a scientific theory is where we end up now how many experiments how many tests do we have to pass in order to prove our scientific theory is it 50 is it 100 is it 500 what do you think that's kind of a silly question i mean it doesn't actually make sense you know you've passed 99 tests it's a hypothesis you've passed a hundred tests as a theory that's absurd with each test that you pass you gain more confidence more confidence is not the same thing as proof and here comes the key idea you can never prove a scientific theory proof means guaranteed correct cannot be wrong can't be done you can certainly disprove a scientific hypothesis you can never prove it what you do is gain essentially overwhelming confidence and when we have overwhelming confidence that's what we call a theory still not proof now that's very important in understanding science because while most of the time scientific theories do turn out to hold up for years and years and years and sometimes forever there are occasions when new ideas new data comes along and we suddenly discover that a scientific theory isn't correct after all back to the drawing board major fail time to rethink time to move forward and discover new things this fact is unfortunately abused by some members of the public usually those who have an agenda they want to push that they know is irrational but they're hoping to push it based on the public's ignorance and it goes like this science is nothing but theories scientists can't prove anything you don't have to believe what they say go with this idea instead okay well the choice of word theory is i think unfortunate because a theory in the dictionary is an idea and that's why i've gone through this flowchart rather carefully with you because a scientific theory is by no means just an idea a scientific hypothesis is just an idea the scientific theory is an idea that has gone through this extensive testing to the point that we have overwhelming confidence that it's the right idea having said that it is still possible for ideas to change in the light of new evidence new data and that's what makes science interesting and fascinating and fun because it's not set in stone it's not locked down so nothing can ever change yes new discoveries do change our understanding of science let's take this thing here for the longest time centuries world conservation of matter just went like this mata can neither be created nor destroyed period and then in the 1930s scientists actually at the university of chicago discovered a method by which you can actually destroy matter you start with a weight quantity and you end up with less matter has gone disappeared technically we now know it wasn't destroyed it was turned into energy but as far as matter was concerned gone this happened in what is called a nuclear reaction and so after a couple hundred years we had to update the law of conservation of matter the blanket overall statement wasn't true anymore matter can be destroyed in a nuclear reaction but that only applies to certain very specific events and all the rest of the time it is still perfectly true that mata can either be created or destroyed so we just added the qualifier it remains true to this day that during a chemical reaction matter is neither created nor destroyed so it wasn't perhaps a total rejection but it did require more rigorous definition a more accurate statement now in your middle textbook he talks about two different kinds of science he talks about something called consensus science and something else called frontier science these aren't something new and different they're another way of looking at this flowchart over here let's take consensus science what is this word what does consensus mean if we have consensus on a matter what do we have it means that we have agreement most everybody agrees that's what consensus means so consensus science is science that pretty much everybody agrees upon how does that relate to the ideas over here where's the science that everybody agrees on it's down at the bottom here isn't it consensus science is a way of describing well-established scientific theories they've been around for years they always work we have overwhelming confidence they're correct therefore we all agree consensus science is consensus science newsworthy mata can neither be created nor destroyed news at 11. not going to happen is it something that we've known about for hundreds of years is not newsworthy definitely not that straightforward now what about frontier science okay here i know students have got into trouble i've had some descriptions on quizzes and tests where people described it this way they said well frontier science is science that was carried out on the old western frontier and we weren't all that good at science in those days and the equipment had arrived by covered wagon a lot of stuff was broken so blah blah blah don't go there please don't go there what miller means by frontier science he's talking about the frontiers of science the newest the latest pushing the envelope new discoveries okay so frontier science is knew the latest discoveries the frontiers of our scientific knowledge where does that fall on the flow chart over here on the right well it's going to come somewhere up here why is that because if it's a new discovery there hasn't been time for a whole lot of testing to occur yet hopefully some testing has occurred before we publish it which is why i haven't pointed the arrow at the hypothesis but i've pointed it a lot nearer to hypothesis than the theory because it's going to take time it's going to take a whole lot of testing and experimentation before we get there we're not there yet so am i saying that frontier science is bad no i'm not frontier science is early in the game frontier science has i presume passed at least one test probably several but it hasn't passed many we do not yet have that overwhelming confidence that will take time and further experimentation and acceptance and investigation by many scientists what will happen during those investigations well there's a possibility always that we'll fail and have to reject and start over as we go on the more and more experiments we carry out the more and more likely passes become and the less and less likely that fails become you know on the very first test it's a 50-50 chance so what that means is frontier science is unreliable it's too early to tell whether it's going to achieve the reliability of consensus science it may it may not we don't know yet but let me ask you that key question again is frontier science newsworthy absolutely the latest breakthroughs yes that's the stuff that we put in the news and report to the public right there we have a huge problem of public perception all of the reliable science what we have overwhelming confidence in we do not share with the public what we do share with the public is the new stuff which might or might not eventually work out so essentially we are telling the public that science can't necessarily be believed we're telling the public that it's great ideas but kind of unreliable and often they don't work out i'm sure you've got experience of this in your own lives in for example the medical business how often have you seen some procedure diet drug being touted on the news as the best thing since sliced bread and then a year or two later either we don't hear anything at all about it anymore or actually being told no that was wrong that was dangerous don't do it frontier sounds some of it turns out to be great some of it turns out to fail that's how science should work you have to have the ideas in order to test them to find out which are the good ones and which aren't but we are giving the public the wrong idea by touting frontier science on the news and ignoring consensus science does a failure of some brand new idea in frontier science invalidate the great body of consensus science no it does has no effect on it but to the public who just thinks of science any failure raises questions about reliability and believability which aren't justified that's the reason why miller goes into these two categories like this the medical business is an area where this distinction becomes very very important if a procedure a drug can potentially injure or kill you you want to be confident in it before you use it you want it to be here rather than there but at the same time the need for rapid new advances has never been more obvious than during this present pandemic and so when are we confident when have we done enough testing governments set up advisory panels to consider that here in the united states we have the fda the food and drug administration and until they've said yes to a new drug it can't go anywhere