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Re: MOST IMPORTANT FOSSIL (A human skull as old as coal!)
meron@cars3.uchicago.edu
Fri, 8 Nov 1996 00:05:42 GMT
In article <rygb7PAepdgyEwHe@vinery.demon.co.uk>, DAVE <Steve@vinery.demon.co.uk> writes:
>In article <55nhn0$bo6@news2.cais.com>, Alan Weiner
><alweiner@presstar.com> writes
>>Pls support your premise with some facts. Name some discoveries that
>>were surpressed and later found to be valid.
>>
>This is an excellent request which will make most of the anti science
>brigade twitch. The problem is that scientists and non-scientists often
>publish 'theories' & 'results' which are criticised, mocked and
>occasionally attacked with vitriolic venom. And sometines the original
>authour is found to be correct. This may be unpleasant and scar careers
>but is part of the social performance aspect of scientific
>investigation, and perhaps does act as an error checker.
>
Not only perhaps. For sure. It is not only the right, but the duty
of the scientific community to try to poke holes in any new idea that
is being proposed. Only through this process we can be assured that
the body of accepted knowledge is reasonably solid. Failing doing
this we get not a scientific community but a "mutual adoration
society" where everybody praises everybody else while producing
gibberish. There are many examples of those in various fields which,
in order to save bandwidth, I won't mention.
Anybody who has been actively involved in research knows well that for
any good idea there are dozens of faulty ideas, thus a strick weeding
process is needed. It may hurt the egos of some people but the
purpose of science is to generate knowledge, not massage the egos of
its practitioners. It may sometimes slightly delay the acceptance of
a good idea but said delay is negligible when compared to waste of
time and effort which may be caused by the uncritical acceptance of
bad ideas.
Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu | chances are he is doing just the same"
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