When a person who needs to believe something for ideological, or wealth protection reasons argues with a scientist the correct and natural tendency of scientists to take each idea seriously makes it seem like they don't really have confidence in their claim.
The fact that the claim would be quickly abandoned if proper evidence existed is alien.
The ideological assume everyone is advocating to win, rather than to know.
It would be so exciting if a well known theory were wrong.
@futurebird I feel like the problem is a lot of bad faith actors take advantage of this in bad ways though. Like antivaxxers repeating the same lies over and over. Scientist disprove each claim over and over, but they just keep making them. At a certain point the response maybe shouldn't be "here is a link to a study that shows there is no significant increase in the claimed effect" and instead should be "you and I both know you are lying and you should stop."
@futurebird "quickly abandoned" is a sliding scale however. Scientists are human too. Those further along in life, and their careers, tend to require a lot more evidence to change their minds than those earlier on in their careers. Thus much change in Science is generational - not all, by any means, but much.
"The ideological assume everyone is advocating to win, rather than to know. "
I love that statement by the way. It's damn near perfect.
Especially with cyptids I long with all my being for them to be right, I will always look at your blurry bigfoot photo. Disrupting the apple cart is the most exciting science. Everyone is psyched for it. No one is suppressing you, you have fans cheering you on to really bring out the kind of evidence that means something.
@futurebird Cryptids have some sort of reality to them, even if or especially if it's all in our minds. I'd love for a decent scientific theory explaining it, but all we get is the unhinged on one side and disinterested hand waving on the other.
On the other side is how excited scientists get when they talk about stuff like maybe this evidence points to a holographic universe, probably not but maybe, and then explain why that'd be cool.