Middle Medicine

Scientific authority, like any type of authority, is easily abused, and often unwittingly abused.
M. Scott Peck takes a stab at illuminating the subject in the paragraphs below.

The Danger of Cloaking Moral Judgment in Scientific Authority

This is a major pitfall. It is a pitfall because we ascribe to science much more authority than it deserves. We do so for two reasons. One is that very few of us understand the limitations of science. The other is that we are too dependent upon authority in general.
When our children were infants we were blessed by the very best of pediatricians, a kind and dedicated man of great erudition. When we visited him a month after the birth of our oldest child, he instructed to start feeding her solid foods almost immediately, because such supplementation was needed for babies being breast fed. A year later, when we visited him a month after the birth of our second daughter, he directed us to delay feeding this one solid food as long as possible so as to not deprive her of the extraordinary nutrition in breast milk. The state of “science” had changed! When I was in medical school we were taught that the essential treatment for diverticulitis was a low-roughage diet. Now medical students are taught that the essential treatment is a high-roughage diet.
Such experiences have taught me that what is paraded as scientific fact is simply the current opinion of some scientists. We are accustomed to regard science as Truth with a capital T. What scientific knowledge is, in fact, is the best available approximation of truth in the judgment of the majority of scientists who work in the particular specialty involved. Truth is not something we possess; it is a goal toward which we, hopefully, strive.
[...]
The problem is aggravated by the fact that the public is actually eager to be guided by the pronouncements of scientists. [...] We are content, even anxious, to let our authorities do our thinking for us. There is a profound tendency to make of our scientists “philosopher kings,” whom we allow to guide us through intellectual labyrinths, when they are often just as lost as the rest of us.
M.S. Peck, MD, 1985, pp 257-258.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post regarding skepticism, it is very important to turn both science and skepticism in on themselves and each other. If this is not done, neither deserves their own title.