Footnote Physicist

          “But is groupthink the best way to create really new science?  Risking heresy, I hereby dissent.  I           believe the creative process usually unfolds in a very different way.  It arises and for a while           germinates in a solitary brain.  It commences as an idea and, equally important, the ambition of a           single person who is prepared and strongly motivated to make discoveries in one domain of           science or another.  The successful innovator is favored by a fortunate combination of talent and           circumstance, and is socially conditioned by family, friends, teachers, and mentors and by stories           of great scientists and their discoveries.  He (or she) is sometimes driven, I will dare to suggest,...

          “Bad faith changes everything.”           – Bret Weinstein I           “Trust, but verify.”           – U.S. President Ronald Reagan II           Intellectual honesty is one of the most difficult ethics for people to follow, but also one of the biggest non-starters in science.  It is just not optional.  One does not want any amount of trust in science, yet reluctantly concedes that it is necessary methodologically (in-principle, we could all replicate every experiment, in-practice, we cannot do everything for ourselves, and need to rely on the credible reports of others).  Yes, there are experts, but no, they are not authorities.  Science does rely in practice, methodologically, on some small amount of trust because, dollars to donuts, once one implements the scientific process, the reality is th...