/edu/ - Education

Always be skeptical. Even the most rigorous and principled people can make errors.
>Is there any reasonable justification for this? That is, is there a reason to believe knowledge producers would draw the line at actual fabrication?
There's plenty of history that they are fine with outright fabrication at times.
>In general, to what extent can we actually trust the information produced by academia and journalism? If none at all, how can we even navigate the world?
Review sources, methods, data if the claim warrants investigation. Try to corroborate the information with other sources, particularly those with different or contrary interests (if you can't find someone disinterested).
>Is it ever reasonable to simply "trust the science" without even looking at the arguments?
No, literally never. "The science" happens in a real social context with a political dimension and it has always been slanted by this. Even if the data collected is good and the study is valid in a technical sense it will often be interpreted (by the scientists themselves or by reporting) through ideological lenses that lead you into mistakes. Always be skeptical. Anybody telling you dude trust me is probably being dishonest and is self-aware of it. An honest person would tell you to check for yourself and validate what they're saying.

I don't think that's fair.

Scientists are sceptical about results, and it is well known and accepted that results are sometimes wrong. More often because of errors than malice, but deliberate falsification does happen. That's why scientific findings always have to be reproducible. If multiple, independent research groups repeat the experiment/study and find the same results, they are most likely correct. Repeating previous results is expensive and not very attractive and unfortunately it is not done as often as it should be. In most cases as an outsider you can't do it from your bedroom alone. That's why you usually see people attack methodology and other issues first, it is less effort and you only need to get the paper from sci-hub. If you are interested in a topic, try finding meta-analyses and literature surveys instead of individual papers, they are more likely to contain trustworthy results, as they aggregate multiple results.

In journalism it is a bit different, but you can (and journalists are supposed to) cross-check facts from multiple independent sources, when they are available. Then again, this is more work that just pointing out faulty reasoning, so outsiders don't bother. But serious, published works are supposed to have done this for you, and they are more likely to be more factual than some online blog masquerading as a news site.

I don't think your criticism is right, these are known issues and there are safeguards that are supposed to limit their harm. Of course they are not perfect, but the situation is not nearly as bad as you make it to be.

>>9124
>Review sources, methods, data if the claim warrants investigation. Try to corroborate the information with other sources, particularly those with different or contrary interests (if you can't find someone disinterested).
But what if, for example, there's an imbalance between the different interests? Few people have the resources to conduct large-scale nationwide polls, or access to advanced telescopes or particle accelerators, stuff like that. The ability to verify data might be concentrated in the hands of a few and at that point it's easier for their interests to align, especially when it comes to journalism.
It seems to me that the bigger institutions will tend to form a sort of "knowledge elite" that not only may align with the political elite but will also have its own independent interests (such as securing funding or maintaining its credibility) that will steer it a certain way.

>>9125
I'm not that trying to suggest that we're in a crisis where most of the science is wrong, I'm just wondering how, epistemologically, we can justify our trust in the data that's presented to us.
I know replication and cross-checking exist, but as you yourself sort of pointed towards, they have their problems as safeguards on an institutional level. As I said above, the ability to verify might be concentrated in the hands of those with shared interests (or not even necessarily interests, but shared biases). This is especially the case with journalism where sources are often anonymous.

But I do agree now that there at least exist processes by which we can gain sufficient trust in the data, even if I don't think they'll always work.

just be critical, like >>9124 said

>>9123
Learn to think skeptically; the clearest introduction to this mode of thought is still Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Skepticism.