Ask a Science Blogger, know how to know!

This weeks "Ask a Science Blogger" question is: "If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?" I assume others will answer this also, so I want to get this out first: my reply is that the public needs to know that the most important idea about "science" is that it is not about ideas, but it is a way of getting to those ideas through a specific way of thinking about the world and interacting with your fellow human. Science is the means, not the ends. And, that means is a synthesis of a set of heuristics mediated by a particular social context which is at the terminus of a path of cultural development. Rules like falsification are important, but they are irrelevant outside of the context of a group of peers who seek to discover the truth about the world ...