The Role of Skepticism in Science

Abstract

Skepticism is a philosophy that traces to the ancient Greeks. It is based on the view that explanations of events are evaluated after collecting all relevant evidence and carefully considering all possibilities. Even then, the explanation should be considered only tentative. This, of course, is fully consistent with the role of hypotheses and their evaluation in science. Hypotheses are tentative explanations and ultimately cannot be proven, but only disproven. Yet, hypotheses are often readily elevated to an accepted descriptive status. A failure to subject hypotheses to critical evaluation—that is, skeptical analysis—seems to be a quirk of the human brain to accept readily available explanations that at least superficially explain the evidence. The skeptic is required to consider all relevant evidence from several viewpoints to judge the relevant merit of competing explanations.