Scientists off track

[Mulder]

I'm sure everyone here is aware of the crucial part that skepticism plays in science. However, without creativity as well, science would never discover anything new. The best scientists have a good balance of both.

Scientists with too much skepticism probably do great experiments but will never discover anything new. Those with too much creativity might discover one or two interesting things before, almost inevitably, going off into fantasy land. They frequently go into fields outside their own. This can be a good thing for well-balanced scientists - many of the best ideas have come from connecting concepts from different areas. However, this trick takes a polymath, capable of really understanding both fields in depth. The scientists who go 'off track' usually never understand much outside their original field. That's how they end up investigating things like orbs, UFOs and crop circles and deciding there's something really extraordinary going on!

Why am I burdening you with this rambling nonsense? Because I keep seeing the same old names cropping up supporting 'non-empirical ideas'. It depresses me and misery loves company. Sorry for wasting 30 secionds of your life.

[Admin]

Skepticism is only the method used to scrutinise hypotheses, theories and especially the results of experiments so it does not preclude a scientist being imaginative and exploring new and even unusual ideas.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that an imaginative and skeptical scientist is more likely to discover new things because (s)he'd be far more likely to reject something that doesn't stand up to scrutiny; thus not going off on a wild goose chase.

That's an interesting point about scientists leaving their own area of expertise though. When they do that and especially when their judgement is clouded by belief could well be why astronomers end up validating mediums and such like.

[Graham Lappin]

John makes the critical observation - scepticism is about the method or the process. Have a read of Michael Shermer's "why people believe weird things" and I think he explains this very well.

Richard Feynman the Nobel Prize winning physicist was asked how he worked out his theory of Quantum Electrodynamics. He replied "I guessed" "It was just that so many guesses were wrong and then one was right". His guess formed a working hypothesis and then only after rigourous testing did it become a theory.

I agree you need to be creative to make that first guess.

You say "The scientists who go 'off track' usually never understand much outside their original field" - is that true? Perhaps but I can't take that on face value without some evidence.

[Mulder]

You say "The scientists who go 'off track' usually never understand much outside their original field" - is that true? Perhaps but I can't take that on face value without some evidence.

I don't want to name names. However, if you read some of the weirder stuff on the web, as I do, the same names keep cropping up as scientists 'validating' odd ideas. If you then look at their work (try their own websites), and if you are familiar with the fields (outside their original ones) they are straying into, you will see many obvious mistakes.

[Cuddles]

I don't want to name names. However, if you read some of the weirder stuff on the web, as I do, the same names keep cropping up as scientists 'validating' odd ideas. If you then look at their work (try their own websites), and if you are familiar with the fields (outside their original ones) they are straying into, you will see many obvious mistakes.

There are a couple of points I'd like to make here. Firstly, scientists are just as likely to be nuts as anyone else. As you note, it tends to be the same few people validating all kinds of nonsense, which suggests that the problem lies with these specific people, rather than the fact that they are outside their original field. John's point about belief is also an important one here. A creationist could do great work on nuclear fusion, for example, while talking utter crap about evolution. It's not necessarily that they are outside their field - the same person could also do great work in many physical and chemical fields, it's their beliefs in a particular area that cause the problem.

Secondly, I think many people don't realise just how specific most fields are. As a particle physicist, pretty much everyone would recognise that I am not within my area of expertise when talking about organic chemistry, but what about if I start talking about space research or helioseismology? I probably know more than the average person about them, but neither field has anything whatsoever to do with my job. The point is, it can be easy to point out and criticise someone who is obviously not in their original field, but there are many more people who are just as far outside their field that the average person just won't notice.

This leads on to the next point that I think scientists often do understand a lot in other fields, certainly more than the average person. There are a variety of reasons for this. To start with, all scientists obviously have a basic grounding in the scientific method, maths and various other things which are common to all science. In addition, they will usually have access to much better resources than the average person, like univeristy libraries, colleagues and friends in the other fields and so on. There is certainly no guarantee that a scientist will be talking out the correct end of their anatomy, but in general scientists will have a more relevant education and access to much better resources than most people, even when far out of their area of expertise.

[Mulder]

As I mentioned in my original post, I have no problem with scientists going into other fields for ideas. Many great discoveries have been made precisely by applying ideas from one field to another.

It is simply an observation of mine that the 'same names who keep cropping up, validating odd stuff' have mostly strayed out of their field AND demonstrated a lack of understanding outside their speciality. It's easy to come across examples if you look for them. It appears to me that cross disciplinary study can yield great, even revolutionary results when people understand both fields. But in a small number of cases, when the new field is misunderstood, it can also generate nonsense. I suspect that, because of confidence gained in their original field, some people may think they can master others more easily than is realistic, which may result in misunderstandings.

I do not know if the 'same names' start with strange beliefs and then wander haphazardly into other fields to validate them, or start by wandering between subjects and so pick up their odd ideas. It's not usually possible to deduce that much detail from their biographical notes.