Subject: Notes from 1/25/07 class discussion -- What makes something scientific? Message no. 1 Author: Bud Gerstman (hs267sp07bg) Date: Friday, January 26, 2007 9:20pm Plato�s allegory of the cave Peter Medawar quote �believing one�s own theories� Ability to alter theories Lack of bias Testing w/ observation Cargo cult (Feynmann) science vs. pseudoscience Data as perception Is bad data better than no data? Bad data to clarify a question; Bad data to see what type of good data is needed? Bad data as a way of improving the quality of a question? (But we didn't really talk about �bad data as a way to mislead� or �bad data as a way to self-deceive" or "bad data as a way to avoid getting good data"