[quote]pushharder wrote:
Thought this exchange on the “Eat Your Lungs Out…” article (the article du jour) was appropriate for inclusion on this thread:
pushharder wrote:
I see a bigger story here i.e., the integrity of the scientific community, that goes beyond the gist of the article.
Many people now worship at the altar of “Science”, the alleged au courant purveyor of all that is Right and True. Science is researched, practiced and disseminated by scientists. At that point many people fail to remember the distinction that these scientists are really just People. And People tend to tote their agendas, which among other things include their hopes and fears, around with them wherever they go. Sometimes overtly. Sometimes covertly. Sometimes for political reasons. Sometimes for religious ones. Or financial ones. Or matters of prestige. Or socio-economic ones. Or…simply crazy ones.
Science itself may be infallible but the people associated with it are not. Never ever underestimate the power of a hidden agenda.
BobParr wrote:
Very true, Push! Back in college I took a course on the history of science and it’s philosophical underpinnings. Scientists gather data to establish a theory. As experiments continue, it’s actually normal to come across some data that doesn’t fit the theory and can’t be explained away. They call that an anomaly. When you get more and more anomalies, there comes a tipping point - called a paradigm shift - where the old theory must be abandoned. The undercurrent in all this is that there is a lot of peer pressure on scientists to toe the line. It’s actually risky to point out anomalies as potential holes in a well-established theory. Often, the peer-reviewed journals won’t publish contrarian research, and getting your research papers repeatedly rejected can be a career-killer for most scientists.
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God, this is so incredibly true. I’m not even talking about evolution/ID at all here…it happens in many, many different fields of biological research as well as physical research. It makes me sick. There are always crazy theories that don’t deserve to see the light of day, but often times there are legitimate questions that get snuffed out because they don’t toe the line exactly. As much as scientists are supposed to be impartial and objective, they are prone to getting very biased-- I mean, who wants to be wrong about his life’s research?
If you doubt this reality, all you have to do is look at one of the most well founded theories we have today—relativity. Einstein introduced it in 1906, and it only gained acceptance about years later. He was ridiculed by a large part of the scientific community. Yes he became something of a celebrity with the populace shortly after the publication of his article, but serious and commited opposition in the science community was everywhere. Oftentimes histories of science will underplay or omit just HOW MUCH opposition there was to Einstein.
Or better yet, look at black holes–the first detailed descriptions of black holes happened in 1915. Yet as late as the 1940s Einstein himself along with others refused to accept them. And this was over something that was part and parcel of Einstein’s legacy, not something opposed to it or poking holes in it.
Werner Israel, a modern day physicist, has written “There is a curious parallel between the histories of black holes and continental drift {the relative drifting motion of the Earth’s continents}. Evidence for both was already non-ignorable by 1916, but both ideas were stopped in their tracks for half a century by a resistance bordering on the irrational.”
There are other examples from biology, but those are two off the top of my head.