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From: davis_d@spcunb.spc.edu (David K. Davis)
Subject: Re: URL, Closeminded Science
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William Beaty (billb@eskimo.com) wrote:
: Check out CLOSEMINDED SCIENCE, a few articles and several links to others,
: about the psychology of herd-mindedness of the mainstream, pathological
: skepticism, etc. 

: 	- Gold's paper about the fate of new ideas in science, from JSE
: 	- Goalpost-moving behavior
: 	- Drasin's "Zen and the Art of Debunkery"
: 	more...


: <h2>QUOTES</h2>

: <pre>"It is not uncommon for engineers to accept the reality of phenomena
: that are not yet understood, as it is very common for physicists to 
: disbelieve the reality of phenomena that seem to contradict contemporary 
: beliefs of physics." - H. Bauer

: "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the
: greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious
: truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of
: conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to collegues, which
: they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by
: thread, into the fabric of their lives."  -Tolsoy

: "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth."
: -G. Goebbles

Physics (and science in general) is very conservative, and for good reason.
Physics tries to understand reality using as few concepts as possible. 
When someone comes along and says telepathy (for example) is real, how do
you explain it?, I say I'm not going to waste time dealing with it because 
it's far easier to visualize how the reports of telepathy are unreliable
than it is for me to imagine a mechanism that would sustain it. Why don't
I just say there's a new force I don't understand? Because the game is
to explain things in terms as few possible fundamental entities as possible.
So the very last thing that will be done is to say - there's a new force.
But since this kind of thing can't be readily explained without some new
entity, I reject the phenomenon until I am absolutely compelled by over-
whelming evidence.

It's interesting to see the conniptions science went through in cases
where there really was something new. The invariance of the speed of
light with repsect to all intertial frames of reference was VERY hard
to swallow (and very meticulously verified), and an awful lot of twisting 
and bending of old concepts was performed before Einstein showed that is 
was actually much simpler to alter our concept of the relation between
space and time. Those who did the twisting and bending are not to be
criticized. Their conservatism was justified until Einstein.

This kind of conservatism (not to be equated with political conservatism)
is absolutely essential to science. Without it you have mysticism and mush.

-Dave D. 
