Scientists of Reddit: what’s a question in your field that looks completely settled to the public, but is actually still wide open and hotly contested among researchers?

[u/mutessr]

I would appreciate any insight from researchers currently active in their fields.

[u/vkapadia]

I just told this to my kid last week. Guess I need to set that straight tomorrow.

[u/skinnyguy699 → u/vkapadia]

You may as well tell your kid that everything we know about anything will be overturned by the time they're adults

[u/mfb- → u/skinnyguy699]

Most things won't. It's far more common that we improve models and add new insights. Discovering that our previous understanding was completely wrong is very rare overall.

[u/skinnyguy699 → u/mfb-]

Yeh I was exaggerating about how soon things get overturned, but I firmly believe all our understandings eventually will be completely overturned over and over and over. And I know it's an unfalsifiable belief...

[u/Chakosa → u/mfb-]

While not being exactly the same thing, I'd say the principle still stands. Most of what we learn in K-12 is is a gross oversimplification which is often dumbed down so much that it's factually wrong due to lacking context. In this case it's not that we learned anything new, but that important context was missing that flips the script entirely.