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[OM] Re: Thymerosol and autism, was: anything but

Subject: [OM] Re: Thymerosol and autism, was: anything but
From: Andrew Gullen <andrew.gullen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 07:16:02 -0400
on 2005/06/24 9:28 PM, Chuck Norcutt at chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Absolutely agreed.  But at the same time you must form a hypothesis that
> explains all the facts.  If some of the facts do not fit the hypothesis
> then the hypothesis is wrong.  Plain and simple.  That's the scientific
> method.  At least it used to be.  Too many sacred cows in the way now.

That's not really what I remember from my upper-level science courses,
especially physical and theoretical chemistry. We frankly discussed how well
a theory fit the data, and what the uncertainty on the data was, and what
the improvement was over previous theories on the same data. Nothing was
perfect, but some theories did well enough to be very useful. Things that
didn't fit were topics for more research, and meanwhile people go ahead
doing practical things using the best theories available.

Sometimes designing a theory seems a lot like designing a machine or a piece
of software. You get an idea, build it, then let it loose to see how well it
does. People don't wait for it to be absolutely perfect before using it,
because they'd have to wait forever (except in the case of quantum mech).

The question theory users ask themselves is: Is it better to go ahead and
use the theory now, or to wait longer for a better one?

Andrew


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