IMO, one of the biggest problems is - scientists are people too. While they will extoll the virtues of the scientific method...doing research and going where the evidence takes them...as a rule they all have egos and are more interested in proving their own preconceived notions (theories).
I’ve followed the Neaderthal question out of curiosity. It’s amazing how many highly regarded anthrpologists simply disregard the DNA evidence that has come out in the last few years. It simply doesn’t fit their model.
Me too. "They" say the last Neanderthals died out some 20,000 years ago based on fossil evidence. I think they were (or still are) around much closer to our own time. Based on fossil eveidence, chimpanzees died out about 20,000 years ago too.
Academics are some of the most political, vicious backstabbers of any group of people. They will work not only to disprove another person's theory, but to destroy the person. There are many examples of scientists being driven out of their field by the old gaurd protecting their work from new ideas, only to have the new ideas eventually proven correct, but too late for the original scientist who proposed the idea.
Everyone is constantly reminded of President Eisenhower's warning about the "Military-Industrial Complex" in his farewell address, a good warning, but few remember his equally stark warning about the Scientific Research-Government Complex he emphasized in the same address.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.Ike was a very wise man. I doubt he would be happy looking at our condition today.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.