Pseudoscience and Heretics

PDF: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/ridley_rsa_millar_speech_scientific_heresy.pdf

Matt Ridley's speech at the Angus Millar lecture - http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2011/angus-millar-lecture-2011-scientific-heresy

FROM: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/thank-you-matt-ridley/#more-50468

So I learnt lesson number 1: the stunning gullibility of the media. Put an “ology” after your pseudoscience and you can get journalists to be your propagandists.

Lesson number 2: debunking is like water off a duck’s back to pseudoscience.

Lesson number 3. We can all be both. Newton was an alchemist.

That’s lesson number 4: the heretic is sometimes right.

Lesson number 5: keep a sharp eye out for confirmation bias in yourself and others.

Lesson 6. Never rely on the consensus of experts about the future. Experts are worth listening to about the past, but not the future. Futurology is pseudoscience.

In conclusion, I’ve spent a lot of time on climate, but it could have been dietary fat, or nature and nurture. My argument is that like religion, science as an institution is and always has been plagued by the temptations of confirmation bias. With alarming ease it morphs into pseudoscience even – perhaps especially – in the hands of elite experts and especially when predicting the future and when there’s lavish funding at stake. It needs heretics.