Attached are a couple excerpts from another great substack by Alex Wasburne, a Princeton trained ecologist and evolutionary biologist. Click this hyperlink to read the entire substack post.

More broadly, in many branches of science what’s being studied is infinitely complex with a lot of uncertainty. That’s certainly the case in areas of science that fascinate me the most including microbial ecology, soil science, atmospheric chemistry, microbiome research, and nutritional biochemistry.

So, in general, I tend to ignore and discount scientists and people who make absolute statements and/or purport to be possessors of “The Truth” based on “The Science” that’s been supposedly “settled”.

Some of these scientists may have credentials out the wazoo and be widely recognized as “experts”. Though due to financial conflicts of interests, many of these so-called “experts” are no longer objective. Many are also afraid of losing their research funding if they contradict or don’t appease the powerful authorities who provide that funding.

Absolutists also include a lot of advocates masquerading as scientists, who filter information to support their agendas. These people tend to suffer from a number of other cognitive distortions especially polarized (black or white) thinking.

So like life, science is very nuanced as well as messy due to its limitations and constraints, including ethical and methodological constraints. Thus the scientists and people that I tend to listen to the most often make statements like these:

“I don’t know”.
“I was wrong”.
“This is what we can surmise from what we know right now”.

If someone won’t acknowledge that he or she doesn’t know or was wrong, then it might be wise to listen to someone else.