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Some of the ideas discussed in this blog are published in my new book called "The Stonehenge Bluestones" -- available by post and through good bookshops everywhere. Bad bookshops might not have it....
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Thursday 14 March 2024

In praise of Popper

 


A nice pic from the Caldey Island Facebook page -- it reminded me of Karl Popper's exhortation to scientists that they should concentrate their efforts on the falsification of existing hypotheses.  The famous example of course is the hypothesis that "All swans are white" --  which was widely accepted as correct, of course, long ago, until somebody discovered that some swans are black as well.

This was one of the themes of by talk in Fishguard last night -- I urged people not to blindly "follow the science" (as we were exhorted to do during the dark days of the Pandemic) but to knowledgeably challenge the science presented in learned papers and especially to take everything presented in banner headlines in the media with a large dose of salt.

My main theme, of course, was that we should all recognise mythology for what it is, especially when it is dressed up as science.  But more of that anon...... 

2 comments:

Tony Hinchliffe said...

A good first step for a large percentage of the UK population would be to stop reading the DAILY MAIL and the DAILY EXPRESS

BRIAN JOHN said...

Especially the latter -- the Express is so obsessed with Stonehenge that they publish ancient , outdated and discredited research on no pretext whatsoever, apparently just to fill space....... they know that whenever they use the word "Stonehenge" they will have readers and viewers hooked!!