we assume and accept that each individual scientist may be crazily attached to their personal theories. Nor do we assume that anyone can be trained out of this tendency—we don’t try to choose Eminent Judges who are supposed to be impartial. Instead, we try to harness the individual scientist’s stubborn desire to prove their personal theory, by saying: “Make a new experimental prediction, and do the experiment. If you’re right, and the experiment is replicated, you win.” So long as scientists believe this is true, they have a motive to do experiments that can falsify their own theories. Only by
...more
