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This is very common in science. New theories are usually rejected and ridiculed until/if they develop enough evidence behind them to sway people. Some careers
by eloff 6y ago
This is very common in science. New theories are usually rejected and ridiculed until/if they develop enough evidence behind them to sway people.
Some careers are destroyed. Some scientists are only vindicated posthumously. The process can take many decades.
Scientists, like most humans, are not that open-minded and are subject to the same group-think blind spots. I think if we could get better at being open-minded as a species, we'd make faster progress and better ideas would win out more often. This is as much true in society at large, or business, as it is in science.
- xattt 6y agoThe most recent event that comes to my mind is the lead up to the discovery of H. pylori causing gastric ulcers.
- sterlind 6y agoTectonic plates was another big one.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoThis is a current fun topic with some controversy related to tectonic plates: do solar flares cause earthquakes? https://astronomy.com/news/2020/07/powerful-eruptions-on-the-sun-might-trigger-earthquakes https://astronomy.com/news/2020/07/powerful-eruptions-on-the...
- Enginerrrd 6y agoDespite being a really stupid-sounding premise, that is actually kind of interesting.
- treeman79 6y agoPeoples position on that one shifted very slowly.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agosir, may I see your dad license please?
- ryandrake 6y agoIt’s not his fault that the joke was dad-worthy.
- dboreham 6y agoBut when they did shift, it was a...
- eloff 6y agoYeah that's a good one. Another is recommending trans-fat based margarine over butter. That was counter-productive health advice that took decades to reverse - even although the evidence it was based on was extremely flimsy. Once the group-think machine gets going in a direction, it has a tremendous amount of inertia.
- logicchains 6y ago>That was counter-productive health advice that took decades to reverse - even although the evidence it was based on was extremely flimsy. I think this was more a case of lobbying by certain agricultural producers than ignorance. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14823257_Food_Lobbies_the_Food_Pyramid_and_US_Nutrition_Policy https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14823257_Food_Lobbi...
- pdimitar 6y agoTrue, but the point still stands: a lot of people can be influenced by something no matter its origins. Once they can say "X thousand can't be wrong" then you and your pesky idea backed up by facts and evidence can go to hell. Sadly history is full of such occurrences.
- eth0up 6y agoAppend Ignaz Semmelweis to this important list, which is a plump one.
- hntrader 6y agoAnother: Many World's Interpretation of QM. Not known to be true but less ridiculed and more widely subscribed.
- astrange 6y agoThe inventor of the COVID mRNA vaccine was fired from her tenure position because UPenn thought the idea wouldn't work. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfi...
- mensetmanusman 6y agoAnd they are careerist... My Post-doc colleague during my PhD@MIT was explaining this trick he does to get his system working that he never publishes (one very small step of 100 steps). He was concerned that if he published the step, it would hurt his chances at getting a professorship. It’s exactly the same logic behind why code is not published. Because ethically you can ‘hand wave it away’ as obvious to other experts and not worth publishing.
- benibela 6y agoHow can you be a post-doc without publishing?
- openasocket 6y agoIt's not just science, I can think of an example from pure mathematics. Cantor's work showing the uncountability of the real numbers was derided by prominent members of the mathematical community for decades. This despite the fact that he was able to boil down his argument into a proof so simple it's taught in introductory undergraduate classes. Now, this was at a time when mathematicians were still trying to rigorously define set theory and ground mathematics on a foundation of logic, but still it's a relatively simple and understandable proof. I think the moral of the story is that people are stubborn and are capable of disagreeing about just about everything.
- resource0x 6y agoBad example. Cantor's theory is controversial to this day. "Classical logic was abstracted from the mathematics of finite sets and their subsets …. Forgetful of this limited origin, one afterwards mistook that logic for something above and prior to all mathematics, and finally applied it, without justification, to the mathematics of infinite sets. This is the Fall and original sin of Cantor's set theory." -- Hermann Weyl
- openasocket 6y agoI wouldn't really consider Weyl as an example of a modern day critic, considering he died in 1955. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a modern mathematician that rejects the diagonalization argument, outside of finitists, which are pretty far from the mainstream. I mean the proof that there is no bijection from a set to its power set is pretty straightforward and constructive. I'm pretty sure the proof is valid even in intuitionist logic.
- cambalache 6y agoBy whom? Almost all mainstream mathematicians rightfully lionize Cantor's main contributions, as David Hilbert so eloquently put it: "No one shall expel us from the paradise Cantor has created for us" Aus dem Paradies, das Cantor uns geschaffen, soll uns niemand vertreiben können
- alisonkisk 6y ago
- itronitron 6y agoBretz defended his theories, and this kicked off an acrimonious 40-year debate over the origin of the Scablands. Both Pardee and Bretz continued their research over the next 30 years, collecting and analyzing evidence that led them to identify Lake Missoula as the source of the Spokane flood and creator of the channeled scablands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods Also Plate Tectonics... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_development_of_tectonophysics_(before_1954) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_development_of...
- eevilspock 6y agoTime to break out Thomas Kuhn.
- Joeri 6y agoAh, but my sister always says I’m not open-minded because I won’t read all her antivaxer info. If we give all ideas equal credence, better ideas will not win out.
- anamexis 6y agoI think antivax claims have been given equal credence, they've just been found false.
- sli 6y agoA better example is that equal time is frequently given to both sides of the climate change debate despite the actually numbers showing that calling it a "debate" is journalistic laziness. Equal credence would mean the deniers only get about 3% of the allotted time to make their crackpot case, because that's the closest they come to being a "side" in this non-debate against the other 93% that also have 100% of the data and research.
- imtringued 6y agoIt's like spam in a decentralized system. Attackers can't change consensus within the system but they can slow it down to a crawl. Proof of work in Bitcoin is just an anti spam mechanism.
- eloff 6y agoI'm not suggesting that being open minded requires giving all ideas equal credence, that's a strawman. Just that us humans tend to have strongly held opinions that are wrong far too often - like your sister in this case. If she was more open minded about her own beliefs that would be beneficial.
- wolco5 6y agoYour sister grew up with you and went through the same schooling as you. Doesn't she deserve to be heard? By labeling her a antivaxer and ignoring her based on that label you effectively are closing your mind to her.
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoThis is a good thing. If we entertained every crackpot theory we would waste tons of time. it's good for there to be some gatekeeping. Of course sometimes they're wrong - but so what? That will come out if there is actual evidence.
- eloff 6y agoThere is a balance here, you are correct, but I think we currently skew too far toward gatekeeping. Too little gatekeeping means trouble finding the signal through the noise and time wasted on dead ends. Too much and good ideas get neglected or squashed for far too long. There is a cost to both.
- emmelaich 6y agoThere's another aspect - with strong gatekeeping it is assumed that those theories that make it through are true.
- pdimitar 6y agoNot really, they often are simply in tune and in agreement with the currently established group-think.
- totalZero 6y agoUnfortunately, gatekeeping is essential to academia. Ask anyone who wants to publish a finding independently, or read a paper for free without being associated with an institution. Heck, ask the undergrads who paid tens of thousands of dollars for Zoom classes that have MOOC alternatives alternatives. > Too little gatekeeping means trouble finding the signal through the noise and time wasted on dead ends. Much time is supposed to be spent on dead ends anyway. That's the way the corpus matures, not to mention an inevitable result of peer review (no need to review anything if all the research product is perfect). Research is a search; imagine running BFS without expecting to encounter dead ends.
- userulluipeste 6y agoOn one hand, this is because it's such a safe thing to cause damage to the image of another fellow scientist that happens to dare looking at something new or in a new way. (Crab mentality, perhaps?) If this effect would be as costly to the individual attacker as it is for the collective, we would probably "move fast and break things" more. On the other hand, we already have way too many non peer-reviewed papers as it is, and those papers get cited by other papers, and so on. Not enough action to ensure quality. In such case, what the critiques with good intentions for the world but with limited time and attention are to do but go after the most audacious claims in their field?
- shvn 6y ago> I think if we could get better at being open-minded as a species, we'd make faster progress and better ideas would win out more often. Given the current scenario we are certainly not sure if we are ever going to achieve it! Though that achievement can work wonders. Any thoughts how you see that change can be made possible?