One Degree wrote:Yes, but that subtle difference is what results in people like Godstud viewing science as something more than it really is. This should be discouraged as it can indeed be viewed as ‘religious belief’.
We really don't know what's going on in Godstud's mind, but yes, having this inaccuracy (calling current findings as facts) could lead to people believing that scientific findings are indisputable fact. Technically speaking.....
That said, if the findings on some random thing being studied is 99%. From a practical standpoint, it's as good as a fact to me (until something better comes along). Arguing over 1% can be very insignificant and a waste of time. For example, since I work in computer architecture performance. What happens is, we propose some sort of architectural change. We make the change, and then test it by running a million different workloads to test the impact of this change on the workloads. If the results come back that this architectural change resulted in 20% performance increases 99% of the time on this specific class of workloads, and in the 1% there's no different on this specific class of workloads. Then the claim that this architectural change is a benefit to performance on these workloads is as good as a fact to me.
Ultimately, I think you're just saying we should stop using the word facts in science discussion. Cause technically, everything is disputable in science. That's fine, and I think most reasonable scientists that arne't working in fields which are heavily politicized understand this anyway. I don't' really see an issue here, or something to cry about from you. The only places this becomes a problem is when shit gets political, like climate science.
I do have to say, all the papers I've read never really declare anything as true facts anyway.
I can think of 11780 reasons Trump shouldn't be president ever again.