The Validity Of Words In Quinn's Belief And Knowledge

Quinn’s “Belief and Knowledge” addresses the problem of everyday people misunderstanding scientific vocabulary and the concepts used with it, essentially degrading the worth of science. A theory is generally thought of as like a hunch or a guess, while in the scientific world, it represents an idea backed up with strong evidence and explanation. It represents a challenge for those trying to discuss using terms that have different meanings for each group of people, like scientists and those who are not. Quinn declares that in order to make it easier for everyone to understand that scientists should convey what is tentative and what is not, rather than using “believe.” Quinn’s ideas of tentativeness relates to conspiracy theories as the validity of them are continuously questioned, and expressing how stable evidence is can prevent misconceptions to the validity of an argument. Quinn explains how it is better to use be cautious about the words that are used to address the public. There are certain words who possess a definite meaning in a certain field, but Quinn
A theory is difficult to convey to others due to the nature of conspiracies. They’re revealing secretive plans, which makes evidence even harder to come by. It makes the use of strong and well explained evidence necessary for anyone to be convinced, else one risks looking like a fool. This makes it that much more important to define the evidence as tentative or unchanging. The misconception of believe is that it doesn’t give as much strength to the argument as “I know.” It must be made clear whether the evidence is tentative to prevent misconception. If the audience recognizes a piece of information as “likely true” and not “there is very little to no evidence against it,” then their judgments could be severely altered by an important fact not being added into their own collection of the