The inference

Introduction – Science on Trial Introduction – Science on Trial: When Authority Overrides Evidence What ultimately defines whether an idea is scientific? Is it its adherence to a method of inquiry—observation, falsifiability, prediction, and revision—or its submission to the consensus of an institutionalized community? Is it its ability to be tested against reality—or the authority of institutions that endorse it, whether courts, academic committees, or government agencies? And what, truly, is an ideology? Is it merely a system of declared religious or political beliefs? Or could it be something more insidious: a set of undeclared philosophical assumptions, disguised as neutrality and rationality, that predefine which questions are legitimate—and which answers are allowed? In 2005, in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover , a U.S. district court was asked to answer a question for which it lacked ...