Scientific Semantics
Nowadays the term “science”—or rather, “Science!” as it is often seems to be declared—is used to denote statements of fact that are beyond debate or dispute. This is how we arrive at phrases like “The science is settled!” when the speaker intends not to accept any further discussion. If you pronounce a claim to be “Science!” it is presumed to be true beyond all contest, as if you were a medical professional declaring a patient “Deceased!”
This observation, the accuracy of which can be debated, caused me to wonder when and how we came to this usage, or if it has been an existing tendency all along that has just become more common within recent memory. In the years of schooling when I was coming up, science meant the collective effort to identify the rules of how the world and universe work by the formulation of hypotheses and subsequently attempting to disprove them. As an hypothesis withstands attempts to defeat it, it becomes increasingly plausible as valid. The way the hierarchy used to be described was that there was first an idea or hunch which was refined into an hypothesis. And if the hypothesis survived enough assaults on it, it would eventually advance to being a theory, and it might be considered akin to a law of nature at some point when it appeared to be beyond defeat.
None of which describes the popular invocation of “Science!” The word is instead used to declare an idea incontestable in the field of rhetoric. This invocation of the term has little in common with the former systematic approach. Instead, it assumes there is a popular consensus behind a theory which elevates it to a law by acclaim. This usage bears little resemblance to a procedure for discovering the rules of nature, since it simply dispenses with the testing phase as a nuisance because it represents a threat to a cherished idea. The idea may be cherished for a lot of reasons, but they all have to do with human social interactions rather than discovering how nature works.
Some have described this usage of the term “science” as “scientism,” meaning it is an ideology that relies on the positive connotation of the word “science” to lend authority to a claim that hasn’t earned it by way of the scientific process. Scientism falls somewhere on the spectrum of deeply held human beliefs that would include religion and ideology. A belief supported by scientism would be considered true because of social pressure to believe.
There has been an ongoing effort to describe human-induced climate change as “Science!” going back to the late years of the 20th century. But that isn’t the first or only application of rhetoric to promote a weak theory with unearned accolades. Others have included ideas about the earth being the center of the universe, about human dietary fat causing heart disease, or—most recent of all—about human sex and gender being social constructs rather than biological.
Science is about trying to determine the laws of nature through a lengthy process of obsessive perfectionism. “Science!” is about forgoing the process as too lengthy and perfectionistic for the purposes of political decision making. “Science!” is a very human trait of impatience.
While I agree that the stating of something, then following same with a preemptive declaration, "Science!", or the use of "Well, I believe the science" as a snarky way of saying, "You're not just wrong, you're an idiot for thinking what you do," I think there is sufficient space between and around "hypothesis" and "theory" for such things as "facts" to cavort about and draw our attention. Indeed, it's repetitive encounter of a given or similar fact(s) that leads to hypothesis. On seeing a sunflower, for instance, change its stance throughout the day to follow the nearest star in its arc across the daytime sky, and then do the same another day, and then another, one might reasonably form a hypothesis about what is happening, and how. This hypothesis can be tested, with further observations and, if we're clever enough, experiments of our own design. When sufficiently supported, the hypothesis may itself, or as part of a grander structure, be labeled a theory. (The juxtaposition of this thought with the uttering of the ill-educated that something is "just a theory" causes scientists understandable heartburn.) If the theory remains standing long enough, substantial enough, reliable and useful enough, it may be accepted as more or less fact--such as the theory about the means by which B cells produce antibodies in response to foreign antigens. There might be some adjustments made in minor details now and again, but the main structure is pretty well accepted as fact. One can't say "law", because that's very nearly entirely restricted for things that simply are, and have to be, true.
Observations of fact lead to hypotheses; hypotheses are tested by further observation and/or experiment; and, based on the new data (facts), remain plausible, become altered, or are discarded in favor of some other alternative(s).
I can hear someone in the back row objecting to the idea that our observations are fact, when everyone knows that they are merely our highly constrained perceptions of an imputed reality. Discussion of such could take us very far away, and for quite some time, without ever becoming very useful. As a practical matter, we rely upon the repeated observation to be something real, even if only a facet or dim impression of the vast sum of reality. The fact that the sun appears to come up in the east (with a pattern of repeated variability around due east), it having been observed a very large number of times, can be taken as "real"--as a fact, as it were. The hypotheses that resulted from these observations were of at least several kinds, and we now know that most of them have been proved, by repeated observations of many related kinds, to bear fatal errors.
Well, if there is no science that actually proves anything? What bother doing it at all?
Aren't we searching for answers/truth ( I acknowledge bias and agendas influence some of it).
If I can't depend on experts to explain the why of things, then it seems of little value to me?
For instance, if it isn't a truth or fact that vaccines work and are valuable...we should just give up and maybe die?
( Yes, this is cynical of me, but, I don't find all science or scientists fake or useless myself.)