What is the highest authority in science?
Channel: Peter Allen
Date: 2021-10-25

Key video link: Why trust science by Naomi Oreskes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7PwqiiQmVM
Allen Lab Vlog 315, 10/24/2021

A few weeks ago I made a video about hydra, the freshwater little creatures. I got people up in my comments talking about a conspiracy theory I'd never heard of. According to this theory, "THEY" are adding HYDRA to the vaccines!!!1!!1 I started reading about what the best practices are for talking with conspiracy theory believers and science deniers. And, as a practical matter, a "trusted institution heuristic" makes sense. But the highest authority is experiment. Science is our understanding based on the past and current observations of the physical world. The organizations that disseminate this are only messengers. We don't have to trust them because they are good or infallible people. We trust them because they are performing the experiments. They are keeping each other accountable to that basic principle.



Video Credits:
Tardigrade video “Tardigrado osservato al microscopio ottico”
Mariastella.paulon CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tardigrado_al_microscopio,_100X.webm

Video of an antlion larva 
Imac.vincent CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antlion_video.ogv