I hope you don't mind me coming in to comment, but I think that there is
an interesting general issue that might be worth opening up.
I think that Dr Goldacre would be a very entertaining speaker for an
evening and might stir up some discussion. But as I understand it, he is a
GP who writes mainly about medical treatment which he disagrees with, and
it might be more reasonable to call the column 'Bad Medicine'.
I do think that there is a need for a serious debate about the nature of
science but it needs to be led by someone of appropriate scientific
stature who's not committed to any particular interest-group, for instance
someone at Nobel level. People like David Bohm and Ilya Prigogine have
expressed some very profound ideas, but they are no longer alive, and we
need people to follow up and build on their work.
I think that it would be very interesting to explore questions about the
nature of science itself. For instance, has it become a church of science
where orthodox dogma rules, or has it managed to retain the spirit of
Descartes and Galileo and continually expose every one of its cherished
beliefs to question and doubt and testing?
I hope I haven't offended anyone by these comments, but I do believe that
the issue is a very important one. I'd be most interested in hearing from
anyone who'd like to open up this type of discussion.
With best wishes, Howie
[log in to unmask] writes:
>Have a look at www.lablit.com - Jenny Rohn (the editor) has interviewed
>him.
>LabLit's a great site, too!
>Ann
>
>
>
>From: Discussion list for cafe scientifique network on behalf of Ann Grand
>Sent: Tue 29/11/2005 19:08
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Request from Brighton cafe
>
>
>Hi,
>
>Jim Grozier from the Brighton cafe is trying to find contact details for
>Ben
>Goldacre - he's had several requests but draws a blank on a google search.
>Can anyone help?
>
>Thanks
>
>Ann
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