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It’s because discovering something completely new and unheard of that isn’t even hinted at hy any existing theory is extremely rare. Most people with such claim
by Swizec 5y ago
It’s because discovering something completely new and unheard of that isn’t even hinted at hy any existing theory is extremely rare. Most people with such claims turn out to be wrong, doing bad experiments, fudging data, or worse.
The scientific community is resistent to such things because 90% of the time they are right to be resistant, the hypothesis is conclusively disproven, and we never hear about it again.
Sometimes, rarely, the claim comes through, survives the scrutiny, and scientists quickly change their minds based on new established fact.
Imagine if someone came out with “I have found a way to run 50 compute cycles per CPU instruction!!”. We would justifiably ridicule that person’s idea as implausible or impossible. It would take a lot of evidence to change the whole computer industry’s opinion on what’s possible.
- patall 5y agoExactly, though I would rather put that number at >99%. I would think, its kind of black swan event where in hindsight, everyone thinks its easy to see but it was not. Recently, we see that here and there with covid research where some single lab (or doctor) comes up with theory that matches some peoples preformed believe. When most scientists then oppose that theory, those people claim that this one of those <1% of cases were all the science is disproven, citing all the cases where it was, failing to see the many more situations where it wasn't.
- andrewjl 5y ago"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Perhaps the single best heuristic for judging any type of objective claim.