To: aruanan
"This is a caricature of medical science and science in general. There are always new ideas, models, and theories being proposed and adopted." Well, it might exaggerate somewhat, but the problem described is very real. Medicine isn't my field, but I recall the "ulcers/H.Pylori" saga. In geology, "plate tectonics" is a good example. I'm sure there have been others in medicine and geology as well as other fields. And I've seen serious academic discussions about how science could do a better job of recognizing "outside the box" but nevertheless real discoveries. One proposal is for journals to actually reserve some small part of their space specifically to explore "fringe issues".
To: Wonder Warthog
One proposal is for journals to actually reserve some small part of their space specifically to explore "fringe issues".
Remember, though, that "fringe" stuff is, by its nature, virtually unlimited in scope. The better way would be for "peer review" to continue to get criticism until it becomes synonymous with CYA and then lose out to people actually looking at data.
31 posted on
09/13/2011 5:49:27 AM PDT by
aruanan
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