RE: Scientific Evidence Shouldn't Dictate Your Opinion
First off, there is always chaos. Always has been. Order is relative to a certain perspective. Second, I don't dismiss scientific evidence. I just say not to take them at heart. Third, I am not a post-modernist. I am just skeptical about much of the scientific method. Simply, I cannot trust the current academic culture.
Forget about vaccinations (Scroll back in my blog and you will see I support most of them). People, in order to accept something they need evidence. It is hard to take something so complicated at face value. Why would anyone trust anybody because of their position? Should we trust politicians as well or famous people? How is merit really measured these days? These are the real questions.
A society where all people believe in facts delivered to them without researching themselves is doomed.
Should we trust politicians or famous people? Not because of their position, not at all no. Should we trust people that have studied years and years on a certain subject, who can be considered experts, and that for the great majority all agree on one issue? Yes, unless we have strong reasons not to. Many people doubt the opinion of experts without any good reason to do so. If that attitude (or lifestyle even) gets out of hand (and I am exaggerating slightly), schools and universities will be useless, because anytime a teacher tries to teach students any 'facts', students will not believe him because there are no facts.
You will find a nice example of what I mean in this scene of Thank You For Smoking (awesome movie), "Your mommy says you can't smoke? So is your mommy a doctor?"
I remember this one. :)
I do have strong reasons for not believing them at heart. There is too much lobbying in all scientific research nowdays. I know because I have been in academia.
This is true. There is a lot of advertising masked as science. Big Cannabis is a good example.
Authority does exist. You can argue "he says it, and he knows better than I do, so I think that's true". What's not correct is to say "he is an authority, so he cannot be wrong"; obviously authorities are wrong sometimes.