3 ms·

Even scientists can't help but trusting other scientists. Nobody can rederive everything from scratch.

• kragen 3y ago
  there's a world of difference between 'the crc handbook says pentamethonium frangonide has a specific heat of 2951 kilojoules per mole per kelvin, but its molar mass is only 502 grams per mole, so that would give a surprisingly high specific heat of 5.9 kilojoules per gram per kelvin, so i'd better check the nist webbook and google scholar, but probably this grammatical-error-filled paper i found in google scholar from three researchers i've never heard of published in a journal i've never heard of isn't a very reliable source and they were probably just copying the crc handbook' and 'scientists say there's a missing link' being able to, in principle, rederive things from scratch gives you a lot of information about who to trust
  • Tainnor 3y ago
    A difference in degree maybe, but not in kind. Trust is a central part of science, without it no advance would be possible. > being able to, in principle, rederive things from scratch Basically no scientist nowadays has any hope of being able to rederive everything from scratch. Not even in mathematics, where experiments are cheap, can you avoid relying on theorems from outside of your area of expertise.