• Question: Do you think people are more accepting of new scientific ideas than they used to be or are we still stubborn? e.g Gallileo and the geocentric model

    Asked by ssell22 to Betul, Bridget, Ceri-Wyn, Laurel, Maria on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Ceri-Wyn Thomas

      Ceri-Wyn Thomas answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Oh good question! Do you know I think we’re still just as unwilling to accept some things like the nature and fate of our universe. So many scientists disagree on these points but the trouble is- until we have enough information to build on and develop new questions and theories to test- then we’ll always be in a state of confusion. that’s the nature of science- we are always trying to discover. And we are still challenging notions that have been long held as true- we are even challenging the concept of gravity at the quantum level!

      However, because we have learned from the past (and Galilieo is a great example of this) I think we, as a society are more inclined to be more trusting of new theories or concepts no matter how wild they seem. The more we know about it the more crazy our universe seems!

    • Photo: Bridget Waller

      Bridget Waller answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Good question. I think scientists are better at communicating with the public now, so hopefully people are more informed and better able to understand what they are doing. Religion and culture are often factors…people don’t want to accept things if they contradict what they already think

    • Photo: Laurel Fogarty

      Laurel Fogarty answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      I think that people are ready to accept the scientific advances in things like medicine that help millions of people- the results are undeniable. In general people are happy to listen and are amazed by the things that scientists discover. We have a few problems (especially in evolutionary biology) with ‘deniers’. Deniers are people who will deny that something is true even in the face of overwhelming evidence. We have had climate change deniers, evolution deniers, even people that deny that HIV leads to AIDS. Some of these are very harmful (that last one especially).

      I honestly don’t know how many people like this there are. I think in general people are more sensible than that!

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