Peter Ellerton, The University of Queensland
Claims that the “the science isn’t settled” with regard to climate change are symptomatic of a large body of ignorance about how science works.
So what is the scientific method, and why do so many people, sometimes including those trained in science, get it so wrong?
The first thing to understand is that there is no one method in science, no one way of doing things. This is intimately connected with how we reason in general.
Science and reasoning
Humans have two primary modes of reasoning: deduction and induction. When we reason deductively, we tease out the implications of information already available to us.
For example, if I tell you that Will is between the ages of Cate and Abby, and that Abby is older than Cate, you can deduce that Will must be older than Cate.
That answer was embedded in…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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