2015-12-23 21:03 GMT+01:00 Jed Rothwell <[email protected]>: > > Or as Stan Szpak put it, scientists believe whatever you pay them to > believe. >
This quote is key to understanding modern science, however I thinks it was much different before (except maybe in imperial china). For long the scientists have a real job, like tax officer (Lavoisir), patent officer (Einstein), Engineer and painter (Da vinci), industrialists (Wright brothers, Lumière brothers),.. The scientists did not have to please their peers to eat, but to please a client with things that works, or just to please themselves. The big problems is that scientist depend on opinion of their peers, not of concrete achievements (which are more and more long to obtain). Scientist believe in whatever is required to obtain a funding and have their paper peer-reviewed. It is not true for all scientist, we know it, but either their funding does not depend on others scientists opinion (rich, retired, tenured, uncontrolled budget, private, political influence), or they can no more work and influence others scientists with publications. Darwinian evolution make all academic scientists follow the Stan Szpak moto.
