scary things at CRTC

[Robert Brockway]

On Wed, 8 Apr 2009, JoeHill wrote:

> That is just not true _at all_. Science is based on verification through
> experimentation, and a good scientist takes _nothing_ on faith. Science is a
> question. It questions everything, including itself, constantly. These claims
> people make about science being based on faith betray an utter lack of
> understanding about what scientists actually do.

During my science education I was taught to be constantly on guard against 
scientific dogma.

Scientists are human and don't always act purely in accordance with the 
scientific method.

Many scientists have become defensive when their life's work (and perhaps 
their reputation and livlihood) has been threated by new discoveries.

Many of them have clung beyond all reason to the work of their youth 
instead of accepting there were major flaws in their theories.  They make 
up more and more elaborate theories to account for the apparent 
discrepances between their earlier work and reality.  They assume their 
work explains reality even when there is evidence to the contrart.  This 
is faith.

Science is replete with examples of scientific dogma, where large numbers 
of scientists have ignored the evidence and clung to older theories that 
looked more and more tenous as time went on.  In the end this resistance 
usually only went away when the old guard died off.

Plate Techtonics is a great example.  The evidence that continents moved 
and changed over time was very strong and came from a variety of sources, 
and yet the geological establishment resisted the idea of decades.

Ideas like an expanding universe were resisted heavily by astronomers (in 
the early 20th century) who had built their life's work on the assumption 
that the universe was largely static over time.  The proponents were even 
happy to suggest that the universe was violating conservation of 
mass-energy to keep their theory afloat.

Science has also been tainted all too often by cultural prejudices. 
Scientists well into the 20th century were presenting serious scientific 
studies that draw conclusions about sexuality or ethnicity that many of us 
would find abhorent.

The idea that science is always pure and somehow naturally avoids 
scientific dogma is itself a form of dogma.

Cheers,

Rob

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