I'm not the person you asked this of, but I've worked in museums and research settings and can lob a response your way.
Ultimately, it's that scientists are humans, too. Despite some of them really making their research data-forward, things like tenure, career, funding, and even who would publish your work now and in the future all create normal human environments that reward small, incremental changes to a body of knowledge that don't upset the apple cart, not discoveries that suggest huge changes. In fact, large changes and discoveries can be resisted and denied further research in favor of the status quo.
This is not a new phenomenon by any means:
Both warm-blooded dinosaurs and the Chicxulub impact were both theories dismissed as fringe for decades before overwhelming evidence led to them being accepted as likely. In no small way thanks to Jurassic Park.
Recall that eugenics and phrenology both used to be widely accepted scientific "fact."
100 fairly prominent scientists signed a letter stating emphatically that Einstein's Theory of Relatively was categorically wrong and should be retracted.
Plate tectonics was seen as fanciful crackpot musings for decades. The author of the original theory died 30 years before plate tectonics was even considered possible.
Germ theory was dismissed for most of Louis Pasteur's lifetime, despite being able to literally show people yeast in a microscope.
Helicentrism has a storied past.
Quantum theory was also denied heavily at first. Now it saves photos to our hard drives.
And how many times has the earliest dates of hominids and tool use and human thresholds of development been pushed back by tens of thousands of years?
This is not an exhaustive list, by any means.
So we have ancient examples and modern ones - and everything in between. So the level of education or scientific progress or equipment are not the cause. Humans are. Humans do this all the time. So until overwhelming evidence surfaces, which can take decades or longer, claims like this shouldn't be dismissed out of hand until proven solidly in error. A theory is a theory, so let it be a theory.
> Both warm-blooded dinosaurs and the Chicxulub impact were both theories dismissed as fringe for decades before overwhelming evidence led to them being accepted as likely. In no small way thanks to Jurassic Park.
The main rejection of the impact hypothesis was that the dinosaurs had already died off by the time of the impact, the idea that the iridium in the layer came from an impact was reasonably well received. In 1984 a survey found 62% of paleontologists accepted the impact occurred, but only 24% believed it caused the extinction. The Alvarez duo, who proposed the impact hypothesis, were proposing to redefine where the cretaceous ended based on a new dating method (at the time the end of the cretaceous was believed to be a layer of coal a few meters off from the now accepted boundary), and fossil evidence at the time seemed to show gradual decline. A big part of the acceptance of the theory was the development of new analysis methods that showed the evidence for a gradual extinction prior to the impact to be illusory. By the time the impact crater was identified, it was already the dominant theory. Actually in the early 90s major journals were accused of being unfairly biased in favor of the impact hypothesis, with many more papers published in favor than against.
Completely coincidentally, the theory that the chixulub structure was an impact crater was initially rejected and it wasn't until 1990 that cores sampled from the site proved it was.
Dinosaurs being warm blooded was well accepted by the late 70s.
You've worked in those settings, and you think archaeologists reject tool use older than 1 mya?
Also, you don't understand that science is a process, based on evidence, and revision is an essential part of that process? Archaeology especially advances regularly, because evidence can be relatively very rare. If they weren't revising it, it would mean the whole research enterprise - to expand knowledge - was failing.
> how many times has the earliest dates of hominids and tool use and human thresholds of development been pushed back by tens of thousands of years?
I don't know, how many times? Tool use is universally believed, in the field, to have begun at least 2.58 million years ago, and with strong evidence for 3.3 mya. Tens of thousands of years isn't in the debate. See this subthread:
>Also, you don't understand that science is a process, based on evidence, and revision is an essential part of that process?
I do, and the process is exactly the point. That human emotions affect the process far more often than we like to admit. Not always, but it's not completely removed from the process by any means.
In each of those cases, it's that no one says, "Oh, new theory, new evidence. Cool, let's test the hell out of it!"
People in positions of relative power sometimes say, "New theory? Nope. Not even going to look at it. No, in fact, you're crazy and you're wrong and get outta here!"
In each of those examples, to some degree the eventual more accurate theory met emotional resistance by people adhering to the status quo, not resistance because of questionable data or poor research methods or non-reproducibility.
>So until overwhelming evidence surfaces, which can take decades or longer, claims like this shouldn't be dismissed out of hand until proven solidly in error. A theory is a theory, so let it be a theory.
I like how the word “overwhelming” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
Imagine if those 100 scientists had gotten their way and Einstein had retracted his Relativity paper. It would have taken decades of observations of gravitational lensing before someone else proposed gravity affects light and why, and then said "huh.... yeah, I guess this other guy had a similar theory a while back."
Imagine if 100 scientists had gotten together to refute the theory of Yakub. Yet many just dismiss it out of hand. Guess it’s a valid theory until such a time comes that science devotes sufficient attention to it that an overwhelming amount of scientists spend their time specifically proving it wrong or right
>Both warm-blooded dinosaurs and the Chicxulub impact were both theories dismissed as fringe for decades before overwhelming evidence led to them being accepted as likely. In no small way thanks to Jurassic Park.
I mean that's how science works. Things can be dismissed until they're proven true. If there's a valid path to finding out it's true then you can try to get funding, it just takes work and convincing people as you're competing for sparse resources. And getting egg on your face is also part of the process.
So you're saying it's a good thing to dismiss potential new discoveries because of feels? Not investigate further, not look for additional data to refute the theory or not. Just dismiss as crackpot BS? IIRC, that's not how science works.
Yes you can dismiss things when a theory doesn't have any evidence and also doesn't work with current evidence. Like you can dismiss my theory of the moon being made of cheese, there might be some under the crust, we haven't looked.
It took about 30 years for every geologist to reach consensus on tectonic plates and continental drift. Old heads who'd invested a lot of their credibility arguing against it had a lot to lose by admitting they were wrong, so they refused to do it.
Bill Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything is where I'm taking that from. It's a great read and shows all the ways in which scientists failed to see what was under their nose for decades before finally figuring out, which makes one wonder what's currently ripe for the picking.
I think it just doesn't fit into the accepted timeline so it's mostly ignored. This is a common pattern with scientific discovery where evidence that contradicts the prevailing paradigm is ignored and builds up until it can no longer be ignored and causes a paradigm shift. This idea comes from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.
True. But the systems are more and more breaking down. Its unsustainable. At least what I can tell from Germany and the Netherlands.
to see a healthcare specialist, you wait 3-6months in some cases.
Not talking about the trains. Germany DB runs on time in only 50% of the cases.
So thats a big problem
My partner has had three extensive cancer treatments in the Netherlands. She has had dietary and psychological specialists help her during and after each one.
All of this was just on normal health insurance and with normal clinics and hospitals.
Never did she have to wait more than perhaps 3 weeks tops for an appointment.
The medical system here is world class.
However Germany and it's infrastructure can not be compared to the Netherlands. I refuse to take trains through that country anymore.
I was talking about Germany's infrastructure. Last year I had 3x separate trips turn into chaos due to how broken their system is. Broken trains, broken track infrastructure etc. Think multiple hours on each trip rather than just 10 minutes delay.
The trains that are 10 min late in Germany mostly not exist in many other countries. Sure Switzerland is the best, but Germany is pretty high up. It’s just less good than it used to be. Oh and you can ride almost everywhere for 60 EUR / month.
For healthcare if you get an IT salary you can either move to private insurance, or buy additional insurance, or just pay a consultation yourself for a fee that US people won’t believe.
Last 7 times i took the ICE, i had 5 delays. 3 times the restaurant wasnt available. 2 times they didnt stop at my destination and I had to rent a car.
so yeah. I try to travel now either by car or plane. But even by car is terrible, especially in the south. More construction sites every year and none are finishing.
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Health care is totally broken if you dont have private insurance. My step dad, who has, gets an appointment 1 day after he calls. my grand ma, who worked all her life and is now on public needs to wait 5 months IN PAIN.
the system is breaking down in front of our very eyes.
i am not living in Germany. i moved to fthe NL, but the situation is very similiar.
That's very alarmist, sensational and dramatic. The systems are going though some tough times, but they are not breaking down, that's what children would say to make their life more like a Hollywood movie.
My father had to go though multiple appointments and analysis to get his prostate and hernia checked. Never waited more than a week and paid 0 in total. Before, he'd probably only have to wait a couple days for appointments, but the stress the healthcare system is currently undergoing is abnormal due to the more aggressive cases of flue this season. All things considering, things are not "breaking down" (I'm even getting some second hand embarrassment reading those words).
> At least what I can tell from Germany and the Netherlands. to see a healthcare specialist, you wait 3-6months in some cases.
Same in France, it can take a while to get an appointment to see some specialists nowadays. There's a clear decline there.
But if you have something bad, they'll treat you in time. Actually, a relative of mine has been diagnosed with cancer a not long ago. She got several surgeries and all the treatments with no wait, and at not cost.
There's no reason why it shouldn't be sustainable.
> Science is characterized by objective empiricism; it relies on third-person observation, quantifiable data, and the principle of falsifiability to build a predictive model of the external, material world. Its goal is to establish "public" knowledge that remains true regardless of who is observing it.
That's only really true of the natural sciences. Cultural sciences (humanitas) are of a different kind. Here, we don't look for universal truths and laws but for meanings and interpretations. And they come from the Western philosophical tradition.
And conversely, Eastern philosophy often centers on phenomenology, using first-person introspection to realize the nature of existence and consciousness itself.
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