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To: GSlob
I am afraid you forget that successfully bucking this peer pressure and the scientific consensus is the shortest path to the top flight of any scientific field

Maybe in Hollywood movies or in "hard sciences" like physics.

115 posted on 10/01/2005 6:13:57 AM PDT by A. Pole (Finberg:"FedEx knows that black and Hispanics fail at a higher rate, but has not changed the test,")
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To: A. Pole

In any science. The key word is "successfully". Existing establishment does not welcome such a development [if only for ego reasons], thus it is a path with obstacles. First it is not easy to come up with a superior product [be it non-Euclidean geometry of Lobachevsky and Riemann in mathematics, Linneus' classification system in biology or Pasteur's work on vaccinations in biology/medicine], and then there is a "marketing phase", although this is easier than coming up with a breakthrough advance, for a breakthrough success in science has a way of demonstrating and "selling" itself.
Pons and Fleishmann are a good exhibit here - they went after the brass ring with their cold fusion, and failed. Their professional reputations now are best passed over in charitable silence. But IF it was reproducible and worked - it would be widely used by now, and their likenesses would be gracing the walls of every physics department.


117 posted on 10/01/2005 8:41:53 AM PDT by GSlob
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