One of the things that has always fascinated me is how much scientific evidence was there for the taking to the ancient world and nobody ever noticed. Anybody looking at a dew drop on a blade of grass had the basics of magnifying lenses staring at him in the face yet it too millenia for anybody to notice. There are lots of other examples of 'obvious' advances being either ignored or relegated to the sidelines like chinese gunpowder that was mostly used for fireworks and the greek steam engine that was only used as a childrens toy in classical Greece.
Before we get too cocky about those foolish ancients, we have our own problems. What does it say about us when you have a major dimming of the sun going on around us for decades and a published paper addressing the subject isn't even noticed? And now all those models on global warming get to be revised (again!) based on scientific information that was out for years prior to the original computer model formation? What does this say about the state of global warming science? What does it say about the IT ability of scientists to process information into relevant knowledge?
There's unmined gold in the scientific literature. There's quite likely a lot of it.
HT: MonkeyX
Posted by TMLutas at March 15, 2004 02:47 PM