[joker]

One of the great movie scenes! I grew up with fluoridated water (actually when we moved away from it, my mom added a fluoride pill to our morning breakfast). A dentist told me that it sure seemed to help prevent decay for me but also made my teeth both harder and more brittle. Sure enough as I've aged my main dental health issue has been with cracked teeth - though this may be more due to an occluded bite (heavy wear on the molars).

[Ski]

love how this thread devolved into yet another argument about global warming. seems the subject of the article cited in the first post was long ago forgotten. doesn't really matter what it is - whether it's diet and fitness or global warming or fluoridation or vaccines or wolves or bears or trees or Ginger or Mary Ann - people will believe what they want to believe based on their own ideology regardless of what kind of evidence is provided to them. you can lead a horse to water too.

[joker]

But it is a very current example of questions about how folks in our society relate to science, and thus a nice microcosm of what's invoked by the OP...

[Ski]

quite true, and I am starting to believe that we all have our own little built-in belief system that keeps us from accepting "science" (and/or "fact"). (same applies to Ginger or Mary Ann)

[Bedivere]

So no one has an open mind? Dammit, I guess I need to stop reading and trying to learn. I already know it all!

[Ski]

well..... I'm sure there are people out there somewhere with open minds who can actually evaluate stuff objectively... but it sure doesn't look like they make up the majority of posters in this thread!

[wolffie]

As a scientist and former science teacher, I've wryly noted that we scientists ourselves are often guilty of the same sort of closed-minded resistance to unexpected new ideas that we decry. A couple prominent examples of major ideas introduced "ahead of their time" that met widespread scorn despite strong supporting empirical data: Ignaz Semmelwies Even much later, as Candice Millard in The Destiny of the Republic notes re. the iatrogenic sepsis that killed President Garfield, American doctors incredulously scoffed at Lister's ideas of aseptic surgery (then accepted in Europe): "...why, he would have us believe that we are immersed in an invisible sea of microsscopic 'germs'!" [good read BTW] Alfred Wegener Continental Drift He had like 6 independent lines of evidence, but you can imagine the difficulty of persuading people that continents float around on a fluid like scum on a roiling soup; the idea did not gain much acceptance until post WWII ocean floor mapping and geomagnetism mapping across seafloor spreading sites. Darwin's theory of Evolution, OTOH, was widely anticipated -- although he sat on it for awhile, he finally published to avoid being scooped by Wallace -- and, ironically, Robert Fitzroy (captain of the Beagle and a biblical fundamentalist) had invited a naturalist on his voyage in hopes of accumulating data to refute the notions of evolution that were circulating at the time (the voyage began at the end of 1831). [The Voyage of the Beagle is also a good read, mostly just a travelogue.] Scientists are not immune to pigheadedness.

[HitTheTrail]

[tom roy]

Since this has drifted I Think science is becoming more consolodateded with technology. Medicine is science or not? I had a complete knee replacement one year a go. I went to the hospital at 8 on the couch by 9 the same day. Therapy in one week and hiked over a 8 mile loop. Just 5 weeks after. If not science a incredible advance in technology.

[MyFootHurts]

[HitTheTrail]