Politics and science; is science being corrupted? (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, February 15, 2010, 04:54 (5191 days ago) @ David Turell

Case Study:-The decipherment of Linear B stands as one of the greatest archaeological feats of the last 100 years. But the story of its decipherment brings something to bear on this discussion. -Sir Arthur Evans was an archaeologist studying ancient Greece, and to speed up the story a bit, found the clay tablets of Linear A and B, and theorized (and attempted) to decipher the tablets. His studies concentrated on assuming that the scripts were Minoan, and actively worked to destroy the careers of those few who disagreed with him--the opposition asserting that they were Mycenaean. The work was only allowed to be seen by those who agreed with him that they were Minoan.-The first breakthrough came four years after his death when Alice Kober from Brooklyn College managed to get her hands on some of the script. She deliberately decided to attack the problem assuming nothing at all, and managed to make heavy inroads in comparing the language with Akkadian. -Full decipherment didn't occur until she died and passed her work to Englishman Michael Ventris. Michael Ventris himself submitted his first article on Linear B at the age of 18 (withholding his age from the journal) and it was published. Time passed and he continued his attack on the language, uncovering first the three towns Knossos, Amnisos, and Tulissos, and eventually more. Though he at first was a supporter of Arthur Evans, it became clear as he attacked the script as Greek instead of Minoan that the script was clearly Greek.-As an architect by trade he wasn't taken seriously by archaeologists when he was asked to appear on television and he dropped the Greek bombshell, bolstered by his confident decipherment. An old war-cryptographer and Greek lecturer, John Chadwick dismissed the claim as well, but decided that he'd better study it well because he would undoubtedly be asked question about it by his students. He ended up the first supporter of Ventris's Greek theory, and in short, Linear B is decidedly Mycenaean--Greek, through and through. -My point, is that even if an active conspiracy works against a theory or an idea, on a long enough timeline--such a conspiracy can never hold if the weight of the explanation is TRULY powerful. Peer review can fail, but a simple appearance on TV was enough to take a theory, advance it, and make it the center stage in an entire field of study. -This is what I mean when I say that I don't think the system is broken.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"