The speed of science

Submitted by Unifex on

This was in response to KwadeTweeling on Minds.com.  Minds is one of the alternatives I'm testing to replace Google Plus. Anyway, it was a longer response so I figured it may be worth sharing here.


Regarding my quote "too many failures in the scientific community".

First, I consider the inability to entertain an idea without accepting it a huge failing. The scientific community is hell bent on the notion that what's established must be true.

You have a very different view of the "scientific community" than I do. Your view sounds like one that would be held by someone teetering on the edge, or fully fallen into, a pseudo science of some sort. At least, as someone that spends too much time arguing on line with alt-med supporters, this is what I have seen. A lot.

In reality, science is constantly evolving and it's the challenges to what we currently "know" to be true that drives those changes.

Correct. My exposure has been that this is the position of the vast majority of the scientific community.

This is true of all studies.

That is a broad generalisation and all broad generalisations are wrong. Except this one.

Renowned physicists right now are discussing parallel realities and a virtual universe.

They have been since Schrödinger gave a lecture in 1952. This isn't new.

When these subjects were first brought up, they were only laughed at.

Some would have laughed, some would have looked upon them as a curiosity and some would have looked on them with interest and/or disdain. This last group (interest/disdain) would have worked on expanding on the work to either establish (refine the hypothesis) or disprove it (causing the hypothesis to need to be refined.) Over time the hypothesis will either be discarded as clearly flawed now more minds have worked on it or it will continue to gain interest and more people will look at it in interest(rather than disdain) and continue to refine it by finding flaws and accounting for them.

This is the normal process of science. It is a slow process. Especially now. We know so much about reality that new ideas have to fit in with. Take homeopathy for example. For that to work we would have to rework physics, chemistry and biology almost from first principles. That isn't a job for physicists, chemists and the medical community.

There is a third outcome though. That of the person that can't/won't accept the idea as having been solidly disproved and clings to it. This is how a new pseudo science is born.

The desired state that you expressed for the scientific community is the actual state of that community. It just feels like it's not happening at a pace that you want it to happen at.

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