arildno said:
Just a caveat here:
"...without SCIENTISTS questioning science IN AN INTELLIGENT MANNER there can be no progress in our understanding of nature or ourselves"
Non-scientists/specialists haven't got the competence to question science in an intelligent manner.
Actually you are right, but mostly in my choice of wording... yes, intelligent people can and do question science, but they usually lack the mathematical base and credentials that the scientific community covets. But there are also 'crackpot' scientists who "prove" things such as evolution wrong, etc... they don't of course, because they don't go about science in an intelligent and responsibile manner. They are religious zealots who have cast science aside due to their twisted sense of beliefs that they have 'discovered' new ways of disproving what they themselves find most uncomforting... anyway... It's like, if only I could disprove Einstein, I'd be world famous, rich and go down in history. Oh heck, the break whistle just blew...I'll start on it after work tonight."
how about this, "...without SCIENTISTS questioning science there cannot be effective debate yeilding any viable progress in our understanding of nature and ourselves."
Carl Sagan made this point in his book, The Demon Haunted World, when he used by way of analogy: [paraphrased] {consider that to even begin to hope to understand science today, a person must be willing to devote years of their lives to the study of mathematics, but it doesn't stop there... he/she must be willing to go through their first 12 years of primary/high school and major in mathematics and the sciences, then major in their undergraduate studies in the sciences and minor in mathematics, then go to graduate school and continue... all tolled they would have to be willing to invest 15 years of their lives minimum in order to have JUST THE MINIMUM baseline of background in order to begin to understand what the scientists are saying and doing... or, they can choose the lesser of these and go to church.}
My point is that only scientists can wage an EFFECTIVE challenge to scientific findings, and only scientists as a group can even know how reported scientific findings were arrived at and then attempt to reproduce the same results in their own laboratories.
So, yes you are right. I am NOT a scientist, and certainly not even willing to attempt to balance my checkbook (which might explain a few things in my household budget "-) and though I can read Scientific American et al, I will never be able to go head to head with scientists in any meaningful way... best I can do is write an article that stirs up the hornet's nest and allow them to duke it out amongst themselves in the ensuing fray.
I do agree with your challenge to how I wrote that, and in and of itself, I couldn't agree with you more. And yes, scientist/specialists do have the advantage of bringing about meaningful debate.
Just remember the boys from Utah...you remember those idiots don't you?...the ones who went public with their world shaking discovery of COLD FUSION... heheheh...funny guys, those Utah wizards... it was scientists worldwide who exposed those frauds. I didn't have the means to test their hypotheses, didn't have the math skills to write out the proofs... but scientists and specialists did.
Phil
