[Coral-List] Corals Persist But Bioerosion Rises in Low-pH Waters

Douglas Fenner douglasfennertassi at gmail.com
Tue Jun 16 17:41:14 EDT 2015


    People who come up with major new theories, ideas or discoveries, are
likely to be doubted by many, just because those are new ideas.  But of
course, hind sight is 20-20, we know now which ideas in the past ended up
being supported by evidence, and we have forgotten most of the ideas that
weren't supported by evidence.  There are vast numbers of people who come
up with different theories or ideas, which are not supported by evidence.
Most of those people are strongly doubted by most everybody else.  There
are hundreds or thousands of crackpot ideas for every idea that ends up
getting support by evidence.  Most of the crackpot ideas are outside of
what we'd call science, but there are LOTS of alternative (non-crackpot)
theories proposed all the time by scientists, only some which end up being
supported by the evidence.  I dare say that the vast majority of hypotheses
and theories that scientists come up with, end up being disproven at some
point.  That's how we learn.
     So yes, many of the major advances are strongly doubted when they are
first proposed.  But then vastly larger numbers of proposals are strongly
doubted but never get the support from evidence that leads to widespread
acceptance.  And these days, lots of people who have political, economic,
religious, and other motivations, are pushing things that are not supported
by evidence.  Everything from vaccines causing autism, to homeopathy, to a
long list of "pseudosciences" and superstitions and things like evolution
that people oppose for religious or other reasons.  Some are very popular,
some even are multi-billion dollar industries.  There are lots of things
out there that people believe in that don't have scientific evidence to
support them.
     So it is a mistake to conclude from the fact that quite a few major
scientific discoveries and theories have been doubted when first proposed,
that anything that is doubted must be right.  Doesn't follow.  Doesn't even
follow that many things that people doubt will turn out to have evidence
that supports them.  Most will be refuted by evidence even if those who
favor them cling to them and believe in them fervently in spite of the
evidence.

Cheers,  Doug

On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 5:32 AM, Alevizon, William Stephen <
alevizonws at cofc.edu> wrote:

> RE: Bill Raymond, "many important discoveries were made by mavericks who
> everybody doubted"
>
> You know, now that you mention it, I seem to remember something about
> Charles Darwin getting doubted a bit too, when he first published "On the
> Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" -  seems the dominant
> paradigm was something else at the time...
>
>
>
>
> William S. Alevizon
>
> Research Associate
>
> Dept. of Biology
>
> College of Charleston
>
> 58 Coming St.
>
> Charleston,  S.C. 29424
>
> USA
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>



-- 
Douglas Fenner
Contractor with Ocean Associates, Inc.
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

phone 1 684 622-7084

"belief in climate change is optional, participation is not."

Much-touted global warming pause never happened.

http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2015/06/much-touted-global-warming-pause-never-happened

Has global warming taken a rest?  Not so fast, study suggests.  (check out
the graph)

http://www.livescience.com/51094-no-global-warming-hiatus-found.html

Climate change deniers love to talk about a recent "pause" in global
warming.  A new study says it didn't happen.

http://theweek.com/speedreads/558971/climate-change-deniers-love-talk-about-recent-pause-global-warming-new-study-says-didnt-happen


website:  http://independent.academia.edu/DouglasFenner

blog: http://ocean.si.edu/blog/reefs-american-samoa-story-hope


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