Archive for June 4th, 2009

Some college professors are quacks. A lot of scientific research is quackery. There are professors/researchers who think very highly of themselves and believe that hundreds of years of scientific discovery has been for naught because the True Meaning has been revealed to them alone. Oh professor/research fellow at Dumpity State University – South Campus, you alone have been granted the divine foresight and wisdom to establish a new theory that Explains It All. You will train up a new generation of supremely enlightened students who will go forth and change the world using the new theories which you preach (not teach… sometimes science is nearly as much faith as reasoning).

However I will steal words of caution from those more accomplished than myself. I was once told by an English professor that you should use citations frequently because nobody cares what an undergrad Physical Education major thinks about The Iliad, however the words of someone who has at least published something gives your paper a little more weight.

David Deming, a geophysicist and professor at the University of Oklahoma wrote in a publication from the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, “The media hysteria on global warming has been generated by journalists who don’t understand the povisional and uncertain nature of scientific knowledge. Science changes. For years we were told drinking coffee was bad for our health … more recent studies have shown that not only is coffee safe for our hearts, it can decrease the risk of liver cancer and is chock full of healthy antioxidants… Truth in science doesn’t depend on consensus or political correctness.”

In the introduction to Ludwig von Mises treatise on economics, Human Action, he writes, “… There is no such thing as perfection in human knowledge, nor for that matter in any other human achievement. Omniscience is denied to man. The most elaborate theory that seems to satisfy completely our thirst for knowledge may one day be amended or supplanted by a new theory. Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilites and the prevailing state of scientific thought. A scientific system is but one station in an endlessly progressing search for knowledge. It is necessarily affected by the insufficiency inherent in every human effort. … [Science] is a living thing – and to live implies both imperfection and change.”

This does not mean that you avoid placing any belief in science, but that you remain skeptical of any Answers. Denis Diderot, an Enlightenment philosopher, said, “skepticism is the first step towards truth.” (Stole this reference from David Deming)

Whether the issue is global warming, gravity, Tahitian Noni Juice, the Higgs boson, the benefits of antidepressants, or general relativity. Remain skeptical. The right answer may not always be the popular one or accepted by contemporaries. Galileo’s ideas were neither accepted nor popular. Of course Galileo got it wrong, the wolrd actually revolves around me.

comic from Moe