Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5420759" data-attributes="member: 8835">I saw this article on google news, and it reminded me of a thread a while back about the scientific method:<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/extrasensory-perception-scientific-journal-esp-paper-published-cornell/story?id=12556754" target="_blank">Extrasensory Perception in Scientific Journal: ESP Paper Published by Cornell Psycholgist Studying Precognition - ABC News</a>The gist of the article is that some respected guy did a study that demonstrated ESP phenomenon.  He wrote a paper and submitted to the Scientific Journal.  The SJ guys reviewed it and decided the research was done correctly and published it.Now, scientists are in a snit because it was allowed to be published.  Since they believe ESP to be impossible, they resent an article on the topic being published.My opinion on the matter is that no self-respecting scientist lets their bias interfere with scientific research.  You don't poopoo somebody's research because you think the topic is stupid or impossible.   The Scientific Journal did the right thing, they verified the research method to make sure it was correctly done and published the paper, regardless of the topic.When scientists refuse to keep an open mind, they refuse to question the nature of the universe.  And that kind of thinking would mean we'd never get past the earth being flat.A good scientist would read the article, and if possible, try to replicate the experiment, and then try to test for alternative hypothesis. The goal being to see if there was a mistake, or an alternative explanation.  A bad scientist says your findings are crap despite there being scientific proof that something wierd happened.</blockquote>

Verification