< link rel="DCTERMS.isreplacedby" href="http://davejustus.com/" >

Friday, December 17, 2004

Michael Crichton on Public Policy Science

This lecture by Michael Crichton is well worth reading. I would hope that even believers in Global Warming would have some concerns about the way 'Science' is sometimes being conducted today.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
The Crichton also quotes Richard Feynman a couple of times, someone I am a huge fan of since I read "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character. (via tsykoduk)

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home