Our society often equates "science" with "expert." When we want to know what the "science" is on a particular matter, we hire an expert to tell us, preferably a PhD. I'm not sure this is the right way to think about science. But, just to be safe, I will cite a PhD in support of my position.
In an earlier post I wrote about the physicist Richard Feynman. In that post I mentioned Feynman's 1974 speech Cargo Cult Science. "Cargo cult science" was Feynman's phrase for pseudoscience or junk science. That speech is a good discussion of what science is and is not. If you have not read it, you may find it worthwhile to do so.
In this post, I want to mention another Feynman speech. In 1966, the year after he won the Nobel prize, Feynman gave a speech at a meeting of high school science teachers titled What is Science? He talked about how the human race has learned to accumulate knowledge and pass it on to subsequent generations:
This phenomenon of having a memory for the race, of having an accumulated knowledge passable from one generation to another, was new in the world. But it had a disease in it. It was possible to pass on mistaken ideas.
Feynman went on to say that science was developed (or discovered) as a cure for this disease. Science avoids the disease by continually rechecking knowledge claims against experience. It is not sufficient to simply accept the word of "experts":
Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
The experts who are leading you may be wrong.
Feynman was of the opinion that "we live in an unscientific age" in which much that is passed off as science is in fact pseudoscience:
As a result, there is a considerable intellectual tyranny in the name of science.
That was in 1966. I wonder if we are more or less scientific today.
