What could possibly be wrong with trusting something which gets mentioned so often?
The quality of the cites is important, not just the quantity.
It’s possible for experts to be utterly wrong, even in their own field of expertise, even when they are very confident in their claims and seem to have good reason to be. However, it seems to me that the probability of that decreases with how testable their results are, the amount and quality of expertise they have, and the degree to which other experts legitimately agree with them (i.e. not just nodding along, but substantiating the claim with their own knowledge).
Since I’m not an expert in the given field, my ability to evaluate these things is limited and not entirely trustworthy. However, since I’m familiar with the most basic ideas of science and rationality, I ought to be able to differentiate pseudo-science from science pretty well, particularly if the pseudo-science is very irrational, or if the science is very sound.
That I had a mistaken impression about the implications of Miller-Urey, wherein I confused pop-science with real science, decreases my confidence that I’ve been generally doing it right. However, I still think the principles I listed above make sense, and that my primary error was in failing to notice the assumption I was making re: smoke → fire.
Excellent summary, I think. I have just a few things to add.
… it seems to me that the probability of that decreases with how testable their results are …
A claim that the (very real) process that Miller discovered was actually involved in the (also very real, but unknown) process by which life originated is pretty much the ultimate in untestable claims in science.
… the amount and quality of expertise they have …
In my own reading in this area, I quickly noticed that when the Miller experiment was cited in an origin-of-life chapter in a book that is really about something else, it was mentioned as if it were important science. But when it is mentioned in a book about the origin of life, then it is mentioned as intellectual history, almost in the way that chemistry books mention alchemy and phlogiston.
In other words, you can trust people like Orgel with expertise in this area to give you a better picture of the real state-of-knowledge, than someone like Paul Davies, say, who may be an expert on the Big Bang, but also includes chapters on origin-of-life and origin-of-man because it helps to sell more books.
The quality of the cites is important, not just the quantity.
It’s possible for experts to be utterly wrong, even in their own field of expertise, even when they are very confident in their claims and seem to have good reason to be. However, it seems to me that the probability of that decreases with how testable their results are, the amount and quality of expertise they have, and the degree to which other experts legitimately agree with them (i.e. not just nodding along, but substantiating the claim with their own knowledge).
Since I’m not an expert in the given field, my ability to evaluate these things is limited and not entirely trustworthy. However, since I’m familiar with the most basic ideas of science and rationality, I ought to be able to differentiate pseudo-science from science pretty well, particularly if the pseudo-science is very irrational, or if the science is very sound.
That I had a mistaken impression about the implications of Miller-Urey, wherein I confused pop-science with real science, decreases my confidence that I’ve been generally doing it right. However, I still think the principles I listed above make sense, and that my primary error was in failing to notice the assumption I was making re: smoke → fire.
Excellent summary, I think. I have just a few things to add.
A claim that the (very real) process that Miller discovered was actually involved in the (also very real, but unknown) process by which life originated is pretty much the ultimate in untestable claims in science.
In my own reading in this area, I quickly noticed that when the Miller experiment was cited in an origin-of-life chapter in a book that is really about something else, it was mentioned as if it were important science. But when it is mentioned in a book about the origin of life, then it is mentioned as intellectual history, almost in the way that chemistry books mention alchemy and phlogiston.
In other words, you can trust people like Orgel with expertise in this area to give you a better picture of the real state-of-knowledge, than someone like Paul Davies, say, who may be an expert on the Big Bang, but also includes chapters on origin-of-life and origin-of-man because it helps to sell more books.