On 23 Jun 2009, at 20:53, Dr Mark Vaughan wrote:
I accept that I am totally incompetent when it comes to this field, and atpresent I don't have the time to study it either But I also don't always trust those that claim they are competent.
Problem is, in these complicated times, there is no way to verify everything from scratch. You have to be vigilant, and skeptical, yet acknowledge the real expertise.
We also haven't considered the finance aspect, for when a research scientist fails to get an interesting result, their finance ends. In many cases thismust cause some to stray from the truth...
In general physics has been pretty well free from this effect, until string theory, which has been studied from a sociological point of view - string theory has dominated other approaches like loop quantum gravity for the wrong reasons. Black holes are pretty clean.
regards, Rod rod.dalitz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx