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Comment by ryguytilidie | Hacker News Reader

My first foray into science was working in a lab at NASA on an internship. The scientist I was working with came up with a hypothesis and instead of testing it in a scientific way, simply disregarded the information that didn't agree with her thesis and used the information that did. I'm obviously not saying all scientists do this, but the way she did it, and the complete lack of self awareness for what she was doing make me feel like it happens fairly often.

I also feel like its a pretty good analogue for modern life. People seem less willing to discover the truth than they are to use facts that support the point they want to make while ignoring the inconvenient parts of the facts.

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I think the way the scientific method is generally presented does not really accurately represent how science is really done. It's true that there are many scientists who more or less follow the scientific method to the letter. But I think it's more common that scientists individually don't follow the scientific method terribly closely. It's only scientists collectively that follow the scientific method.

One scientist might come up with a hypothesis, never test it, but nevertheless believe it devoutly. But science progresses because other scientists are sceptical and test the hypothesis.

It's in the first scientist's self-interest that the hypothesis is proven true, but it's generally more in other scientists' self-interest to prove the hypothesis false.

Some of the greatest scientists of the 20th century closed their eyes to overwhelming evidence that their pet hypothesis was wrong. One of the classic examples was Geoffrey Burbidge (known best for showing that the heavy elements were created in stars and released into the universe in supernovae) who believed until the day he died that quasars were galactic objects.

I experienced the same thing in my masters degree.

discovery of the truth is in our self-interest, nobody else's.

therefore, it is a more lonesome endeavour, and harder than subscribing to the pap fed to the masses.

see my [other](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4968390) comment.

(edit: link, grammar &c.)

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