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Science is enforced humility
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 8:31
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What is the core, immutable quality of science?
It’s not formal publication, it’s not peer review, it’s not properly citing sources. It’s not “the scientific method” (whatever that means). It’s notreplicability. It’s not even Popperian falsificationism – the approach that admits we never exactly prove things, but only establish them as very likely by repeated failed attempts to disprove them.
Underlying all those things is something more fundamental. Humility…@ Science is enforced humility | Mike Taylor | Science | guardian.co.uk:
Further quote:
But the same self-corrective mechanisms apply to more important science in other fields. The most visible recent example is probably the “arsenic life” story. An article written by a team headed by a Nasa scientist made it through peer review to publication in Science, a well-respected journal. It claimed that the bacterium GFAJ-1 could grow using arsenic in place of phosphorus – a finding with possible implications for extraterrestrial life. That study was badly flawed. But rather than being blindly accepted because it was in a prestigious journal, it was strenuously critiqued: immediately on blogs, then after peer review in print – not once, but several times.
2012-11-13 08:20:50
Source: http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2012/11/science-is-enforced-humility.html
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