Re: thed
Disagree with what? A bunch of sociological claptrap. The one thing I'll give the author is that they didn't use the phrase 'paradigm shift'.
They appear to be saying that acceptance by your peers is a Very Bad Thing(tm). That only work sanctioned by The Peerage(tm) is accepted. I submit that there is vast amounts of scientific work that started out contradicting the accepted norm but was then shown to be correct, at which point people started listening.
Understand one thing, the majority of work in science is incorrect to begin with. Scientists accept this, realise their peers are necessary in weeding out false assumptions, and are (more than average) willing to accept corrections. Specifically I am reminded of a description by a Pharmaceutical Chemist I heard, "Science is 99.9% failure. I live for the 0.1%".
The issue is that if you have a radically new idea that contravenes accepted thought you have to be willing to defend it against everyones objections. If you are right, you are right, the idea will eventually be accepted once the facts start defending you. In short, science is by nature very adversarial. The author of the previous claptrap has completely missed this point, IMO.
As I pointed out in the Homeopathy thread, science has made huge blunders, Polywater for example. Peer review is about trying to minimise these foul ups. perfect it is not and mistakes happen. Hopefully it works better than alternatives.
All the sceptic asks is that UFOlogists accept the same level of questioning or peer review as the average scientist has to. Corollary, it is not acceptable to make statements and just accept people to accept them. Expect detailed questioning and give answers without disseminating by claiming the method is some sort of closed clique.
Originally posted by spookz
do you disagree?
Disagree with what? A bunch of sociological claptrap. The one thing I'll give the author is that they didn't use the phrase 'paradigm shift'.
They appear to be saying that acceptance by your peers is a Very Bad Thing(tm). That only work sanctioned by The Peerage(tm) is accepted. I submit that there is vast amounts of scientific work that started out contradicting the accepted norm but was then shown to be correct, at which point people started listening.
Understand one thing, the majority of work in science is incorrect to begin with. Scientists accept this, realise their peers are necessary in weeding out false assumptions, and are (more than average) willing to accept corrections. Specifically I am reminded of a description by a Pharmaceutical Chemist I heard, "Science is 99.9% failure. I live for the 0.1%".
The issue is that if you have a radically new idea that contravenes accepted thought you have to be willing to defend it against everyones objections. If you are right, you are right, the idea will eventually be accepted once the facts start defending you. In short, science is by nature very adversarial. The author of the previous claptrap has completely missed this point, IMO.
As I pointed out in the Homeopathy thread, science has made huge blunders, Polywater for example. Peer review is about trying to minimise these foul ups. perfect it is not and mistakes happen. Hopefully it works better than alternatives.
All the sceptic asks is that UFOlogists accept the same level of questioning or peer review as the average scientist has to. Corollary, it is not acceptable to make statements and just accept people to accept them. Expect detailed questioning and give answers without disseminating by claiming the method is some sort of closed clique.