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Re: What makes science powerful?



"Strickert, Rick" wrote:

Richard Feynman told a national science teachers convention in 1966:

"We have many studies in teaching, for example, in which people
make observations, make lists, do statistics, and so on, but=20
these do not thereby become established science, established
knowledge. They are merely an imitative form of science--=20
analogous to the South Sea island airfields, radio towers, etc.,
made out of wood. The islanders expect a great airplane to
arrive. They even build wooden airplanes of the same shape as
they see in foreigners' airfields around them, but strangely
enough, their wood planes do not fly. The results of this
pseudoscientific imitation is to produce experts, which many of=20
you are. You teachers who are really teaching children at the
bottom of the heap can maybe doubt the experts once in a while.
Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter
of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the
belief in the ignorance of experts." (The Physics Teacher, 7
September, 1969, 313-320)

By following this advice, a scientist may never publish, lose his/her
job and even die.

Pentcho