Originally shared by Marcel Gagne
Speaking of inconvenient truths. Science has been described as either physics or stamp collecting. On one hand, you collect lots and lots and lots of data, looking for patterns that form part of the ‘observation, hypothesis, experimentation’ loop. Once you have enough data to generate a response, what’s left is physics, namely the natural forces that explain all the data you collected. Science is never finished because it’s always open to more stamp collecting, but we like to think that the answers we provide as we go through the loop toward the physics part of science aren’t going to get us killed. Scientists are often just curious people looking to satisfy their curiosity. If we’re lucky, the scientists share the interesting parts of their stamp collecting with us. Generally, unless they’re going up against some kind of hardcore religion, where truth can really be inconvenient, they don’t expect to receive death threats for sharing information about their stamp collecting.
Always a bit surprising coming from that side but the anti-nuclear movement counts a number of brainless soldiers as well