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When Scientific Orthodoxy Resembles Religious Dogma

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
The real issue with this opinion piece to me is not skepticism about new ideas but refusal to even consider them. He's not denying the extraordinary claims/extraordinary proof concept nor denying that testability is key. He is attacking dogmatic refusal to look at ideas and facts that challenge dogma.

There's a vast difference between "that idea can't be true so I don't need to consider it for a second" and "I don't think that idea can possibly be true but if you can present an experimental idea that can prove or disprove that idea, I'll think about it.

When Scientific Orthodoxy Resembles Religious Dogma

Those who refuse to consider an unconventional idea in science are disturbingly similar to those who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope

When my Harvard colleague Stephen Greenblatt saw my book Extraterrestrial featured on the cover of the Orthodox Jewish magazine Ami, he commented “It is interesting that the Orthodox evidently do not consider their faith threatened by the possibility of other inhabited worlds.” To which I replied: “They appear to be less orthodox than my colleagues in the scientific community.” This was in reference to the pushback that my book received regarding the possibility that the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua might have been manufactured by another civilization.

Innovation blossoms in a culture willing to acquire new knowledge rather than being trapped in its past belief system. A mainstream astronomer who worked on rocks in the solar system for decades commented grudgingly: “‘Oumuamua is so strange…. I wish it never existed.” Such a sentiment is not the trademark of an intellectual culture that fosters discovery. In the weeks following the publication of my book I received numerous e-mails from astronomers, some tenured, who confessed that they agree with me but are afraid to speak out because of the potential repercussions to their careers.
...
The culture of ignoring testable ideas because of prejudice coexists comfortably with a more extreme culture that embraces other ideas without requiring any test...
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
The real issue with this opinion piece to me is not skepticism about new ideas but refusal to even consider them. He's not denying the extraordinary claims/extraordinary proof concept nor denying that testability is key. He is attacking dogmatic refusal to look at ideas and facts that challenge dogma.

There's a vast difference between "that idea can't be true so I don't need to consider it for a second" and "I don't think that idea can possibly be true but if you can present an experimental idea that can prove or disprove that idea, I'll think about it.

When Scientific Orthodoxy Resembles Religious Dogma

Those who refuse to consider an unconventional idea in science are disturbingly similar to those who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope

When my Harvard colleague Stephen Greenblatt saw my book Extraterrestrial featured on the cover of the Orthodox Jewish magazine Ami, he commented “It is interesting that the Orthodox evidently do not consider their faith threatened by the possibility of other inhabited worlds.” To which I replied: “They appear to be less orthodox than my colleagues in the scientific community.” This was in reference to the pushback that my book received regarding the possibility that the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua might have been manufactured by another civilization.

Innovation blossoms in a culture willing to acquire new knowledge rather than being trapped in its past belief system. A mainstream astronomer who worked on rocks in the solar system for decades commented grudgingly: “‘Oumuamua is so strange…. I wish it never existed.” Such a sentiment is not the trademark of an intellectual culture that fosters discovery. In the weeks following the publication of my book I received numerous e-mails from astronomers, some tenured, who confessed that they agree with me but are afraid to speak out because of the potential repercussions to their careers.
...
The culture of ignoring testable ideas because of prejudice coexists comfortably with a more extreme culture that embraces other ideas without requiring any test...

It's always a danger, in science as in any other field. It was Planck who didn't say "Science advances one funeral at a time" - he actually said " A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents........ but because [they] eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

But in fact, in science, new ideas are generally adopted fairly rapidly - relativity and QM being famous examples - when there is an acute enough problem posed by the observations. In the case of Omuamua, it's not quite like that. Loeb could be right or not but there is no more data.
 

Kooky

Freedom from Sanity
Galileo was a perfect example here.

Good thread.
Galileo drew pictures of the moon with more detail than he could have observed with his telescope (as optics precise enough to capture images of such detail did not exist in his time), so I agree that a scientist making strong claims based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence is definitely a good example for how that debate is being conducted.

Astronomers Have Analysed Claims 'Oumuamua's an Alien Ship, And It's Not Looking Good
 

gnostic

The Lost One
The real issue with this opinion piece to me is not skepticism about new ideas but refusal to even consider them. He's not denying the extraordinary claims/extraordinary proof concept nor denying that testability is key. He is attacking dogmatic refusal to look at ideas and facts that challenge dogma.

There's a vast difference between "that idea can't be true so I don't need to consider it for a second" and "I don't think that idea can possibly be true but if you can present an experimental idea that can prove or disprove that idea, I'll think about it.

When Scientific Orthodoxy Resembles Religious Dogma

Those who refuse to consider an unconventional idea in science are disturbingly similar to those who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope

When my Harvard colleague Stephen Greenblatt saw my book Extraterrestrial featured on the cover of the Orthodox Jewish magazine Ami, he commented “It is interesting that the Orthodox evidently do not consider their faith threatened by the possibility of other inhabited worlds.” To which I replied: “They appear to be less orthodox than my colleagues in the scientific community.” This was in reference to the pushback that my book received regarding the possibility that the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua might have been manufactured by another civilization.

Innovation blossoms in a culture willing to acquire new knowledge rather than being trapped in its past belief system. A mainstream astronomer who worked on rocks in the solar system for decades commented grudgingly: “‘Oumuamua is so strange…. I wish it never existed.” Such a sentiment is not the trademark of an intellectual culture that fosters discovery. In the weeks following the publication of my book I received numerous e-mails from astronomers, some tenured, who confessed that they agree with me but are afraid to speak out because of the potential repercussions to their careers.
...
The culture of ignoring testable ideas because of prejudice coexists comfortably with a more extreme culture that embraces other ideas without requiring any test...

Interesting.

But I’d like to point out that “new idea” cannot become “knowledge” by default, until such idea can be verify in some ways.

Sure, you can consider new ideas, but with knowledge (I am not talking about scientific knowledge, just knowledge in general), it required some fuller explanations of what this idea may be, and still need to be verified in some ways.

And while new idea can or could replace old knowledge, it still needs work.

As to Galileo, he didn’t actually “invented” heliocentric model of planetary motion. It was proposed earlier by Nicolaus Copernicus. And even Copernicus wasn't the first to propose heliocentric; that honour go to a Hellenistic astronomer/mathematician Aristarchus of Samos (mid-3rd century BCE).

Galileo did make the first discovery, but Kepler and then Newton refined Copernicus/Galileo model, and it was Newton who used calculus and theory on gravity to perfect his predictions.
 
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Those who refuse to consider an unconventional idea in science are disturbingly similar to those who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope

Nobody "refused to look through Galileo's telescope", and there were valid scientific reasons to reject heliocentrism at that time, just as there were when it had first been proposed.

It wasn't that people simply refused to consider heliocentrism as a possibility.

Just because Galileo later proved to be correct, doesn't mean that the scientists who rejected his ideas at the time (as most did) were simply being obtuse by doing so. Galileo simply hadn't done enough to demonstrate his case with sufficient evidence to overturn a dominant paradigm.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Galileo drew pictures of the moon with more detail than he could have observed with his telescope (as optics precise enough to capture images of such detail did not exist in his time), so I agree that a scientist making strong claims based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence is definitely a good example for how that debate is being conducted.

Astronomers Have Analysed Claims 'Oumuamua's an Alien Ship, And It's Not Looking Good
Have you a reference for this about Galileo embellishing his drawings of the moon? I've had a quick look and can't trace anything about it.
 

cladking

Well-Known Member
The real issue with this opinion piece to me is not skepticism about new ideas but refusal to even consider them. He's not denying the extraordinary claims/extraordinary proof concept nor denying that testability is key. He is attacking dogmatic refusal to look at ideas and facts that challenge dogma.

There's a vast difference between "that idea can't be true so I don't need to consider it for a second" and "I don't think that idea can possibly be true but if you can present an experimental idea that can prove or disprove that idea, I'll think about it.

When Scientific Orthodoxy Resembles Religious Dogma

Those who refuse to consider an unconventional idea in science are disturbingly similar to those who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope

When my Harvard colleague Stephen Greenblatt saw my book Extraterrestrial featured on the cover of the Orthodox Jewish magazine Ami, he commented “It is interesting that the Orthodox evidently do not consider their faith threatened by the possibility of other inhabited worlds.” To which I replied: “They appear to be less orthodox than my colleagues in the scientific community.” This was in reference to the pushback that my book received regarding the possibility that the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua might have been manufactured by another civilization.

Innovation blossoms in a culture willing to acquire new knowledge rather than being trapped in its past belief system. A mainstream astronomer who worked on rocks in the solar system for decades commented grudgingly: “‘Oumuamua is so strange…. I wish it never existed.” Such a sentiment is not the trademark of an intellectual culture that fosters discovery. In the weeks following the publication of my book I received numerous e-mails from astronomers, some tenured, who confessed that they agree with me but are afraid to speak out because of the potential repercussions to their careers.
...
The culture of ignoring testable ideas because of prejudice coexists comfortably with a more extreme culture that embraces other ideas without requiring any test...

You can't even communicate new ideas to Egyptology. They are locked into their ivory towers with no windows occasionally issuing proclamations and fiat.

The problem in mostly in the US but it is a brave new world where "skeptic" has come to mean an individual who accepts dogma absolutely and literally.

In many ways scientific dogma is far worse and far more dangerous than any religion that ever existed. Only scientific beliefs are founded largely in empirical evidence and not only irrefutable but truth by definition. We have a strange new world where there exist an infinite number of possible universes but not a single one with a Creator.

Science as understood by the masses and many scientists is a form of madness.
 

cladking

Well-Known Member
In many ways scientific dogma is far worse and far more dangerous than any religion that ever existed.


Only scientific beliefs are founded largely in empirical evidence and not only irrefutable but truth by definition.


"Science" has access to the truth about every single thing whereas no religion claims to be able to know the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin.
 
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