Having been around long enough to see absolutes in the science of
medicine repeatedly give way to refinements and better understanding
of things, I have a strong preference for keeping an open mind.
The culture of this forum is extremely dichotomous. People here draw
bright lines dividing participants in these discussions into two
camps (those who are right and those who aren't). They then go
further and start taunting those who do not share their opinions with
cracks about how they are uninformed, stupid, backward, crazy, even
ill intentioned.
I shared the article about discovering something that doesn't
completely square with Einstein's predictions as an illustration of
how scientific knowledge remains open to revision as new discoveries
are made. We arrived at the science of today with theories that
seemed to best predict how things behave. When we can predict
successfully how things will behave, we feel that we have a pretty
good theory. That is, until the next discovery that emerges and
challenges the predictive value of the theory. It seemed to me that
the arguers above were asserting absolute certainty about scientific
theory. The absence of any nod to uncertainty** about what the
future may bring in terms of our understanding of radiant energy,
that strikes me as hubris.
