Okay, you guys have got me going again ... First, Presto:

While I understand your problems with scientific methodology, I think the greater problem is with the media misinterpreting the results of said studies.

That is certainly true, and your comments regarding sensationalism in the media are also spot on. However, there’s far worse afoot out there. When I first began teaching introductory psychology as a graduate student, I wanted to do the best job possible; therefore, I used several textbooks as resources for my lecture notes. (I never was one of those instructors who merely read the assigned textbook aloud in class.) I noticed that descriptions of classic experiments—all presented as “fact”—varied, sometimes widely, among the texts. How could that happen if the authors were doing basic fact-checking? (I began reading the original research after noticing this, but it is a time-consuming process; and it requires an excellent library.) Anyway, if the so-called experts in a field, who are writing the texts for future experts, can’t be bothered to do that kind of work, why should anyone else? Sloppiness is shot through the system—at least in my former field.

More from Presto:

One thing that I learned is that laymen (including managers who think that they're experts) do not understand the context of a particular statistic, and therefore misinterpret what it means. .... Science reporters rarely have any background in the subjects that they are reporting on, making the problem worse.

You’re right, of course. However, the research process is not easy to grasp (well, that or maybe I was just slow at grokking it): although I could have taken a minor in quantitative psychology in grad school, and did lots of research throughout my educational training, it wasn’t until I began teaching experimental psychology that I deeply grokked how it all is supposed to flow—ideas into research hypotheses; hypotheses into testable questions; testable questions into a rigorous research design; collected data into inferential statistical tests; and the results of those tests back into general conclusions. Of course, there are potential land mines at every step, and plenty of places for bias (conscious or not) to seep in to the process.

The media is also loooking to get an attention-grabbing headline to sell newspapers or whatever, and often skews its interpretations to grab the reader's attention.

These days, the “celebrity scientist” plays a role in the sensationalism as well. I highly recommend the excellent book (I ought to review it) Of Moths and Men for some insight into this development and the scientific process as well.

And white rabbit says, in part:

I think much of the problem in science comes from societal attitudes toward it. It is viewed as either a god or a charlatan.

Of course; and this simplified dichotomy is the inevitable result of an educational system that is designed to dumb down children across all levels of ability.

We also understood science isn't fact, but only observation; that science is never static and sure, but ever changing, because our knowledge changes daily. Much of what I learned in genetics class is that we really don't know as much as the media makes out that we do.

One of the things I emphasized in all my teaching is that science is a method—and that method also changes over time, as does our understanding.

Your mentioning of genetics reminds me of another widespread fallacy—that our genetic code is somehow beyond influence. It is what it is and one is either genetically doomed or blessed. Environment can influence the expression of one’s genes, sometimes radically; and genes get switched on and off over the course of a life, perhaps by situations that geneticists currently don’t fully understand. It irks me to no end to see the genome portrayed as some unassailable tyrant of life.

I understand, I think, why you titled your comments “In defense of science”, but my wandering babble shouldn’t be taken as a complete repudiation of it. Science is a system—and in our current environment, it’s a system influenced by political, economic, and cultural ideas to a disturbing degree. But beyond that, the system of science is largely both reductionist (in methodology, mostly) and aggregate (in interpreting/applying results). Because of those elements, scientific findings are not easily mapped into a holistic, individualistic perspective. Yet that’s what science celebrities, media, and many others smuggle in to their articles and interviews—and I have enormous difficulties with that misrepresentation.