Tuesday, January 25, 2011

"Mainstream" standards

Imagine if we applied Paul Tobin's idolization of "mainstream" consensus to science:


Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the New England divine, actually proposed a germ theory of medicine when 99.9% of the medical community disagreed with him. Conversely, Georg Ernst Stahl (1660-1734) proposed a “phlogiston” theory to explain combustion (burning) and rusting that nearly every scientist of the day (including Joseph Priestly [1733-1804]), hailed. 


http://www.uncommondescent.com/culture/consensus-science-voyage-of-the-dumbed/

Can't you just see Tobin with the powdered wig and gavel sentencing an upstart like Mather to the stocks?

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