On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 1:11 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence <sa...@pobox.com>wrote:
> ** > > OK, OK, you don't like any of Jed's examples. > > But here's one you may find harder to dismiss: For a couple of > generations dinosaurs were said to be very much like big lizards: Cold > blooded, slow moving, and most important, walking splay-legged. > I think that in fields like geology or cosmology or paleontology, the time constant is longer than it is in small-scale research that is carried out on a bench top with all the parameters in the control of the experimenter. So, I've mentioned examples like continental drift, and to a lesser extent, black holes, which were accepted rather slowly, because nature does not reveal data so easily in these fields. Examples of small-scale phenomena rejected for decades and then vindicated are much scarcer. The best one I know of is the Semmelweis's germ theory and importance of hand-washing, and that goes back more than 150 years. If cold fusion is vindicated it will be (as Storms has said), and unprecedented case. > So, the question we're left with is ... how do you know if the field > you're working in is infected with a similar virus? > > I think looking at history is valuable to instill caution either way, but the best anyone can do in in a specific field, is to try to suppress bias, and look at the data itself as objectively as possible. Trying to diagnose viruses in others is probably counter-productive.
