Re: PSEUDO-SCIENCE ? (rambling but not long)

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

        "Conducted in that way?", absolutely not.  Ludwik, please
carefully read the quote that you are referring to.
        Looking for a signature is different from confirming "preconceived
ideas".  Negative results are reported (usually in papers entitled "Search
for ....") and used to kill theories.  Limits on proton decay, for
example, have relegated the simplest versions of SU(5) to the ash heap.
                                        Regards,
                                                Jack

Adam was by constitution and proclivity a scientist; I was the same, and
we loved to call ourselves by that great name...Our first memorable
scientific discovery was the law that water and like fluids run downhill,
not up.
                          Mark Twain, <Extract from Eve's Autobiography>

On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

> Barlow Newbolt wrote:
>
> > ... I should say that I suspect that there are some ( a minority ) who
> >  decide what they want their study to say and then do the study to
> >  confirm their preconceived ideas.  This approach is doomed ...
>
> Most big experiments (National Labs, etc.) are conducted in that way.
> Right, Jack? Scientists usually know what "signatures" they are looking
> for. But they are expected to be objective, open-minded and not blind.