MeteorWayne":u6ez0jo3 said:
That's BS. Anyone who can suggest new ideas with real science, supported with observations, models, and a reasonable explanation for the validity would be grilled, but if it stands up would be welcome with open arms.
Woo Woos that use their justification as "I think", "It seems to me", or "everything we have learned about physics in the last century is wrong because I say so" will be justifiably laughed out of the room and serious discussion unless they can support it with more than word salad.
My comments were about how evidence is collected, not about how it's interpreted once in hand. I agree completely that ultimately it's the evidence that carries the day in forming scientific consensus. Sadly, evidence doesn't simply fall out of the sky. Well, unless you're studying meteorites, but that's another story entirely.
My criticism is of instances where the answer is simply assumed without making the observations to support it.
Yes, Ramparts, I am well aware that a professional scientist's opinion of what's worth investigating is likely to be different from mine. It's not my intention to wag my finger at any particular researcher, either as an individual or as part of a group, and say, "Well you should be doing experiment X! Why aren't you?" I'm just not happy when the attitude of the community seems to send the message, "Experiment X isn't worth doing, so anyone interested in it must not be a very good researcher." Scientists are as human as everyone else, and the effect on one's reputation - and possible ramifications on one's career - are certainly a consideration for anyone in choosing a research topic.
We never know what the results of an experiment will be until we actually do it, and we never know when what should be a routine experiment will turn up a completely unexpected answer. It doesn't happen all that often, but it does happen. And when it does, it can often be the doorway to a better understanding of things. Most of the time a check of something considered to be obvious will produce nothing surprising. But if we discourage people from doing those sorts of checks, we'll miss out on the occasional bizarre result.
My position is that a model should not be a prerequisite for doing an experiment. The universe is under no obligation to follow our ideas of how it should work, and it's the odd results that *don't* fit into our models that are the most interesting.
I'm not suggesting that conventional research following established theory should be abandoned, nor that scientists should be forced to do odd experiments that aren't likely to produce results. I'm just saying that if we don't make room for some unconventional projects, we run the risk of overlooking something new and exciting.
On the particular example of relativistic effects with non gravitational fields, I don't know if those effects could occur or not. You may all be entirely correct that the results would be predictable and of no interest at all. But what if they're not? What if, by some crazy chance, it turns out that those effects *do* occur? Wouldn't that be exciting? Wouldn't one result like that make a thousand fruitless experiments that just confirm what everyone already thought worthwhile?