A second misperception is about thoroughness of science. It is interesting to me that this thoroughness is often misunderstood. To geoscientists it means that we have investigated and carefully measured all the factors that can affect our answer. However, when people say something has been done scientifically, often all he or she means is that it has been done thoroughly. A third misperception deals with uncertainty.
People confuse uncertainty with a lack of fundamental understanding.
That is, I can say with some degree of confidence that the half-life of uranium is 4.5 billion years plus or minus 0.1 billion years. That is, we can be certain only to a limit that is dependent upon our measuring instruments and the heterogeneity of natural systems. Saying we have uncertainty in measuring parameters in science is normal, and this uncertainty is generally quantified by some measure such as a standard deviation or equivalent expression. We in geoscience recognize this uncertainty, and it is an integral part of the way we report and interpret information. Many people, however, interpret this uncertainty to mean that we do not understand the fundamental physics, chemistry, or biology, of an issue or problem, which is incorrect.