robot_parade

The conservative scientific thinking that you dislike so much is in place for one simple reason: It works.

Scientific thought is by it's very nature conservative - science tends to build on what came before. Science tends to be skeptical of claims that the laws that underpin our understanding of the universe are rubbish, and likewise skeptical of claims of vast new theories.

Imagine a science adhering to your view - that it should be quick to embrace every new theory that comes along. That doesn't get you the science of Newton and Einstein, it gets you the science of Chopra and Yogi. I know which one I'd prefer. My point is, science *does* accept new things - but it requires a very high burden of proof. Several hundred years ago, mankind learned that the universe is governed not by spirits, wishful thinking, and magic, but by physics. We started developing what's now known as the scientific method. We trained scientists to think critically, to question, to hypothesize experiment. The fact that people want to throw that all away makes me both sad and angry.

Now, even though science is by it's nature conservative, and resists new theories, new theories *do* happen. Paradigm shifts occur. Sometimes people come along and fundamentally change our view of the universe. When they do, we give them fancy names like "Newton", "Rutherford", "Einstein", "Watson", and "Crick". But even these revolutions look more like evolution - high school physics is still mostly stuff that Newton would recognize. We don't have to calculate relativistic effects for the trajectory of the bullet that the hunter fires from his gun at the monkey as it drops from the tree branch. Netwonian physics is a good approximation for pretty much all earthly phenomena. They take relativity into account for things like the GPS satellites, though. Science builds upon science, and it bloody works. *That's* why we trust it.

To make an example close to psychology, which you are apparently interested in:

Just like the 'cars powered by H2O' article, I have a grand new theory for psychology. Instead of mental disorders being caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, or whatever it is you old fuddy-duddy 'scientific' psychologists think, I believe that mental disorders are caused by demons...er...no, make that 'thetans'. Yes, thetans. They're psychic life-forms that feed off the energy of people's brains. By using special techniques, I can measure the 'thetans' in people, and cleanse them of them. As I'm sure you can see, this will revolutionize the field of phsychiatry. Are you ready to invest in my enterprise? Would you like to make a donation so I can do more research? How about taking a training course so you too can treat your patients with this amazing new technique? First, how about you let me hook you up to my e-meter, and then we can talk about cleansing *your* thetans! For a small fee, of course...

Does this sound familiar? It should - I basically lifted the above from the scientologists.

Any time someone expounds on some grand new theory that topples all we know of existing science, we *should* be skeptical - not to the point where we ignore what they say, but we should say "fine, prove it!". In pretty much every case, 'they' fail to do so, no matter what it is - ghosts, esp, Qi, homeopathy, scientology, cars-running-on-water, perpetual motion machines, etc, etc. I'm not aware of a single theory that starts out by violating all known laws of science, and later turns out to be proved true.

On a slightly different tangent - psychology as a field *is* trying to be more scientific - more rigorous, more disciplined, etc. Just like all the social sciences, it's *really hard* to follow the scientific method when people (and especially people's brains) are involved. Hard, but not impossible. And the benefits of following science instead of bullshit should be pretty clear by now.