Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific EstablishmentIn this compelling tour through the world of anomalous research, Richard Milton makes clear what the scientific establishment takes pains to deny: plenty of hard experimental evidence already exists for such things as cold fusion, paranormal phenomena, bioenergy, and the effectiveness of alternative medicine. Because these subjects and those who dare to investigate them are continually denied legitimacy by what can only be called the "paradigm police," the public is led to believe that all claims made about such topics are completely groundless. With humor and an eye for the telling detail, the author describes many instances when the defenders of scientific orthodoxy acted with unscientific rigidity in the face of the evidence. Faraday, Roentgen, Edison, and even the Wright Brothers were thought to be charlatans by their contemporaries. Taking the broad view of the way science is done, Milton discusses the forces at work in the marginalization of unorthodox research, and makes the reader wonder if there is not something fundamentally wrong with the way that science is currently being practiced. |
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Table des matières
A Trout in the Milk | 158 |
Too Insensitive to Confirm | 177 |
The Future that Failed | 191 |
A Methodical Madness | 207 |
Postscript | 221 |
Frauds Fakes and Facing Facts | 223 |
Notes | 236 |
Bibliography | 248 |
Calling a Spade a Spade | 105 |
The Research Game | 119 |
Guardians of the Gate | 134 |
Subject Index | 255 |
People Index | 261 |
Expressions et termes fréquents
able accept American appeared areas asked attempt become believe body British called cancer carried cause cell cent century CHAPTER chemical claims cold fusion described detail discovered discovery disease effect electric energy entirely evidence examined example existence experimental experiments explanation fact field fraud funds Game Geller human idea important impossible Institute interest Journal knowledge laboratory later light living London looking magnetic matter means measure merely method million mind nature objects observed paradigm paranormal patients perhaps person phenomena physics position possible practical predict produced Professor published question rational reaction reason recorded rejection remains reported scientific scientists seems simply Society studies taboo theory things thought true University wrote
Fréquemment cités
Page 106 - I can't make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn't even look like a card that time. I don't know what color it is now or whether it's a spade or a heart. I'm not even sure now what a spade looks like. My God!
Page 109 - In science, as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.
Page 116 - Many readers will surely want to say that what changes with a paradigm is only the scientist's interpretation of observations that themselves are fixed once and for all by the nature of the environment and of the perceptual apparatus.
Page 117 - More important, the process by which either the individual or the community makes the transition from constrained fall to the pendulum or from dephlogisticated air to oxygen is not one that resembles interpretation. How could it do so in the absence of fixed data for the scientist to interpret? Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses. Confronting the same constellation of objects as before and knowing that he does so, he...
Page 24 - He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.
Page 121 - Authoritarian aggression. Tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values.
Page 117 - Today research in parts of philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and even art history, all converge to suggest that the traditional paradigm is somehow askew.
Page 168 - These are cases where there is no dishonesty involved but where people are tricked into false results by a lack of understanding about what human beings can do to themselves in the way of being led astray by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions.
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Informations bibliographiques
| Titre | Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment |
| Auteur | Richard Milton |
| Édition | réimprimée |
| Éditeur | Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, 1996 |
| ISBN | 0892816317, 9780892816316 |
| Longueur | 264 pages |
| Exporter la citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |