ChemE Stewart <cheme...@gmail.com> wrote: "Everyone knows the rules" > > Jed, do you have a copy of the rule book I could borrow, or at least let > me know what page to look on?... >
The rule is right here, plain as day: Nullius in verba http://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/ Chapter 1, paragraph 1, first sentence: Take nobody's word for it. As Francis Bacon put it in 1620: "For we admit nothing but as an eyewitness, or at least upon approved and rigorously examined testimony; so that nothing is magnified into the miraculous, but our reports are pure and unadulterated by fables and absurdity. . . . In every new and rather delicate experiment, although to us it may appear sure and satisfactory, we yet publish the method we employed, that, by the discovery of every attendant circumstance, men may perceive the possibly latent and inherent errors, and be roused to proofs of a more certain and exact nature, if such there be. Lastly, we intersperse the whole with advice, doubts, and cautions, casting out and restraining, as it were, all phantoms by a sacred ceremony and exorcism. . . ." That is the experimental method. There are no substitutes and no shortcuts. A demonstration -- worthy as it may be -- is not a test, not an experiment, and not a scientific paper. That has been the rule since the 17th century. It is the basis of the scientific revolution. It is also the motto of the state of Missouri and source of the Jeffersonian spirit at the University of Missouri. It's on the license plates: "show me." - Jed
