here are a lot of excellent points about science...
- From: "TC" <tunderbar@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 28 Aug 2006 14:23:29 -0700
that the nutritional scientists could learn from:
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_4241947
Pluto proves science is tentative
By Diane Carman
Denver Post Staff Columnist
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and
Pluto.
Or not.
Last week, Pluto was voted off the interplanetary island. It was
downgraded to a mere dwarf celestial body, and one with a bum orbit at
that.
People, people, is nothing sacred?
For the International Astronomical Union, the answer clearly is "no."
The IAU unceremoniously stripped Pluto of planetary status at a meeting
in Prague, and some of us are not taking this well.
"My computer's been smoking with e-mail about this," said Richard
McCray, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and professor
emeritus of astrophysics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The debate is roiling and he hasn't even begun to hear from the
millions of disgruntled fourth-graders out there.
"New scientific data always change things," said Kirk Johnson, vice
president for research and collections at the Denver Museum of Nature &
Science, "and people hate that. The scientific knowledge they have was
hard-won, so it's understandable that change makes them distrust
things."
The next thing you know they'll tell us scientists can harvest stem
cells without destroying embryos.
Oh, wait, that happened last week, too.
"A lot of people think that science is just a collection of facts,"
Johnson said, "but the way I look at it, it's carving away at the edge
of what we don't know."
That's why what we do know is constantly being revised, reinterpreted
or in the case of Pluto, reclassified.
"To me, it's kind of beautiful," said McCray, who admits he chafes
against the notion of scientists as "high priests."
"I hate that. Scientists don't give edicts. They're in the business of
trying to discover. Everything they do is tentative, particularly if
they're working at the frontiers - and that's the fun place to work.
"It's not as if we bring tablets down from the mountaintop."
The reclassification of Pluto is an example of how researchers
challenge each other and correct mistakes, Johnson said. "Science is
one of the most honest of human endeavors."
Sure, some researchers have faked data or lied about experiments, but
the nature of the process is to test theories to see if the data can be
duplicated, so fraud tends to be discovered quickly, he said.
Science also is obstinate, independent and nonpartisan - annoyingly so.
"Politicians don't like science," McCray said. "It's because
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science is uncontrollable. You can't make laws against it because the
truth is going to come out no matter what, and the guys in Washington
are all control freaks."
Science is ruled by data, by facts - not by ideology. So despite
sentimental attachments to certain concepts, scientists periodically
have to accept the possibility that they're just plain wrong about some
things - like Pluto.
When satellite images and a new class of powerful telescopes opened
vast regions of the universe to human exploration, the Pluto dilemma
reared its ugly asteroid and threw decades of traditional science
instruction into the trash heap.
"We've now found that Pluto's moon is almost as big as Pluto, and we've
found another minor planet out there that's bigger than Pluto," said
McCray. "So if we keep Pluto, we'd have to add a few more planets, and
then it would be open-ended."
Then there's the debate about how to define a planet since some are
rocks, some ice, some just orbiting balls of gas - and whether any of
it means anything anyway in the grand scheme of things.
"Really, whether you call Pluto a planet or not is scientifically
inconsequential," McCray said. "Personally, I would have preferred that
the International Astronomical Union remain silent and let schoolkids
decide whether Pluto is a planet."
The teacher in him can't resist tossing out a delicious challenge.
I love that idea.
Imagine how much more kids would learn from that discussion than from
just memorizing "My very excellent mother just sent us nine pizzas."
*****************
of specific interest are these quotes:
**
"New scientific data always change things," said Kirk Johnson, vice
president for research and collections at the Denver Museum of Nature &
Science, "and people hate that. The scientific knowledge they have was
hard-won, so it's understandable that change makes them distrust
things."
**
"A lot of people think that science is just a collection of facts,"
Johnson said, "but the way I look at it, it's carving away at the edge
of what we don't know."
**
To me, it's kind of beautiful," said McCray, who admits he chafes
against the notion of scientists as "high priests."
"I hate that. Scientists don't give edicts. They're in the business of
trying to discover. Everything they do is tentative, particularly if
they're working at the frontiers - and that's the fun place to work.
"It's not as if we bring tablets down from the mountaintop."
**
TC
.
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