Deadrat wrote:

"Googler" <GOOGLE.4.godfatha@spamgourmet.com> wrote in message
news:1135886653.258962.19560@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

CreateThis wrote:

Googler wrote:

... "forbidding" something can lead to its
being looked upon as desirable.

Not rejecting it can lead to its being looked upon as sensible.

Taking this response as it is written, one could say it is both elitist
and condescending.

Possibly. But is it a correct observation? I think so. Science
rejects bad ideas and provisionally accepts good ideas. The latter
comport with the known evidence; the former, don't.

Not actually the way science works -

one actually can't reject even a
"bad idea" up front -at least until there is some evidence built up
against it. Even then, one has to be careful that it is really the
core idea that is incorrect and not some peripheral concept.

And on the other side, an idea may *seem* "good" when in reality it is
only insufficiently tested or over-protected. .

It would be more accurate to say that core scientific ideas - once they
are acccepted - have needed quite a body of evidence against them
before they are replaced by something else. And that new ideas have
often been given a short hearing.

Also, the history of science shows that there have been plenty of truly
"bad ideas" that managed to stay around for quite a while, even when
there was evidence against them. S.J. Gould wrote about one such core
set in 'The Mismeasure of Man' - now those ideas were *really* bad
science, as it turned out, but they stayed around long enough to cause
a lot of damage.

Therefore, this whole implication that somehow the scientific process
and those who follow it will lead us progressively to truth - and that
'common sense' can't be trusted - had best be taken with more than a
grain of salt.

So I maintain my view that as it was originally proposed, this was an
elitist stance, and I continue to have my doubts about its correctness.

I also have no problem teaching about any of this, even in a science
class. Although I think that the history and philosophy of science
would be better taught elsewhere..

Personally, I have a better view of people than this, and I don't
believe that we need some elite thought-police deciding for us what is
sensible and what isn't.

No one is telling you what to think. Think nonsense all day, if you wish.
The question is whether scientists should label pseudoscience for what it
is.

Oops, you make a mistake. I didn't quite say that.

What I was saying goes more along these lines:

I don't want someone even hinting to me - nor to anybody else - what
is "sensible" and what isn't.

I have plenty of sense of my own, thank
you very much - as do a lot of people.

So teach me how to *think*
sensibly, and don't tell me what is and is not sensible - I'll figure
that out myself.

Of course, much less would I want someone telling me what I can and
cannot even *think* about. That would be a fundamentalism of the worst
sort. But that wasn't where I was coming from.

Certainly pseudoscience *should* be identified as such - but only
because it is not scientific - NOT because it doesn't meet somebody's
criteria of 'sensibility'.

Again, I refer to the situation as described by Gould. Most of the
initial criticisms of those ideas came not from within the scientific
community, but from those outside of it. And often, those critics were
essentially accused of not being 'sensible' by the scientifc
proponents.