<HTML>Clare, Joe, Matt:
Perhaps the answer lies in simple human behaviour.
Whether it is a religion or a science, we do not "call up" all the arguments that led us to a conclusion we made years ago every time we get into a discussion of a topic. We tend to "file away" our conclusions, and build on them in order to advance our knowledge.
If we had to wake up every day and start over from, "the sun is at the center of our solar system. There are nine planets... we are #3, our year is 365.25 days long, this is one of those days. The sun is rising at 6:43. This means that photos reaching the window left the sun 8 minutes ago at a speed of 186,282.397 mps. Therefore, the sun may have been extinguished up to 8 minutes ago, and I would not know it."
Well, we'd go crazy.
So, scientists have built entire careers and lives based on certain things that they took as "givens" years ago. Now, somebody like Schoch wants to come along and change all that? Ouch.
However, as the author of the article pointed out, religion and science have one distinguishing factor... you can hold on to "wrong tennets" in religion by crying "Heresy!" and waging war. In science, when the math says you wrong, you wrong. Stop hanging out in the condemned building, so to speak.
However, the "weight" of the evidence must tip the scale. Sometimes, just having a majority of the people NOT KNOW the new evidence exists will allow a scientist to continue his career just long enough to collect a pension. We're still human, ya know.
Sure, when we find a new piece of evidence, the discoverer wants everybody to just throw up their hands and surrender (trust me, I'm VERY familiar with this feeling) However, it doesn't work that way. You have to BEAT people over the head with the evicence, appeal to their rational side, and if necessary, publicly embarass them, in order to affect change.
But, in a dozen years, when the NEW theory is and OLD theory and gets thrown out, the once eager-beaver explorer will find him/herself in the shoes of the stodgy old scientist defending his/her now mainstream theory against some new upstart that just doesn't understand all that has transpired to get to this point...
Ah, the circle of life.
Anthony</HTML>
