Ah! Spoken like a true scientist.
john marlow
--- Damien Broderick
<d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> At 12:22 AM 14/01/01 -0800, Daniel Ust wrote:
>
> >> But then, hey, what's the opinion of the
> Nobel-laureate co-untangler of DNA
> >> structure and code compared with those mighty
> unheralded geniuses who
> >> shatter the myths of Darwinism?
>
> >Don't argue from authority! ... No need to invoke
> prize winning statuses
> >or other achievments -- not that this is ever good.
>
>
> Hmm. This is an interesting issue, since in science
> (unlike many other
> fields of human endeavor) authorities often have
> this status granted them
> by their peers not due to birth or wealth or
> winsomeness or force of arms,
> but because of track record in their fields of
> expertise.
>
> Acknowledged authority thus becomes a useful
> shorthand, inviting us to
> consult one rather than another body of claim and
> argument. Granted, this
> heuristic sometimes breaks down, when the brash
> innovator from the wrong
> sides of the track record comes up with a snazzy
> paradigm buster. But
> usually not. Science mostly *is* cumulative, despite
> research program and
> paradigm discontinuities.
>
> That being the case, it makes plenty of sense to
> heed, by preference, the
> acknowledged authorities in the first, second and
> third instance, and to
> turn to the unheralded self-proclaimed geniuses as a
> last resort of
> desperation (and, of course, for fun and sport).
>
> Damien Broderick
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