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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alexis Powell" data-source="post: 3765848" data-attributes="member: 5327">I think you are misunderstanding "reactions on his observations" and perhaps even the physics example. Many questions and mistaken ideas persist because obtaining definitive evidence is difficult. In science, we work hard to try to come up with unambiguous and reliable ways to test ideas, but it is difficult and we often fail even when we think we have found such means. Methods of testing that are subject to considerable variation in outcomes, or that cannot be evaluated externally, are undesirable compared to methods that are less ambiguous and that allow presentation of evidence (that can be evaluated by a reviewer) to support the conclusion. When lots of reliable evidence or types of experiments support a conclusion, and one seemingly reliable experiment contradicts it, it is more likely that we misunderstand something about the seemingly reliable single experiment than that the otherwise supported idea is wrong. Occasionally, that is not the case, and then perhaps we will eventually arrive at a dramatic change in understanding, or what Kuhn called a paradigm shift. But even Kuhn, in his description of scientific revolutions, noted that revolutions didn't happen until many anomalies accumulated.In this case, we have a very easily executed means of photographing the source of glare problems in a binocular (looking backwards though the bin) that allows reviewers to see the design deficiency in the presented photographic evidence. Detecting this glare by looking through the bin normally is not nearly so reliable a method of detecting whether the underlying problem obtains. If I had a dollar for every person who claimed that a glare prone binocular didn't have a glare problem based on their viewing experience, I might be able to afford an 8x32 EL SV just for fun. Let's see someone use Henry's method to investigate baffling/glare in this bin.  --AP</blockquote>

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