Re: Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at Cern
Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 8:50 am
Well, I have to give credit to the scientists at CERN for being cautious - from the very beginning they were warning us not to jump on the bandwagon and rather wait until the conclusions are verified, in order to be absolutely sure about them. It's the media that jumps to conclusions and writes headlines about 'revolutionary' discoveries. I agree with your belief that most scientists are cautious, but I think episodes like this only prove that science is conducted by humans who are fallible, so science can not and should not be worshipped and idealized as our only 'objective' instrument in the search for truth.narnia4 wrote:I read about this but forgot to post about it. No disrespect to Cern or the people working on that, I think its very interesting... but it occurred to me that "This is what we're supposed to put our faith in before God?" (and yes I know most wouldn't put it that way and many don't believe that). All this hooplah and it turns out to probably be a loose wire!
Its stuff like this that would make it easy to dismiss every new theory that comes up as something that will be replaced in a couple months. That might not be exactly what true, but it does go to show that you should approach this stuff with caution (and I'm sure most scientists agree, they went through the right process here).