My reaction to this talk went through 4 stages:
- I laughed at the idea that some old lady wanted to give such a talk. I was excited to watch it to enjoy some comic relief.
- I soon realized this "old lady" is actually very smart and raised some interesting points I have never considered. Interesting enough that I think they do deserve some serious contemplation.
- I then reverted to my "the science community isn't a conspiracy. If there was really something to a theory mainstream science wouldn't ignore it."
- I still feel like #3, but also admit this lady has me wanting to learn more about what is going on here.
Anyways, I think you will find this "old lady" to in fact be very interesting regardless of whether her theory holds any weight.
Maybe this is a sign of my raging political conservatism, but I'm not so suspicious of the "repressive academic community" theme. While I think there are some things that deserve to be repressed (intelligent design for one), there are other topics that are repressed because they violate social or traditional views held by the majority of academic community. My wife's experience in her master's program in public administration has been one of a definite bias in favor of liberal politics that occurs simply because conservative ideas are not discussed, let alone objectively evaluated.
ReplyDeleteThe point is that I agree that the majority of scientists will align themselves with the data when there is clear data in support of a theory, but bias can sometimes limit the questions being asked, as appears to be happening here.