads to all those unreproducable findings.
Yeah, the problem is that proper science is incredibly hard to do, and incredibly time intensive and thus expensive.
And since only a single metric (amount of published content) is really rewarded, anything else (including the fail-safes necessary for proper science) falls by the wayside.
lol science is fked because you can never be certainn and everything a theory while belief based systems are always certain and always act like theory means false
We might need a science based religion, we could call it Scientology
I'm pretty sure that was the basis of the Foundation series. And I'm here for it
It does when it comes to funding.
Not even then.
There's a little bit in a hypothesis, but I take your point. It just requires good faith approaches and conclusions.
There's a little bit in a hypothesis
Not in a properly formed hypothesis.
You shouldn't have faith in anything in science.
Good faith isn't the same as spiritual faith. It just means good intentions.
Europe is very welcoming to any scientists fleeing the regime.
In that case, I'm switching to ghosts, ufos, government cover ups, and the zodiac.
Take that science.
belief has no place in science, thats religion bs.