For scientists, opposition is a feature not a bug. Authorities can proudly convince themselves to be absurdly wrong, until some brave souls stand up to them. Sometimes there is a heavy price.Update: Sorry, but forgot to put in the link. It's there now.
An easily comprehensible example would be the case of the physician Ignaz Semmelweis. He proposed that patients would be helped if you thoroughly washed your hands between patients. The consensus among experts of his day was that he was wrong. He was driven out and ended his days in a psychiatric hospital. This phenomenon is not the exception, but the rule. In countless cases ranging from obscure technical issues, known only by experts, to grand insights like continental drift, this story, or something like it, has been played out again and again in history.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Another scientist stands up to the climate change fanatics
Dr. Christopher Essex takes on the global warm-mongers. A sample:
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I'm sure Dr. Christopher Essex is comfortable with the fact he will never again receive an NSF research grant.
ReplyDeleteWhere disagreeing with some mighty facile and self-serving conclusions equals "denying science!"
ReplyDeleteMoronic.
Yes my grandfather's mother and 2 step-mothers all died after childbirth (1870s). His father was rich and got the best doctors, who would have come from the university after dissections without washing or disinfecting hands and all that crazy denier stuff of Ignaz Semmelweis (known as the saviour of women because his ideas stopped them dying like that).
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