5 ms·
Is it though? Some ideas are so obviously nonsense to most of us, whereas bad research can have a more robust veneer of legitimacy - which makes that research a
by hyperdunc 7y ago
Is it though? Some ideas are so obviously nonsense to most of us, whereas bad research can have a more robust veneer of legitimacy - which makes that research a potentially useful tool for bad actors. The internet is full of authoritative sounding tripe backed up by "science".
- asdff 7y agoBad research doesn't usually hold up. Even good research doesn't always hold up over time. Was Bohr a bastard for getting the atomic model wrong, or just offering his best interpretation given what was known at the time?
- pdonis 7y ago> Bad research doesn't usually hold up. Your faith in the reliability of the scientific process is touching, but naive. Bad research is driving public policy in many areas. > Even good research doesn't always hold up over time. In the sense that it gets superseded by better models (as Bohr's original model of the atom did), sure. That's to be expected in a healthy scientific field. But one of the things that's needed to keep a field healthy in that respect is the ability to do controlled experiments with high accuracy. That's how scientists figured out that Bohr's original model of the atom wasn't right--it couldn't match the results of the experiments as they got more accurate.