Re: how science works

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Fri, 28 Sep 2001, Richard Hake wrote:

> Yes, as Debbie says "science works through lots of bickering," so as
> to finally arrive at a "community map." In Hake (2001a), I give a
> capsule description of the "scientific method" as practiced by most
> research scientists (rather than "as typically presented"):

I think it goes much further than that.  There is a vast difference
between asking for evidence versus derision and ridicule, between
scientific skepticism versus irrational disbelief.  Scientists are human
beings, and the problem of irrational disbelief is well known by many
scientists, if not by the textbook authors: 

  "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
   making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually
   die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."  - Planck

   "Science advances funeral by funeral." 


Skepticism is a very necessary component of science.  I define skepticism
as "refusing to accept new discoveries without proof."  Irrational
disbelief is different, it leads to emotional attacks on new discoveries,
including attempts to silence the voices of the discoverers, as well as
emotional attacks in peer review which can halt funding of the
replications that would validate the new discoveries.  If someone says
"OK, prove it", that's skepticism.  If someone says "I don't care how
strong your evidence is, the very idea is ridiculous"  ...that's NOT
skepticism. 


Here's something scary.  Are you aware of the common findings of analyzers
of accidents, where each full-blown accident is often found to be part of
a group of close calls and ongoing unsafe practices?  What if the same is
true of revolutionary ideas in science?  What if the almost-suppressed
discoveries are just the visible part of a larger problem?  The works of
McClintlock and Wegner (and Ahrrenius' ions, and Chandrasekhar's black
holes, and Gold's deep rock bacteria) were almost lost because of the very
strong negative reaction of the scientific community.  This suggests that
it's quite possible that some revolutionary discoveries WERE completely
lost.  Note that with this kind of "science accident", only the near
misses could ever be visible.

Some quotes about how science actually works:

 "Perhaps the only thing that saves science from invalid conventional
  wisdom that becomes effectively permanent is the presence of mavericks
  in every generation - people who keep challenging convention and
  thinking up new ideas for the sheer hell of it or from an innate
  contrariness."  - D. Raup, Paleontologist

 "It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to
  our taste."   - John Tyndall

 "Whenever the established ideas are accepted uncritically, but 
  conflicting new evidence is brushed aside and not reported because it
  does not fit, then that particular science is in deep trouble"
                                                       - Dr. T. Gold

 "New ideas are always criticized - not because an idea lacks merit, but
  because it might turn out to be workable, which would threaten the
  reputations of many people whose opinions conflict with it.  Some people
  may even lose their jobs."    - physicist, requested anonymity

  "It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative
  scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the
  preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible.  When
  this happens, the most well-informed men become blinded by their
  prejudices and are unable to see what lies directly ahead of them." 
   - Arthur C. Clarke, 1963

 "We must care to think about the unthinkable things, because when things
  become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless."
      - James W. Fulbright

  "Sit down before facts like a child, and be prepared to give up every
   preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses
   Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."  - T.H. Huxley

 "Biologists can be just as sensitive to heresy as theologians."
   - H.G. Wells

 "The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange 
  protein and resists it with similar energy.  It would not perhaps be 
  too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen 
  known to science."   - Wilfred Trotter

 "The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively not by the false
  appearance of things present and which mislead into error, not directly
  by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by
  prejudice."  - Schopenhauer

  "...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they
   would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to
   ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them."
            - William James

 "If I want to stop a research program I can always do it by getting a few 
  experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it 
  was a fool thing to try in the first place." - Charles Kettering, GM

 "If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.
  You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the
  world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now
  and then, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful.
  If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything,
  you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing 
  in the way of understanding and progress. "      - Carl Sagan

 "It's like religion.  Heresy [in science] is thought of as a bad thing,
  whereas it should be just the opposite."  - Dr. Thomas Gold

 "I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of
  nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of
  phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE."  -William James

 "There is nothing particularly scientific about excessive caution.
  Science thrives on daring generalizations."  - L. Hogben

 "Let the mind be enlarged... to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not 
  the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind" - Francis Bacon

 "It would seem to me... an offense against nature, for us to come on the
  same scene endowed as we are with the curiosity, filled to overbrimming
  as we are with questions, and naturally talented as we are for the
  asking of clear questions, and then for us to do nothing about, or
  worse, to try to suppress the questions..."  -Lewis Thomas

Also see:

  NEW IDEAS IN SCIENCE,  T. Gold
  http://www.amasci.com/freenrg/newidea1.html


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