[ExI] Do your own research

[John Clark]

On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 7:58 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> *Being an astrophysicist does not entitle Ethan Siegel to speak on behalf
> of all scientists. The notion that scientists should stay in their own
> research lanes and not pursue questions or develop opinions  in other
> fields is ludicrous.*


I'll tell you what's ludicrous, the idea that you must do your own research
and every reader of the journal Nature or Science must personally reproduce
every experiment in them before he can conclude that what they say is
probably true. Can you imagine a microbiologist reproducing an astronomer's
10 year research project using the world's largest telescopes to determine
the distribution of galaxies in the universe? Can you imagine an astronomer
reproducing a microbiologist's 10 year research program to determine the
expression of genes in a paramecium? I can't either.

The history of scientists telling other scientists in very different fields
how they should do their job is full of humiliating failures. I'm thinking
of the eminent physicist lord Kelvin who told geologists that they got it
all wrong and that the Earth was not billions of years old but only about
20 million; and the eminent astronomer Fred Hoyle who told biologists they
got it all wrong and Darwinian evolution can't work and said those who are
mathematical geniuses got that way because they received mathematical
genius genes from viruses which came from outer space; and the eminent
physical chemist Linus Pauling who told doctors they got it all wrong and
that vitamin C could cure just about everything.

If you're an expert in one field of science you must realize that it took
you many years to obtain the necessary knowledge and skills to reach that
level, and if you're not only smart but also wise you'll know that there
are fields of science other than your own and conclude that experts in
those fields may know more about them than you do. This is even more true
if you're a civilian and not an expert in ANY field of science. So if the
consensus of the entire scientific community is that COVID-19 is killing
thousands of Americans a day, and it is, then it is logical for me to
conclude that what they're saying is true, or at least closer to the truth
than what anybody else is saying.

 >* I must conclude that **Siegal, aside from the  hypocrisy of opining on
> matters not astrophysical in nature, **is an elitist snob and idealogical
> stooge of the left.*


And I must conclude that today's science deniers tend to be ideological
stooges of the right.

John K Clark
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