Indeed- I think the same has been said of Gallileo who apparently disregarded the experimental observations to fit his theory, which stood the test of time...While there is a logic or method related to justification of scientific claims, unfortunately there is no one of scientific discovery...we simply don't know how and why the "bulb goes off" in our brains and why people stick to some claims and not to others...
one of the reasons for this is that , as a historian of science Steven Shapin put it in his recent book "Never Pure"-science has never been pure as it is "produced by people with bodies, situated in time, space, culture, and society, and struggling for credibilty and authority"...and humans do have their limits...
best
ben djulbegovic
-----Original Message-----
From: Evidence based health (EBH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stephen Senn
Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2010 1:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Great Anecdotes versus poor science
Things are not always so simple. Badly conducted research sometimes reaches the right conclusion, if I may be permitted an autoquote this is what I recently wrote in defence of the point of view that climategate has little bearing on what we should believe about global warming
"It has been claimed that Claudius Ptolemy, the greatest astronomer of antiquity and Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics falsified their data. I don't think that we need to know whether this is correct or not to judge their theories. As it happens, Noel Swerdlow mounted a robust defence of Ptolemy against the charges brought by Robert Newton whereas in Mendel's case I don't think anybody has argued with RA Fisher's (respectful) case that the data look highly suspect. But Mendel's theory looks currently much better than Ptolemy's. "
Regards
Stephen Senn
________________________________________
From: Evidence based health (EBH) [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of SUBSCRIBE EVIDENCE-BASED-HEALTH Tom Smith [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 06 November 2010 16:56
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Great Anecdotes versus poor science
Of course when new discoveries are made, great observations, by great scientists are often dismissed as invalid because someone did a bad study which trumps someones observations.
Does anyone have a historically good example of this, or a list of examples.
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