Hello all,

It seems to me that mistakes, evasions and some downright falsifications by a
few scientists are being taken as an excuse to attack all of science and
scientific method itself. Scientists are human and so it would be exceedingly
strange if there were not a few bad scientists, just as there are bad doctors,
bad lawyers, bad teachers and even some bad philosophers.

The great advantage of the scientific method is that errors and falsifications
are self-correcting in the long or more often short term, something which cannot
be said for religion or philosophy, for instance.

It seems that some think that scientific theories are another kind of dogma
which scientists defend at all costs. While this may sometimes occur (see
above), when scientific method is properly applied all theories are taken as
provisional hypothesis to be tested by experimentation and are liable to be
supplanted at any moment by other theories better adapted to experimental
results (which in turn must be verified). Thus some theories are very soon
discarded while others, even though apparently vindicated, must still be taken
as approximations which may be soon replaced by better approximations. When
scientific method is correctly applied science advances, otherwise not, and so
is self-correcting. In this sense, an advance is taken to mean better
correspondance between theory and results.

It seems strange to me that so much is being written about science and
scientists (but not generally by scientists), in seeming ignorance of the very
basis of the scientific method.

If on the other hand the discussion is referred to the desirability, objectives,
and funding of scientific research, then we are talking politics, where
different criteria apply.

Regards,

Luca