In what ways does society benefit , suffer from, reject, ignore, or embrace scientific claims?

Benefit: This is an easy one. The natural sciences are very important to us because they include the health and well-being of ourselves and basically everything around us. Therefore when scientific claims are true and backed by facts obtained through research, we are able to better our understanding of our universe or improve our world. One example among countless is the scientific discovery of plastics which are one of the most widely used materials to date.



Suffer from: It is easy for the average american to believe what a lab coat has to say but we must always remember that not everything we are told is true. If you are familiar with the term "quackery" then you know that this is the most annoying example of society suffering from a scientific claim. Today the television is blown up with weight loss commercials that all claim to be scientifically proven to work. Quackery is still extremely prevalent and while it isn't exactly detrimental to society, society certainly does not benefit from false advertisements. On a more severe note, scientific advancements such as the atomic bomb have been a huge step for warfare, but we can see their impact on the world as they cause tension between countries, not to mention the US alone has enough nukes to destroy the world.



Reject/ignore: This goes hand in hand with the previous paragraph. Most educated people would be able to distinguish between a plausible scientific claim and a quackery attempt. Many scientific claims are obviously false and are easy to ignore, but when we ignore facts, we run into trouble. Some use their beliefs of their desires to plunge themselves into denial about things like alternative energy, genetically modified organisms, or even evolution. You can't ignore the facts!



Embrace: If we can embrace the positive and reject the negative, then we will be in good hands. It's as simple as that.