4 ms·
The half-life of facts
- polarix 14y agoThomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" should be mentioned. Far more germaine than "Consilience."
- cousin_it 14y agoCosma Shalizi's "null model of scientific inquiry" [1] seems relevant here. Basically it's a model where all published findings are due to the file drawer effect [2]. In such a model, scientific results will indeed have a "half-life" until they are overturned. [1] http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/698.html http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/698.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias
- drcube 14y ago"IN PRIMARY school Babbage learned that there were nine planets in the solar system. None were known to exist outside it." There were only 7 planets known when Charles Babbage was a youth. Neptune was discovered when he was an old man, and Pluto was not discovered until almost 60 years after his death.
- bcbrown 14y ago"Babbage" is the name of a column in the Economist, and is used in this sense to refer to the author of the column. So the writer is talking about his or her own schooling.
- GregBuchholz 14y agoThere is a excerpt from chapter 1 of the book at the authors website. http://arbesman.net/the-half-life-of-facts/ http://arbesman.net/the-half-life-of-facts/