Description
Fringe science is used to describe unusual theories and models of discovery. Those who develop such fringe science ideas may work within the scientific method, but their results are not accepted by the mainstream community. Usually the evidence provided by supporters of a fringe science is believed only by a minority and rejected by most experts. Fringe science may be advocated by a scientist who has a degree of recognition by the larger scientific community (typically through the publication of peer reviewed studies by the scientist), but this is not always the case. While most fringe science views are ignored or rejected, through careful use of the scientific method, including falsificationism, the scientific community has come to accept some ideas from fringe sciences. One example of such is plate tectonics, an idea that had its origin as a fringe science, and was held in a negative opinion for decades. It is noted that:
- The confusion between science and pseudoscience, between honest scientific error and genuine scientific discovery, is not new, and it is a permanent feature of the scientific landscape Acceptance of new science can come slowly.
The phrase fringe science can be considered pejorative. For example, Lyell D. Henry, Jr. wrote that "'fringe science' a term also suggesting kookiness." Such characterization is perhaps inspired by the eccentric behavior of many researchers on the fringe of science (colloquially and with considerable historical precedent known as mad scientists). The categorical boundary between fringe science and pseudoscience can be disputed. The connotations of fringe science are that the enterprise is still rational, but an unlikely avenue for future results. Fringe science may not be a part of the scientific consensus for a variety of reasons, including incomplete or contradictory evidence.
Read more about this topic: Fringe Science
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)