Science and questioning . All my life I have been a student and a fan of science. . In science we question a lot. We question everything. There is no free ride. Every theory, hypothesis, finding, formulae, reasoning and philosophy CAN, MUST and WILL be questioned. . . When a scientist presents a paper at a conference, it goes without saying that there will a long line of other scientists waiting to question him/her. What is your basis? What data did you use? How did you collect that data? How was your quality control? Did you do the tests in duplicate? How was your experimental design? Were there controls? How did you calibrate your machine? Did you test for seasonal variation? Isn’t your data set a bit small? What is the statistical significance of the correlation? What are your assumptions? And questions go on and on…. sometimes for many years. . . Even when you publish a paper in a journal, the paper is reviewed by other experts who in turn question the basis of the reasoning, robustness of the tests, etc, etc before the paper will be published. Even after it is published, readers are free to comments, criticize, debate, the paper and its findings. . . The best part is this. If you disagree with a scientist, he or she will not tell you that you will go to hell for disagreeing. If you disagree with a scientist, no one will accuse you of being an infidel. If you question a scientific formulae or theory, no one will say that the questioner is part of a Jewish conspiracy. . . Questioning is an integral part of science. If no one questions scientific findings or theories, science will never progress. Science has progressed so much because it allows and encourages questioning. .
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 08:31:36 +0000
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