Daniel Little — Science and decision

Science is uncertain•; and yet we have no better basis for making important decisions about the future than the best scientific knowledge currently available. Moreover, there are powerful economic interests that exert themselves to undermine the confidence of the public and our policy makers in the findings of science that appear to harm those interests. How should we think about these two factors, one epistemic and the other political? The first lays out the reasons for thinking that some of our most confident theories may in fact be erroneous; the second makes us worry that even strongly credible science will be undermined by corporate and financial interests....

Understanding Society
Science and decision
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor

Science is uncertain in several respects. First, science knowledge is uncertain in the sense of being tentative. Science involves general description, which can be falsified but not definitively confirmed. Secondly, since science is empirical it can only approach probability 1 as a limit. Science is essentially skeptical. Thirdly, no theoretical explanation can be shown to be the "best" explanation possible, only the optimal one available at the time.

This relates to the raging discussion that Paul Romer began with his post on "mathiness." It's still raging.