Current science; fraudulent thinking (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 07, 2015, 14:44 (3246 days ago) @ GateKeeper


> GK: My main point is that I agree with you guys. we have so many people trying for PhD's they have to start making stuff up. Some, not all, PhD's are more about defending the "world changing claim" instead of actually being one. I mean we know so much that area's to study for the regular grad student to study are becoming confining. 
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> The result is less than insightful science. Toss in fraud. "POOF" integrity is lost.-Thanks for the explanation. I follow. But I also disagree. I don't think that 'the areas for study are confining'. The real problem is grant money is not as plentiful as it once was, compared to the number of research folks who want it and to live on it. I had some grant money once for a cardiology project. It was a sideline for me, I didn't need it to live on. But today there is open warfare to get the grants and publish anything. We have a science-government complex just like the military-government complex Eisenhower warned about. And you are right. There are few chances for the 'great breakthrough' in new interpretations. String theory is a glorious relic.-Please read the current NY Times article for full clarification:-http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/a-crisis-at-the-edge-of-physics.html?_r=1-"A few months ago in the journal Nature, two leading researchers, George Ellis and Joseph Silk, published a controversial piece called “Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics.” They criticized a newfound willingness among some scientists to explicitly set aside the need for experimental confirmation of today's most ambitious cosmic theories — so long as those theories are “sufficiently elegant and explanatory.” Despite working at the cutting edge of knowledge, such scientists are, for Professors Ellis and Silk, “breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical.'”-*****-"Recall the epicycles, the imaginary circles that Ptolemy used and formalized around A.D. 150 to describe the motions of planets. Although Ptolemy had no evidence for their existence, epicycles successfully explained what the ancients could see in the night sky, so they were accepted as real. But they were eventually shown to be a fiction, more than 1,500 years later. Are superstrings and the multiverse, painstakingly theorized by hundreds of brilliant scientists, anything more than modern-day epicycles?"