Why Don't People Believe in Science? - Joel Achenbach

"Most people really do like science." Reporter Joel Achenbach researched the pervasive disbelief in some of science's findings, like climate change, the moon landing and autism's disproven connection to vaccines, to find that people tend to think of themselves as rationalists. But, when scientists discover something that conflicts with our worldview, the public wants the findings to be completely infallible before they'll accommodate the findings. But science, by its nature, is fallible: "By definition it's rarely truly settled, because if it was settled, it wouldn't be a scientific question at that moment. Scientists do their work with a certain level of uncertainty in the results, and they're comfortable with that." Achenbach recommends that the public take a less absolute approach. Just because there is some degree of uncertainty, doesn't mean that we don't know anything about the topic.