That means looking at methods, discussing confounding factors and how they were and weren't handled correctly, and what alternatives could have been employed.
There's a similar form of dismissive, passive skepticism that says: science has problems, so it's not even worth looking harder.
Note: I'm assuming good faith on part of parent, so not pointing fingers. But it is a thing I've seen on HN, especially re: biology.
Tl;dr - don't tl;dr science.
I will comment though: Passive skepticism is important too. At this stage, the bigger problem is treating one study outcome as if it were fact. Dismissing established, well-replicated science is, of course, a problem as well, but at least from what I've seen, the much bigger problem is that you have one correlational study. Popular media runs with it. People make products based on it. The underlying science is nonsense.
The good news is that it's also possible to solve. There is constant progress in science, of course, but if we ignore all science from the past 20 years, we're still left with pretty good science (at least for the level of policy-making and personal decision-making). Simply ignoring anything recent solves the hype problem. And for all the anti-vaxxers and flat earthers, those are still minorities since recognizing established science is actually not especially hard.
But what if the people of 20 years ago had made that same choice? And the people 20 years before then? Etc.
It's not a tenable long-term position.
> Popular media runs with it. People make products based on it. The underlying science is nonsense.
This has always been the case, though. A majority of people are dumb and/or lazy. Consequently, the quickest way to make a buck off them is the above.
But that trash science gets popularly communicated doesn't opine on the advancement of the academic practice.
> And for all the anti-vaxxers and flat earthers, those are still minorities since recognizing established science is actually not especially hard.
This feels like something we degree pretty strongly on.
(1) I don't think it should ever be easy to tell bad science, (2) I certainly don't think established science should hold an especially privileged place (heliocentrism!), & (3) I do think that the anti-vaxxers and flat earthers deserve a place in any true scientific practices (there's a myriad of ways they generally demonstrate their ineptitude, but ideas should not be verboten).
