[WikiEN-l] Slander against scientists

[Toby Bartels]

Ec wrote in part:

>Students of alternative
>scientific theories are content to pursue their studies, and have better
>things to do with their time than to go out attacking scientists.

You should hang out on alt.sci.physics.new-theories more often.
(Not that I ever go there anymore, so no promises.)
Still, these aren't the same sort of people as chiropractors,
or even serious astrologers.

>That something cannot be proven does not make it false.

No, but the attitude of the sceptic (which is most opponents of pseudoscience)
is that something should not be *relied*upon* unless it's been verified.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that chiropractic is pseudoscience
but your family doctor's methods have been verified a good deal
(by which I mean that they've survived several attempts at falsification).
Then the sceptic's POV is that your family doctor is worth turning to
but the chiropractor is more likely just a waste of your time --
so if this POV has any credence in society, then it's dishonest
to suggest that the chiropractor is as reliable as the family doctor.
(This is a more subtle position than what I *think* RK is saying,
and I haven't checked whether, say, Fredbauer is violating it or not.)

>In the spirit
>of Kurt Gödel there are always things that cannot be proven within a
>finite set of principles.

As a mathematician, I'm contractually obligated
to refute misapplications of Gödel's theorems.
Of course, you only said "In the spirit of" ....

>Fermat's Last Theorem could not be proven for
>300 years, did that make it false during all that time?  Were all the
>people who insisted on its truth for three centuries to be called
>pseudoscientists, or even more slanderously, frauds?

No, but anybody that maintained that it was a theorem
would be called, at best, mistaken.  No mathematician
would have *relied*upon* its truth, even one that believed it.
Of course, we're not exactly comparing the same things here,
scientific verification vs mathematical proof.

>A basic concept of
>logic is that the negation of the statement "All A are true" is "Some A
>are false" and NOT "All A are false".  The fallacy of the excluded middle
>ignores that simple principle.

Aside:  Constructivist mathematicians would argue that even
"Some A are false" is too strong.  But that's irrelevant here.


-- Toby