{"id":3932,"date":"2009-10-23T05:30:34","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T10:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=3932"},"modified":"2009-10-23T05:30:34","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T10:30:34","slug":"quantifying-doubt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/3932","title":{"rendered":"Quantifying Doubt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/network.nature.com\/people\/henrygee\/blog\/2009\/10\/22\/science-as-a-religion-that-worships-doubt-as-its-god\">Science as a Religion that Worships Doubt as its God<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A rebuttal to the notion that science worships truth.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What science is all about, in contrast, is the quantification of <em>doubt<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> I&#8217;ve seen this from a sightly different angle.  Some people like to say &#8220;For all we know, blah, blah, blah,&#8221;  with the implication that some result or its opposite, or just a complete spectrum of outcomes, are equally likely.  And it usually isn&#8217;t so \u2014 statements like that are from people trying to portray &#8220;not being sure&#8221; as being the same as &#8220;not having a clue.&#8221;  What science does is limit the uncertainty involved in &#8220;for all we know,&#8221; and it does this by quantifying it.  The answer may not be (for example) exactly 3, but knowing that 5 is right out adds to our knowledge.  That&#8217;s something that a result of 3 \u00b1 0.1 tells us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Science as a Religion that Worships Doubt as its God A rebuttal to the notion that science worships truth. What science is all about, in contrast, is the quantification of doubt. I&#8217;ve seen this from a sightly different angle. Some &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/3932\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}