I am just finishing a book I have enjoyed more than any other in years: The Black Swan.
One of my favorite passages:
”One needs to exit doubt in order to produce science - but few people heed the importance of not exiting from it prematurely… it is a fact that one usually exits doubt without realizing it.”
That, incidentally, describes James Hansen precisely.
As I perused this (rather short) thread, I have arrived at a new theorem, as follows:
With respect to science, funding corrupts; government funding corrupts absolutely.
Science had degenerated into a pursuit of grants instead of truth, and a sinecure for those engaging in mindless - and worthless - speculation instead of discovery of fundamental principles.
Witness the sad, so-called “scientific” claque bowing at the altar of Al Gore, who could hardly be LESS qualified in the science he propounds.
And witness also the funding - so far, at least, not federal, thanks to President George Bush - poured down the rat-hole of embryonic stem-cell research with absolutely no positve results. Meanwhile, research on stem cells from other than human embryos labor in the shadows, producing hundreds of therapeutic methods and thousands of SUCCESSFUL treatments and cures, but ignored by both the funding and the science communities.
The scientific method has been overwhelmed and subsumed by the political method, and big science has become just another political party, infested with the same inflated egos, with the same god complex.
I too enjoyed “The Black Swan” but I found that it needed to be taken in small bites, to allow time to reflect on it. Our local Mensa book club chose it as one of our monthly selections last year, but few had completed it before the meeting.