Re: [linux] LCD's & radiation

[Mitch Trachtenberg [Permanent Link]]

Nathan, it's not a problem, and you are right that my experiment would be pretty dumb if you were interested in long-term effects, just like your offered PCB-in-the-tomato analogy.  

On the other hand, the beauty of the scientific method is precisely that it doesn't/shouldn't matter who you are; if you do a double-blind experiment and get a statistically significant result, others either have to find the problem with your experiment, repeat it without duplicating the results, call you a liar, or accept the results.  If you don't do the experiment, though, I don't think you should be too surprised when people dismiss your anecdotal evidence, whether or not you sincerely believe your anecdotes are real.

There are, in my opinion, a lot of people out there who confuse science with expertise, politics, expensive labs, engineering, etc...  "Science" can be confused with any of those things, but no-square-quote science stands alone and can often be conducted by a single person and negligible equipment -- it's nothing more or less than a way of communicating about shared observed reality. 

Mitch

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Nathan Young <nathan@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Ok, this may well be my mistake...