Actually, you need the Laws of Nature's permission. Science is a human attempt to get at them. Showing that you can do something in spite of the current laws of science is how you make them evolve and progress.
I do believe you can apply science once a goal or desired outcome is decided upon. There is no known science that can help you come to a goal. E.g. science can't tell you that we should reduce pollution but can help if we decide that's a worthy goal and worth the tradeoffs.
Perhaps as we better understand the brain that may change.
True (or mostly so), but not useful. Math is obscure, and science is not trusted.
Not that "we" are any better -- we can't even get technologists (or doctors) to understand statistics. How can we hope for a general-population understanding of scientific process?
My answer: We can't. We can hope for leadership that steers the conversation in a useful direction, but democracy sometimes gets in the way of the elevation of useful leaders, and the media has no interest in promoting good (mostly boring) governance.
It's hard making some people understand that such debates go beyond the scope of science (or that there's anything beyond the score of science for that matter) :/
But can we though?
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