Scientific Method
"A scientist said it" is not a scientific argument. The method is.
Science isn't a collection of facts handed down by experts. It's a process — and a ruthless one. You start with a question, form a hypothesis, design a test that could prove you wrong, run it, and see what happens. Then someone else tries to replicate your result. If they can't, your finding is suspect. If nobody can ever disprove it in principle, it's not science at all — it's a belief wearing a lab coat.
This is what makes science powerful: it's built to catch its own mistakes. Falsification is the backbone. A theory earns trust not by being proven right, but by surviving serious attempts to tear it apart. The moment a claim is shielded from challenge — by status, consensus, or institutional pressure — it stops being science and starts being dogma.
Most people never learn this distinction. They're taught that science means "what scientists agree on" rather than "a method for rigorously questioning everything, including what scientists agree on." That confusion gets exploited constantly — by industries, governments, and anyone who wants to borrow the credibility of science without submitting to its discipline.
The method doesn't care who you are. It cares whether your evidence holds up.
References
- Thomas Kuhn — The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
- Karl Popper — The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)
- Paul Feyerabend — Against Method (1975)