"Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts."
That's the most controversial, because a lot of people want to be authorities and don't want to be questioned.
For instance, the origins of Covid... or really lots of things about the pandemic were pushed by authorities with little justification other than authority. It turns out many of those things were subsequently reversed or reasonably doubted.
I agree that that particular point is one of the biggest problems when it comes to translating scientific understanding to public policy.
Can there be "settled science"? What is considered an acceptable level of skepticism?
Governing society is largely based on rough estimates of ROI and optimizing for certain value systems based on minimal firm data at best. Often under time pressure.
The problem is that it's easy to generate bullshit skepticism to lock up the process (to benefit the status quo) whereas it takes lots of effort to scientifically disprove and debunk the bullshit. We generally use appeal to authority as a shortcut to overcome this effort asymmetry.
The thing we need to be clear about is when/how that is a valid tool for public policy, but not science itself.
The bullshit skepicism should usually be identifiable by applying the same set of rules to evaluate its claims. Take the claim that Ivermectin was effective in treating COVID. Some doctors did support this, but that's Argument by Authority, and probably also Statistics of Small Numbers if not several others.
> lots of things about the pandemic were pushed by authorities with little justification other than authority.
Whatever people's feelings about how this was handled, please don't include the scientists in the issue. The authorities mandating things were the political folks, not the scientists.
That's the most controversial, because a lot of people want to be authorities and don't want to be questioned.
For instance, the origins of Covid... or really lots of things about the pandemic were pushed by authorities with little justification other than authority. It turns out many of those things were subsequently reversed or reasonably doubted.