Identifying Future-Proof Science (Paperback)

Paperback. Is science getting at the truth? The scepticsthose who spread doubt about scienceoften employ a simple argument: scientists were 'sure' in the past, and then they ended up being wrong. Through a combination of historical investigation and philosophical-sociological analysis, Identifying Future-Proof Science defends science against this potentially dangerous scepticism. Indeed, we can confidently identify manyscientific claims that are future-proof: they will last forever, so long as science continues. How do we identify future-proof claims? This appears to be a new question for science scholars, and not an unimportant one. Itis argued that the best way to identify future-proof science is to avoid any attempt to analyse the relevant first-order scientific evidence, instead focusing purely on second-order evidence. Specifically, a scientific claim is future-proof when the relevant scientific community is large, international, and diverse, and at least 95 per cent of that community would describe the claim as a 'scientific fact'. In the entire history of science, no claim meeting these criteria has ever beenoverturned, despite enormous opportunity. This is the first book to explore how to identify future-proof science. Peter Vickers takes a transdisciplinary approach in his analysis of 'scientific fact' in order to defend science against potentially dangerous scepticism. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…