Os cientistas radicais, livres, de posicionamentos ousados, são os que inflamam a ciência

terça-feira, maio 22, 2012

BOOKS ON SCIENCE

Rebels Whose Bold Moves Set Science Aglow

By KATHERINE BOUTON

Published: May 21, 2012

“Science is not for the meek and mild,” Michael Brooks writes in this entertaining new book. “It is red in tooth and claw; its very ideas and breakthroughs are subject to the law of the survival of the fittest. Good scientists must strive to overthrow, undermine and destroy their colleagues’ reputations.” 

The “radicals” of his title are scientists with an unwavering belief in the truth of their ideas and no compunction about breaking the rules to prove it. They fight, they try to block colleagues’ progress, they commit fraud, they deceive and manipulate others.

And, more than occasionally, they rely on illicit substances and fever dreams. Kary Mullis, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating the polymerase chain reaction, credited his breakthrough to regular use of hallucinogenic drugs. Nikola Tesla had to be shaken out of a catatonic state after he saw a vision in the setting sun that inspired the first self-starting alternating-current motor.

Then there is self-experimentation that no medical review board would approve if it were done on others. The Australian physician Barry Marshall discovered the cause of many gastric problems, including ulcers , by drinking the suspected bacteria “in a cloudy, brown, bug-nourishing broth.” Three days later he began to feel strangely bloated; five days later he was vomiting and his breath smelled putrid. Finally and luckily, his own immune system dealt with the infection. He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2005.

Scientists overlook inconvenient results, writes Mr. Brooks, a British science writer who holds a doctorate in quantum physics and writes a weekly column for The New Statesman. They ignore data that conflict with their ideas. Einstein, for example, bristled at criticism of his papers, withdrawing one submitted to The Physical Review after an anonymous peer reviewer pointed out an error. He published the paper elsewhere, Mr. Brooks writes, “complete with the mistake.”
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Read more here/Leia mais aqui: New York Times

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NOTA CAUSTICANTE DESTE BLOGGER:

A Nomenklatura científica quando se depara com um cientista radical livre desses tenta de todas as maneiras destruir sua carreira acadêmica ou silenciá-lo. Inquisição sem fogueiras!!! 

Exemplo recente desse comportamento abjeto vimos em Francisco Salzano, Sergio Danilo Pena et al que, covardemente não mencionaram o nome do Prof. Dr. Marcos Nogueira Eberlin, Unicampem carta ao presidente da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, expressando sua preocupação com a "popularização de ideias retrógradas que afrontam o método científico, fundamentadas no criacionismo, também chamado como 'design inteligente", e por se sentirem "afrontados pela divulgação de conceitos sem fundamentação científica por pesquisadores de reconhecido saber em outras áreas da Ciência".

A filosofia e a história da ciência mostram que é a existência e a insistência desses rebeldes em avançarem suas ideias é que move a ciência. Por que? Porque se todos estiverem pensando a mesma coisa - a camisa de força paradigmática, ninguém está pensando em nada. A síndrome dos soldadinhos de chumbo! Este livro chegou em boa hora em que os Torquemadas tupiniquins já estão caçando os hereges!!!

Vade retro!!!