Re: how science works

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Mon, 1 Oct 2001, RAUBER, JOEL wrote:

> (soap-box mode on)
>
> I'm rather glad that Bernard mentioned N-rays.  I think folks, particularly
> the lay-folks tend to over-emphasize the progress of maverick new ideas.  By
> pointing to Einstein and many others.  One tends to forget that being a
> maverick idea opposed to the opinion of the "dinosaurs" is not proof of
> correctness and that most maverick crazy ideas are just that, crazy.

Certainly.  Only a tiny portion of "crazy" ideas ever proves valid.  Also,
if a "crazy" idea comes from non-scientists, it has that much less a
chance of being real.  On the other hand, these crazy-but-true ideas often
cause scientific revolutions.

I see it as a matter of longshot betting versus gambling on "sure
winners." Science is often said to be conservative, but this is not
entirely true. It's conservative to put money (funding) on a bet which
guarantees a small return.  It is *not* conservative to bet on longshots
with huge rates of return, but having little chance of success.  Yet both
techniques can work, since the long odds of the crazy ideas are balanced
by their large returns when they occasionally prove valid.  Horse races,
the stock market, and government funding of pure research are each a form
of gambling.  If you have deep pockets and can afford big losses, then you
can also pursue much bigger jackpots.


It is clear to me that science contains both mavericks and conservatives,
or in Kuhn's terms, people who intentionally pursue revolutionary science
and who pursue normal science.  I've met many from both sides of the
argument who belittle the achievements of their opponents, and who
describe success as coming entirely from "their" side of the fight.  The
truth is that science would be vastly diminished if the mavericks or the
conservatives were removed.  The controversy is over where to draw the
line:  would science benifit by more strongly inhibiting it's mavericks?
Or by making it easier for them to obtain funding?


>  We
> tend to not know about all the wrong crazy ideas as they are lost from
> having been corrected by the sieve of skepticism.

Yet there are a examples which have been well studied.  I wish the list of
famous failures was a bit longer.  I don't mean pseudoscience, I mean
semi-honest mistakes like polywater and N-rays (and the problem with
Millikan's value for e.)  It's possible to eliminate mistakes by
eliminating maverick research, but then you throw out the few Galileos and
Weltners with the masses of Blondlots.


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