Do you trust scientists/technologists? ( Archived) (13)

Scientist just do their jobs. They experiment, investigate, come up with theories, etc. It is those who popularise science that make a mess of it because they present theories as if they were facts. Scientists know they are theories even if they are generally accepted like Einstein's theory of special relativity. So when new data comes to light scientists will re-evaluate the theory and amend it or develop a completely new one. They know that theories only present them with a framework in which they can work, but may not necessarily be true and may need to be modified in the future. Very often you find that a few theories compete with each other, like super symmetry with other theories (I cannot recall their names) in particle science.

There was this scientist who over many years developed a theorum for something or other. World class, so much so that he won a Nobel Prize for his efforts.




And then he spent the next 4 years proving it wrong.




Then found the error and won another Nobel Prize



A lot of early scientists made their discovers by accident. Newton lazing under a tree is a good example. Everyone knew all things fall down but he decided to come up for a theorem for it, just an excuse as he just was a bit laid back (pun intended).

And that guy who kept dropping things off the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa onto the heads of tourists. Polish origin but Italian name. His hat fell off one day and it went straight down pretty fast (no wind that day). Some tourist bent down to pick it up and so he dropped a brick down to stop the tourist from pinching it. "Soli mio! Thata bricka fella asa slowa asa mya hata. Ia trya morea." (I am lousy with accents ) And then worked out that if you have the same weight falling, no matter the material, it fell at the same rate.

I thought the accent was funny. But so is the science. The brick would fall faster than the hat due to the hat suffering greater air resistance. But I'm sure you knew that.