Cheers!
Another "bash science" thread?
There seems to be a lot of those here lately.
My doctoral advisor (who once said to me in earnest, "If I don't get a Nobel prize, there's no way Rudy Marcus will" -- about two years before Marcus got the phone call from Stockholm) got zinged by a reviewer who was even more prestigious than him stealing one of his ideas, down to the new nomenclature for the phenomenon.
So it isn't just wankers and wannabees who get shafted.
Cheers!
If you don't mind me jumping in here; bashing science is actually the farthest thing from my mind. IMHO, science, and scientists applying the "scientific method", have been primary ingredients in the mix making America what it is today. America was the world leader in scientific and technological breakthroughs for the better part of 200 years. We're probably not the first; I'm sure the same thing could be said of past cultures and societies.
To the layman, it appears something has gone awry. That something seems to have had a negative effect, particularly in the areas of science. To the layman, what seems to pass for science these days is limited to theories and hypotheses that typically fit within a narrow field. Dogmatic adherence to "acceptable" science is what I see -- from the outside. "Acceptable science™" is where the money goes; anyone bucking the acceptable science™ system is on their own.
The NSF is requesting a budget of something approaching 7 billion dollars for 2009! Much of which will be awarded to acceptable™ projects. The weiners from academia who make up a large portion of the NSF board and the scientific community are naturally conjoined. The NSF board(academia weiners) are VERY likely fairly squishy liberals since that seems to be the makeup of academia these days. So, who gets the money? Squishy liberal members of the scientific community? It appears to this layman the system is heavily skewed in favor of liberal projects. THAT is at best, short sighted; at worst an agenda.
The NSF/NSB has apparently identified a problem re their adherence to acceptable science™ and have at least paid lip service to ADDRESSING THE ISSUE(a pdf file).
I know it's not your area of expertise, but just for grins would you humor me and give me your impression of THIS DISCUSSION, particularly as it relates to the expanding earth theory?