3 ms·
On what, at the time, did you base the assumption that people walking slowly after reading words related to old age was clearly fantasy? It doesn't sound likel
by wyattpeak 6y ago
On what, at the time, did you base the assumption that people walking slowly after reading words related to old age was clearly fantasy?
It doesn't sound likely to me, but neither do a bunch of other cognitive results (the gorilla running through the basketball court comes to mind).
I'm all for questioning and rerunning tests, but dismissing them because they seem clearly fanciful without data just brings us back to pre-science. Science which is only allowed to discover plausible-sounding things isn't science at all.
- aabhay 6y agoThe burden of proof is on science, not me. I’m not going to follow every conjecture and hypothesis floated by a scientist. If something sounds fanciful and violates my common sense, I need a robust experiment. Accepting results without that just brings us back to pre-science.
- jbay808 6y agoSounds like you're properly applying priors! There's an interesting chapter in Jaynes' Probability Theory: the Logic of Science where he talks about how much evidence it would take to convince him that ESP is real. At the time that book was written, there were experiments supporting it that failed to replicate. Basically you're totally allowed to read a scientific study, say "okay, that's an interesting result", and then still not believe the conclusion if you have enough reason to doubt the premise a-priori.