"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
Eye of the Beholder: Even seemingly objective direct observation can be influenced by bias. As evidence, consider the case of the Venus and the astronomer. At the turn of the last century, astronomer Percival Lowell turned his telescope on Venus. To see it better, he reduced the aperture of his scope to less than three inches. He was the only astronomer to describe a series of channels on the planet similar to those seen on Mars. Strangely, the channels never moved. This didn’t jibe with current planetary knowledge. Different spots on Venus should be visible from the earth at different times since both planets are orbiting around the sun at different rates. No problem. He theorized that Venus and Earth were in synchronous orbit around the sun. His colleagues ridiculed him, but he persisted. It turns out, though, that by narrowing the aperture of his telescope, he turned it into an ophthalmoscope. He wasn’t looking at Venus, but at the retina of his own eye. posted by Sydney on
9/12/2002 07:10:00 AM
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