What’s science?

From a Social Galactic post I saw this link. An interview with a science-type guy out in the field. He says it quite eloquently (paraphrased): Science is about observing, thinking, discussing, not just what’s in peer reviewed papers. By definition, published peer reviewed papers means they all thought the same and agreed. New knowledge almost always comes from outside academia. “The best candle-maker couldn’t dream of electric lights.”

Yes, indeed. It gets old trying to argue with people who don’t know, can’t think, but can easily point to a “peer reviewed article” that I can easily point out flaws with, but because I’m just some guy with a brain, not an “expert,” I don’t count.

1 thought on “What’s science?

  1. One of the core principles of science is that you’re always trying to invalidate the currently held theories. Anyone who appeals to “consensus” is not a scientist and it so utterly clueless as to be totally beyond repair. For the same reason, anyone who hides data or is only willing to provide “corrected” or summarized data is not a scientist but rather a quack, unfit for the company of actual scientists.
    Along the same lines, it’s a basic rule that every scientific statement (theory or “law”, same thing) is “falsifiable” — meaning you can construct, or at least imagine, an experiment or observation that would show the statement to be false. Any statement that isn’t falsifiable is not science; it might be religious dogma or something like that, but not science. A particularly nasty example of such a statement is “climate change”. Of course, the practitioners of that particular cult violate all the principles, including the “show the data” one I mentioned earlier.

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