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| August 25, 2001 12:07PM |
<HTML>No problem, Jameske. We all know what that's like 
I don't doubt your experience. What I'm saying is the wider process of science limits the impact of individual practitioners' foibles. Arguments are not ultimately settled in science on the basis of the authority of supporters or opponents. It is the intrinsic cogecny of the arguments, the evidence they are based on, their ability to withstand scrutiny and criticism, etc ... these are the things that settle scientific disputes.
(I speak in general terms here, and I am aware there are exceptions where good ideas have been suppressed for a time by some powerful scientific authority ... but it is only a temporary suppression. That is the really important factor here. I exlcude ideas that have repeatedly failed to check out, except by openly selective or prejudiced "work" -- ideas like astrology, psi factor, alien abductions, etc. Such ideas rightly stand outside science and are not "surpressed" by science; they just don't check out and never have done.)
In this regard, I am not a social-constructivist when it comes to how science is done. But science is a human process, so it will be messy and uneven and very bumpy. What makes it so powerful, however, is how disagreements are harnessed, deployed for the benefit of the advancement of knowledge, and sorted out on the bases I stated above. No scientist, no matter how powerful, ever has the right to say "This issue is settled. Nobody will investigate it any more. I decree it so." There is no Pope of Science.
GF</HTML>
I don't doubt your experience. What I'm saying is the wider process of science limits the impact of individual practitioners' foibles. Arguments are not ultimately settled in science on the basis of the authority of supporters or opponents. It is the intrinsic cogecny of the arguments, the evidence they are based on, their ability to withstand scrutiny and criticism, etc ... these are the things that settle scientific disputes.
(I speak in general terms here, and I am aware there are exceptions where good ideas have been suppressed for a time by some powerful scientific authority ... but it is only a temporary suppression. That is the really important factor here. I exlcude ideas that have repeatedly failed to check out, except by openly selective or prejudiced "work" -- ideas like astrology, psi factor, alien abductions, etc. Such ideas rightly stand outside science and are not "surpressed" by science; they just don't check out and never have done.)
In this regard, I am not a social-constructivist when it comes to how science is done. But science is a human process, so it will be messy and uneven and very bumpy. What makes it so powerful, however, is how disagreements are harnessed, deployed for the benefit of the advancement of knowledge, and sorted out on the bases I stated above. No scientist, no matter how powerful, ever has the right to say "This issue is settled. Nobody will investigate it any more. I decree it so." There is no Pope of Science.
GF</HTML>
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