(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)
“He’s attacking science!” at least one frequent commenter on my blog will exclaim, as predictably as if he were one of Pavlov’s dogs, when he sees this note. “He’s attacking science!”
I’m not, of course.
I’m simply pointing out that science, being a human enterprise, is subject (in its own unique ways) to the same human factors — including sloppiness, psychological quirks, uncontrolled ambition, haste, deceit, ideological bias, and sheer incompetence — that affect all other human enterprises.
“Ah, but,” some will say, “science is self-correcting. Unlike theology and religion.”
I’ve said nothing here about theology and religion, of course. Their response will be irrelevant, as it always has been. And I don’t deny that theology is a human enterprise, just as science is.
But the evidence is beginning to indicate beyond any reasonable quibble that science’s self-correction mechanisms, while very good and in many ways quite unparalleled, may not be working nearly as well in reality as they invariably do in idealized models and sanitized histories:
Posted from Grindelwald, Switzerland
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