Re: "Political Correctness" drives scientific errors

From: OsherD (mdoctorow_at_comcast.net)
Date: 03/20/05 

Date: 19 Mar 2005 16:32:45 -0800

>>From Osher Doctorow

Odin said:

>Sorry... You lost me...

I don't want to lose anybody. The "scientific method" involves
replication according to most people in science, and it turns out that
certain very important events are one-time events, including 9-11, the
beginning of the Matter-Dominated Era of the universe, the 2004 USA
election, the evaporation (if it occurs) of a black hole, etc. Science
should be "extended" to study such events, which would require I think
being equally comfortable with abstraction and theorizing and
exploration as with concrete replication if not more. Biological and
behavioral and social sciences and philosophy are more familiar with
such scenarios in their fields than physics and engineering are in
theirs. In fact, there is a literature on Quasi-Experiments which is
almost exclusively outside physics and engineering, and Exploratory
Studies are a concept taught in advanced statistical courses.

Is this clear enough? I can get clearer. :>)

Osher

Relevant Pages
Quantcast