I am not sure why we have all these comments about confidence/overconfidence of scientists and the limits of science.
The article has some very different findings. The crucial paragraph from the abstract is:
>We find a nonlinear relationship between knowledge and confidence, with overconfidence (the confidence gap) peaking at intermediate levels of actual scientific knowledge. These high-confidence/intermediate-knowledge groups also display the least positive attitudes towards science.
It seems to that it is essentially a refinement of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It also matches some previous study I remember which found that science sceptisim and many conspiracy theories around science are most prevalent with certain engineering disciplines (I can't find the study right now, but will update with a link once I do).
It is interesting that someone mentioned Sabine Hossenfelder as a positive example, because I find much of her recent content peddles to exactly the crowd who has intermediate knowledge of and very negative attitude toward science. In particular she often comments on topics where she herself has very little understanding (I know because I have seen it for topics where I am an expert) and just pushes a scepticism opinion without much understanding, but acting like she is an authority.
> The article has some very different findings. The crucial paragraph from the abstract is:
It's kinda funny how only the abstract is referred to when trying to paraphrase the findings of the paper. I would say that the abstract by itself is more like an opinion. The real hard data backing up the abstract, should be in the article. But, it can't even be faulted because this "science" is behind a pretty hefty paywall with 40$ for the full PDF and 10$ for a 48h rent. It's basically the same price as a full movie.
The abstract is not an opinion, it is a summary of the key methods and findings written by the authors. It is the perfect place to get a short quote to outline the main results of the paper.
Now if we wanted to investigate the methods and results in detail, we certainly would have to read the full paper, however the main findings will not differ from what is in the abstract. You might find that the methods (and hence results) are not valid, and can come up with a detailed rebuttal, for that you certainly would need to read the full paper. However, I assumed here that the findings are valid, because even though I have access to the paper, this is well outside my area of expertise so I am not well placed to investigate the claims in detail and rather refrain from that.
You are right. "Opinion" was also the wrong word. I just felt that the shortness of the abstract yields some similar dangers of details and context being lost as you have when reading only a headline. For example, one wouldn't use the valuable abstract space to reiterate shortcomings of one's method even if they are listed in the paper.
The article has some very different findings. The crucial paragraph from the abstract is:
>We find a nonlinear relationship between knowledge and confidence, with overconfidence (the confidence gap) peaking at intermediate levels of actual scientific knowledge. These high-confidence/intermediate-knowledge groups also display the least positive attitudes towards science.
It seems to that it is essentially a refinement of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It also matches some previous study I remember which found that science sceptisim and many conspiracy theories around science are most prevalent with certain engineering disciplines (I can't find the study right now, but will update with a link once I do).
It is interesting that someone mentioned Sabine Hossenfelder as a positive example, because I find much of her recent content peddles to exactly the crowd who has intermediate knowledge of and very negative attitude toward science. In particular she often comments on topics where she herself has very little understanding (I know because I have seen it for topics where I am an expert) and just pushes a scepticism opinion without much understanding, but acting like she is an authority.