Quote:
|
Originally Posted by DaveMatrix
I could not disagree more, throughout history the scientists who are on the cutting edge or scoffed at, ridiculed, and defamed because their current hypothetical models, whatever they may be, don't fit the existing norm. It takes years for any of these to be accepted, no matter what the context, how the strong the arguments are or evidence in their favor. Once again, its safer to stay within current scientific thinking than go out on a limb. This propensity for humans to be accepted, stay within traditional models, be accepted by the group usually goes without saying, but I'm not surprised I hear an argument against it. What other argument do you have??? Nobody wants their clique to be threatened with a valid argument........
|
Again, I'm not sure what you're talking about. A cursory examination of scientific history yields scores of examples of the consensus or status quo being altered based on the work of a single individual. This used to take decades, now it takes years or less - the change is due to better communication among scientists. Frankly, the fact that in such a short time a theory can become dominant is astonishing, considering the number of scientists and field of knowledge out there.
Here are a few examples:
- Ernest Rutherford disproved the "plum pudding" theory of atomic structure with a single experiment in 1910.
- In 1986, Robert Bakker published The Dinosaur Heresies, which COMPLETELY changed the way that paleontologists viewed dinosaur metabolisms.
- In 1952, Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase performed experiments which proved conclusively that DNA, rather than protein, is the encoding medium for genetic information. This was in direct contradiction of the status quo.
- Isaac Newton's view of the nature of light has been nearly entirely discredited by the modern understanding of quantum mechanics, despite the fact that it was a decent enough predictive model to allow him to makes some pretty serious telescopes.
- Gregor Mendel's famous experiments on heritability in pea plants demolished the (then current) theory of blended inheritance, replacing it with allele genetics - nearly in the form we understand it today.
That's off the top of my head with the reply box open. I could continue to provide examples of scientific consensus changing all day, if not all week.
I don't deny that it seems that certain parts of human nature don't accept change easily - Gallileo's experience with the church is a fabulous example. However, science itself is a system which is set up to accelerate the rise of good ideas and do away with inadequate ones. The flaw here isn't with
scientists, it's with people who don't subscribe to science. To say otherwise is just ignorant of history.