dave_in_michigan
Well-known member
How to tell a good scientist from a bad scientist
Nice link on Tom Nelson's blog to this article: "How to tell a good scientist from a bad scientist".
This excerpt is a quote from New York Times science writer Gary Taubes (my emphasis added):
"I’m a stickler about the use of words like “evidence” and “proof”. So if someone tells you there’s no evidence for some controversial belief, you can be fairly confident that they’re a bad scientist. There’s always evidence, or there wouldn’t be a controversy. If somebody says that “we proved that this was true” or “we set out to prove that this was true” that’s another bad sign. The point here, as [Karl] Popper noted, among others, is that you can never prove anything is true; you can only refute it. So researchers who talk about proving a hypothesis is true rather than testing it make me worried."
Nice link on Tom Nelson's blog to this article: "How to tell a good scientist from a bad scientist".
This excerpt is a quote from New York Times science writer Gary Taubes (my emphasis added):
"I’m a stickler about the use of words like “evidence” and “proof”. So if someone tells you there’s no evidence for some controversial belief, you can be fairly confident that they’re a bad scientist. There’s always evidence, or there wouldn’t be a controversy. If somebody says that “we proved that this was true” or “we set out to prove that this was true” that’s another bad sign. The point here, as [Karl] Popper noted, among others, is that you can never prove anything is true; you can only refute it. So researchers who talk about proving a hypothesis is true rather than testing it make me worried."