RE: ANECDOTAL INFORMATION

kathryn marsh (kmarsh@iol.ie)
Mon, 13 Jul 1998 19:29:12 +0100

As I see it there is nothing wrong with the scientific approach except that
a very large proportion of its practitioners are unwilling to say "I don't
actually know all about this, I've only controlled for what I know about
but there may be other factors at work that we haven't discoverred yet" and
if someone suggests a solution to the problem that requires the
experimenter behaving as if there may be other factors - not postulating
that there are, just accepting the possibility - they deny the validity of
results. Sometimes experiments aren't repeatable because there is an
outside factor there that we haven't spotted - you can call it the great
spirit or homeopathy or the next big breakthrough or whatever takes your
fancy but you can't do good science with a closed mind

kathryn

>Carl,
>
>> The scientific approach has given us the internal combustion engine,
>> billions of tons of chemicals of all types, and other products.
>>
>I have a feeling you may mean something different by "scientific
>approach" than I do.
>
>> In their linear sort of way, these inventions have done many good
>> things.
>>
>What do you mean by "linear" in this context?
>
>> But they have also had major consequences that the linear, scientific
>> method can not see (loss of biodiversity, pollution which exceeds
>> earth's ability to cycle within a time frame that removes toxins from
>> our biosphere, societal changes).
>>
>I was discussing reliability of information.
>
>> The scientific method is laden with limitations as well and we need
>> not to be in denial of the shortcomings of this approach.
>>
>What do you think the shortcomings are?
>
>Dale
>
>
>To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with "unsubscribe sanet-mg".
>To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
>"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".

To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with "unsubscribe sanet-mg".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".