{"id":1549,"date":"2001-12-12T19:34:32","date_gmt":"2001-12-13T00:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=1549"},"modified":"2001-12-12T19:34:32","modified_gmt":"2001-12-13T00:34:32","slug":"move_over_phlog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/12\/12\/move_over_phlog.html","title":{"rendered":"Move over, Phlogiston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Science is usually criticized for one of two contradictory things.<\/p>\n

Either scientists are so blindly accepting of How Science Says Things Are that they cannot be trusted to make judgments about stuff like flying saucers and ESP and the ghost of Elvis.<\/p>\n

Or else scientists are so uncertain of How Things Really Are that it just proves that any hypothesis — flying saucers, ESP, the ghost of Elvis — is as good as any other.<\/p>\n

Now, granted, some scientists are as enamored of knowing The Truth that they do get blinded by it. But most scientists are not, I’d say, and even those verging on that accept the scientific method: hypothesize based on what you’ve proven, develop an experiment to test the hypothesis, disprove the hypothesis or move onward. <\/p>\n

Scientists do occasionally discover stuff that was hypothesized, and even widely accepted, is not true. Now that may be happening again<\/a>. Some new experiments are hinting that a hypothesized subatomic particle called the Higgs boson — which has conveniently fit into quite a bit of the picture physicists have draw about the fundamental nature of matter and energy — may not actually exist.<\/p>\n

The point to this is not that scientists don’t really know anything. If that were so, this computer wouldn’t exist. What it does mean is that scientists don’t know everything<\/i> — and that good<\/i> scientists are willing to change their worldview as the evidence changes.<\/p>\n

As Isaac Asimov once put it:<\/p>\n

The young specialist in English Lit … lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern “knowledge” is that it is wrong.
\n… My answer to him was, “… when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
\n— Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), in The Relativity of Wrong<\/i> (1996)<\/p>\n

(Via Xkot<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Science is usually criticized for one of two contradictory things. Either scientists are so blindly accepting of How Science Says Things Are that they cannot be trusted to make judgments…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6649,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/08\/10\/healthy_skeptic.html","url_meta":{"origin":1549,"position":0},"title":"Healthy Skepticism","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 10-Aug-04 7:24am","format":false,"excerpt":"How do the best chess players succeed? How do they find the stunning moves that win them the game? Simple (or relatively so): they try to disprove their own ideas....","rel":"","context":"In "Gaming"","block_context":{"text":"Gaming","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18970,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/20\/unblogged-bits-wed-20-oct-10-1130.html","url_meta":{"origin":1549,"position":1},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Wed. 20-Oct-10 1130)","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 20-Oct-10 11:30am","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science - Magazine - The Atlantic - \"We could solve much of the wrongness problem, Ioannidis says, if the world simply stopped expecting scientists to be right. That\u2019s because\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3506,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/11\/05\/love_is_pain_sa.html","url_meta":{"origin":1549,"position":2},"title":"Love is pain, say scientists","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 5-Nov-02 3:23pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Ignoring the common convention that one's spouse is a pain in the neck, scientists have determined that actually spouses are pain in the back. I was going to write a...","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Nature","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3989,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/04\/good_luck.html","url_meta":{"origin":1549,"position":3},"title":"Good luck","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-Mar-03 8:14am","format":false,"excerpt":"The gene that gives black cats their mutated coat color may help scientists battling HIV in humans. Some interesting stuff on black cats and black jaguars here....","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Nature"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Nature","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/science"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30753,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/22\/italian-scientists-convicted-of-manslaughter.html","url_meta":{"origin":1549,"position":4},"title":"Italian scientists convicted of manslaughter","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 22-Oct-12 11:11am","format":false,"excerpt":"... for not predicting earthquake activity accurately.Unless there was serious malpractice, this seems like a very politically motivated conviction. And a very dangerous one.Reshared post from +Ars Technica Embedded Link Italian scientists convicted of manslaughter for earthquake risk report No finding of elevated risk in a report days before a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31474,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/23\/climate-change-denial-the-scientific-discussion.html","url_meta":{"origin":1549,"position":5},"title":"Climate Change Denial – the scientific discussion","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 23-Nov-12 11:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"'Anyone can repeat this search and post their findings. Another reviewer would likely have slightly different standards than mine and get a different number of rejecting articles. But no one will be able to reach a different conclusion, for only one conclusion is possible: Within science, global warming denial has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}