

The half-life of facts - balakk
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/11/qa-samuel-arbesman?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/halflifeoffacts

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cousin_it
Cosma Shalizi's "null model of scientific inquiry" [1] seems relevant here.
Basically it's a model where all published findings are due to the file drawer
effect [2]. In such a model, scientific results will indeed have a "half-life"
until they are overturned.

[1] <http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/698.html>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias>

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drcube
"IN PRIMARY school Babbage learned that there were nine planets in the solar
system. None were known to exist outside it."

There were only 7 planets known when Charles Babbage was a youth. Neptune was
discovered when he was an old man, and Pluto was not discovered until almost
60 years after his death.

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bcbrown
"Babbage" is the name of a column in the Economist, and is used in this sense
to refer to the author of the column. So the writer is talking about his or
her own schooling.

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GregBuchholz
There is a excerpt from chapter 1 of the book at the authors website.

<http://arbesman.net/the-half-life-of-facts/>

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polarix
Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" should be mentioned.
Far more germaine than "Consilience."

