Science Guardian

Paradigms and power in science and society

I am Nicolaus Copernicus, and I approve of this blog

I am Richard Feynman and I approve of this blogQualified outsiders and maverick insiders are very often right about the need to replace received wisdom in science and society. This site exists to back the best of them in their uphill assault on the massively entrenched edifice of resistance to and prejudice against reviewing, let alone revising, ruling ideas.

In support of such dissenters and other courageous heretics in a world of organized group think, we search for paradigms and other established beliefs which may be maintained only by the power and politics of the status quo, comparing mainstream wisdom in science and society with academic research and the published experimental and investigative record.


We especially defend and support the funding of honest, accomplished, independent minded and often heroic scientists and other original thinkers in their right to free speech and publication against the censorship, mudslinging, false arguments, ad hominem propaganda, overwhelming group prejudice and internal science politics of the paradigm wars of cancer, AIDS, evolution, global warming, cosmology, particle physics, macroeconomics, health and medicine, diet and nutrition.
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HONOR ROLL OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTHSEEKERS

Henry Bauer, Harvey Bialy, Giordano Bruno, Erwin Chargaff, Nicolaus Copernicus,
Marie Curie, Rebecca Culshaw, Freeman Dyson, Peter Duesberg, Albert Einstein,
Richard Feynman, Galileo Galilei, James Hansen, Michio Kaku, Adrian Kent,
Ernst Krebs, Serge Lang, Mark Leggett, Richard Lindzen, Lynn Margulis,
Marco Mamone Capria, Peter Medawar, Kary Mullis, Linus Pauling, Eric Penrose.
Rainer Plaga, David Rasnick, Carl Sagan, Otto Rossler, Fred Singer, James Watson.
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Many people would die rather than think – in fact, they do so. – Bertrand Russell.

Skepticism is dangerous. That’s exactly its function, in my view. – Carl Sagan

It is really important to underscore that everything we’re talking about tonight could be utter nonsense. – Brian Greene (NYU panel on Hidden Dimensions June 5 2010, World Science Festival)

No snowflake in a snowstorm ever feels responsible. - Voltaire

One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways. – Bertrand Russell (Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 9)

(Click for more Unusual Quotations on Science and Belief)

I am Albert Einstein, and I heartily approve of this blog, insofar as it seems to believe both in science and the importance of intellectual imagination, uncompromised by out of date emotions such as the impulse toward conventional religious beliefs, national aggression as a part of patriotism, and so on.   As I once remarked, the further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.   Certainly the application of the impulse toward blind faith in science whereby authority is treated as some kind of church is to be deplored.  As I have also said, the only thing ever interfered with my learning was my education.My name as you already perceive without a doubt is George Bernard Shaw, and I certainly approve of this blog, in that its guiding spirit appears to be blasphemous in regard to the High Church doctrines of science, and it flouts the censorship of the powers that be, and as I have famously remarked, all great truths begin as blasphemy, and the first duty of the truthteller is to fight censorship, and while I notice that its seriousness of purpose is often alleviated by a satirical irony which sometimes borders on the facetious, this is all to the good, for as I have also famously remarked, if you wish to be a dissenter, make certain that you frame your ideas in jest, otherwise they will seek to kill you.  My own method was always to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity. (Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life magazine)
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Onion’s Lack of Seriousness Deplored by NIAID Director Anthony Fauci

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, stated today (Wed Nov 23) that in his opinion “the continuing ridicule and satire by the weekly paper, The Onion, of the strenuous efforts of our institution to raise the alarm regarding the greatest threat to US national security and world order in history, H5N1 bird flu, is now beyond a joke.”

Asked by New AIDS Review what he objected to most, Fauci replied: “For example the blatant excess of the image in this week’s issue ‘KFC Introduces New Bird-Flu Dipping Vaccine’.”

Added the NIAID director, “While I appreciate humor as well as the next official in Washington, I have to draw the line when it comes to the Onion’s giving the bird to what is without doubt the most alarming prospect for the human race since Noah’s flood.”

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