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In reply to the discussion: Robert F Kennedy Jr compares childhood vaccines to Nazi Death Camps... [View all]Silent3
(15,909 posts)Really? There's not, in fact, a large body of invention that more or less fulfills expectations of what might come next? You're sure there's not a large body of scientific knowledge that has been built incrementally and not-too-surprisingly from known science?
And yes, "refusal to bow to authority" and "disobedience" have their place in scientific discovery, but it's "survivor bias" (Google it) to not realize what low yields those things produce.
Most of what is laughed at deserves to be laughed at, and thankfully never goes anywhere.
Most crazy ideas are just that, crazy ideas.
The problem is, when a crazy, laughed-at idea hits the big time, everyone hears about it. Most of the vastly larger supply of bad ideas is quickly forgotten. To make matters worse, the degree of rejection and controversy about some scientific ideas that had a bit of struggle getting started gets greatly exaggerated by popularizing biographers and historians of science, just to make their stories seem more dramatic.
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