It's not just about scientists and their short term goals
It's about ordinary people who for example hope that medical science will advance to the point where biological immortality will be discovered. It cannot be proven whether or not this can happen within their lifetime (unless a scientific breakthrough is imminent), so they hope that it will happen. This is faith in medical science.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Wed 25 Mar 2009, 9:10, 1 reply)

You're confusing
hope with faith.

Faith implies a belief that something will happen, not necessarily something you do or don't want though and certainly not for any particular reason.

Hope implies that you do or don't want something to happen.

If you're talking about people who have reasonable grounds to be hopeful about the outcome of medical research, then that's not faith. It's confidence gained from forecasts which itself is borne from evidence laid out by medical scientists.
( chart cat has an itch, Wed 25 Mar 2009, 10:00, closed)

But faith could easilly be spawned from hope.
If you hope for something enough, sometimes, people start to have faith in it. I admit this is pretty irrational, but many people think this way.

While medical researchers have a clear idea of what they're doing, ordinary people can't make any forecasts on the progress of medical science.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Wed 25 Mar 2009, 22:58, closed)

The word 'faith'
has several dictionary definitions. In the context of the QOTW, faith means unsubstantiated belief. We're not talking about faith as a synonym for confidence in a particular outcome which itself is derived from knowledge.

i.e. I might have faith in the pilot to safely land the aircraft, but that's because I know he's trained to do so and I vaguely understand the mechanics of aerodynamics and flight. I have confidence in his abilities and the laws of physics, not unsubstantiated belief.

I think you are focussing on the *placing-your-trust-for-a-reason* definition here, so although you are correct, it's a straw man argument and has nothing to do with 'faith' in the context of religion.
( chart cat has an itch, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 1:55, closed)