Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Would the 500 major pre-1970 discoveries be vetoed today?

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

That’s what a group of scientists, including some Nobelists, told the Guardian on Tuesday.

Recently, we’ve been writing about Nobel Prize winners who have no use for the professional science journals, as they now exist.

On Tuesday, the group wrote to The Guardian:

… The 500 major discoveries, almost all initiated before about 1970, challenged mainstream science and would probably be vetoed today. Nowadays, fields where understanding is poor are usually neglected because researchers must convince experts that working in them will be beneficial.

However, small changes would keep science healthy. Some are outlined in Donald Braben’s book, Promoting the Planck Club: How Defiant Youth, Irreverent Researchers and Liberated Universities Can Foster Prosperity Indefinitely. But policies are deeply ingrained. Agencies claiming to support blue-skies research use peer review, of course, discouraging open-ended inquiries and serious challenges to prevailing orthodoxies. Mavericks once played an essential role in research. Indeed, their work defined the 20th century. We must relearn how to support them, …

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Comments
How would you like it, if you'd spent your whole career telling the emperor his attire was a perfect match for his exalted station, and some ornery little brat came along and called out to him that he was a rude man and he shouldn't go walking around, naked; he should put some clothes on!Axel
March 21, 2014
March
03
Mar
21
21
2014
11:02 AM
11
11
02
AM
PDT
This is a remarkable claim eh. Its so bad so much would not of been done? There must be some real complaining out there. In all comes down to intelligence. The peers and other bosses easily don't know what they are talking about and yet are stopping other researchers. Indeed. Evolution should be already dead if there was this superior peer review. The peerage is just more commoners.Robert Byers
March 20, 2014
March
03
Mar
20
20
2014
06:42 PM
6
06
42
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply