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One of the assignments in my high-school science class was to do a presentation on the history of some scientific question. This meant stating the question, exp
by gizmo686 13y ago
One of the assignments in my high-school science class was to do a presentation on the history of some scientific question. This meant stating the question, explaining the early hypothesis, explaining the early tests that disproved those, explaining the new hypotheses, explaining the new tests that disproved those, ETC.
As the end of almost every one of those presentations, there was a strong feeling of "then what" hanging in the classroom, until people realized that the most recently stated hypothesis is what they had learned, and scientists have not yet discovered why it is incorrect.
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoIt used to be that part of the magic of becoming an expert in something was learning all the 17,000 things that we still didn't know. Scientists were very proud of all the work ahead of them. Nowadays physicists still mostly sound that way, but a lot of others, including many fields that we would consider hard sciences, are taking a "we're smarter than you" attitude when dealing with the general public. Even if they are correct in one particular instance, the idea of placing science on some kind of pedestal where it can be asked anything from "what makes a good life" to "what's the mass of an electron" is crazy. A really bad idea. Science has always been political, but lately it's getting politicized: it's choosing up teams and playing the role of arbiter of truth. That's bad for all of us.