Apr 17, 2016 02:19 AM
http://news.discovery.com/human/death-an...160416.htm
EXCERPT: . . . In the sciences, a sure thing is elusive; uncertainty is the norm. Scientific research is an iterative process. A hypothesis is formulated; research is undertaken; evidence is gathered; results are analyzed. Uncertainty doesn’t mean a lack of understanding so much as it provides opportunities for further study. As the Union of Concerned Scientists, a scientific advocacy organization, explains in an article about climate change: “To most of us, uncertainty means not knowing. To scientists, however, uncertainty is how well something is known.”
Scientists express their degree of certainty by presenting qualified conclusions based on their results, explaining potential limitations of their methodology and shining a light on potential sources of error for the sake of transparency. Scientific findings have to be reproducible to be reliable, but even that isn’t exactly proof of a theory.
“The very expression ‘scientifically proven’ is a contradiction in terms,” physicist Carlo Rovelli said in a 2012 interview. “There is nothing that is scientifically proven.”
Certainty is described in terms of confidence, and scientists have their own terminology for explaining their level of assurance in their findings....
EXCERPT: . . . In the sciences, a sure thing is elusive; uncertainty is the norm. Scientific research is an iterative process. A hypothesis is formulated; research is undertaken; evidence is gathered; results are analyzed. Uncertainty doesn’t mean a lack of understanding so much as it provides opportunities for further study. As the Union of Concerned Scientists, a scientific advocacy organization, explains in an article about climate change: “To most of us, uncertainty means not knowing. To scientists, however, uncertainty is how well something is known.”
Scientists express their degree of certainty by presenting qualified conclusions based on their results, explaining potential limitations of their methodology and shining a light on potential sources of error for the sake of transparency. Scientific findings have to be reproducible to be reliable, but even that isn’t exactly proof of a theory.
“The very expression ‘scientifically proven’ is a contradiction in terms,” physicist Carlo Rovelli said in a 2012 interview. “There is nothing that is scientifically proven.”
Certainty is described in terms of confidence, and scientists have their own terminology for explaining their level of assurance in their findings....