Wow … what a wild word we are living within! A Harvard professor is implying his team can bring the fountain of youth to reality. Of course, there are skeptics and calls for his termination as well. https://www.statnews.com/2024/03/05/david-sinclair-harvard-longevity-scientist-reversing-aging-dogs/
Do you all remember when superconductivity was claimed at room temperature? Take a look at this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01174-6
The scientific community has become tainted by opportunists and frankly … liars … who are so hungry for funding they will compromise their ethics and “fake it till you make it” as the Silicon Valley adage goes. Theranos is the classic example but we have so many these days that the abuse of public trust and investor confidence is tragic.
I suspect we are about to see similar reversals of praise in the climate change claims of so many. The attraction of simple answers to complex questions always lures us. Knowing professionals realize how complex today’s questions have become.
A recent New York Times article in the New York Times struck me as refreshing. These paragraphs are IMHO some of the most profound writing I have seen:
“I warn my students. At the start of every semester, on the first day of every course, I confess to certain passions and quirks and tell them to be ready: I’m a stickler for correct grammar, spelling and the like, so if they don’t have it in them to care about and patrol for such errors, they probably won’t end up with the grade they’re after. I want to hear everyone’s voice — I tell them that, too — but I don’t want to hear anybody’s voice so often and so loudly that the other voices don’t have a chance.”
“And I’m going to repeat one phrase more often than any other: “It’s complicated.” They’ll become familiar with that. They may even become bored with it. I’ll sometimes say it when we’re discussing the roots and branches of a social ill, the motivations of public (and private) actors and a whole lot else, and that’s because I’m standing before them not as an ambassador of certainty or a font of unassailable verities but as an emissary of doubt. I want to give them intelligent questions, not final answers. I want to teach them how much they have to learn — and how much they will always have to learn.”
There is a lot we can learn from these recent articles which should cause us to question almost everything we are being told. We need an informed electorate or we are going to elect charlatans again and again.
I always love your thoughts and writing. You have a gift of seeing things others miss, and an ability to convey complicated ideas that rivals that of Oppenheimer and Feynman, two other Jewish men considered brilliant in their ability to explain complex subjects to non-technical peers and students.