2005 Nobel Prize: how to do science

[Mojo]

Congratulations to Barry Marshall and Robert Warren, who have been awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for Medicine for demonstrating the role of Helicobacter pylori in stomach ulcers.

Homeopaths and others take note: here we have someone who was up against the medical establishment and “Big Pharma” but proved their case within around a decade by doing proper research. Homeopathy has had 200 years and still no sign of any decent evidence.

 

[Hawk one]

Ahh, proper science. Where you keep your mind open, but without letting your brain fall out; and where you at worst end up knowing more, and at best - like in this case - can actually help people in that you know what is actually causing the problem, and how to remove this cause... I wish Sarah-I and Barbrae could take notes from how it's done.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ah, this is just an aberration. They slipped in this paradigm shift while no one was looking. Science almost always asserts its ponderous hegemony over new ideas.

~~ Paul

 

[Pastor Bentonit]

Damn those scientists!

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

pause,

Hawk One, nice signature!

play,

 

[Pastor Bentonit]

Come to think of it, the fact that Warren himself drank a H. pylori culture to establish infection, and subsequently be able to isolate bacteria from stomach samples (endoscopy is so fun, try it some day ) - now that´s commitment...

 

[Diamond]

Another "overwhelming scientific consensus" bites the dust.

 

[Melendwyr]

It's a shame it took so long to convince the establishment (as opposed to the medical researchers themselves, who are actually scientists), but truth and justice win out in the end.

They have to win once in a while, after all.

 

[pgwenthold]

Given the large number of things held in "overwhelming scientific consensus," that one gets toppled on occasion means little outside of the fact that there are not 100% correct. Maybe there are 10 000 such things, and they are only 99.9% correct. That means 10 will be found to be wrong. Of course, that means that 9990 are correct, but guess which ones going to make the newspapers (or brought up by creationists)?

 

[Melendwyr]

That's quite true, pgwenthold, but we can't fail to acknowledge the truth just because some idiots will use it as a talking point.

 

[Mojo]

Given the large number of things held in "overwhelming scientific consensus," that one gets toppled on occasion means little outside of the fact that there are not 100% correct. Maybe there are 10 000 such things, and they are only 99.9% correct. That means 10 will be found to be wrong. Of course, that means that 9990 are correct, but guess which ones going to make the newspapers (or brought up by creationists)?

And, of course, they'll try to present this as a weakness of the scientific approach, whereas it is in fact a strength.

 

[hammegk]

And, of course, they'll try to present this as a weakness of the scientific approach, whereas it is in fact a strength.

The only weakness I identify in the scientific approach is that scientists are also human and subject to the same economic constraints, and the follies and foibles of human interactions, as non-scientists.