Bloggers may not be doughty researchers on the cutting
edge of scientific enquiry, but they do on occasion serve as useful
disseminators of information that may be old hat to the
scientifically informed, but is hardly well known by the public at
large.
It's not forbidden by the laws of physics, but it's not the usual
model. The usual model is complicated scientific questions being
treated like newspaper editorials, where people try to develop
first principles arguments about why such-and-such a scenario is
absolutely impossible or self-evidently true, and then attack their
opponents' character. Exhibit A.
(That said, the straight news media doesn't do a particularly good
job either.)
Far many more people are likely to read a comment by
someone like Glenn Reynolds than will ever stumble upon the
"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
Yeah, exactly. And if Glenn Reynolds hasn't stumbled on the
proceeding either - which I'd bet a tidy sum he hasn't - how is
this preferrable to reading the entrails of sheep or receiving the
truth from an ecstactic vision? And if we're going to pay no
attention to people who spend their lives working on these
problems, isn't it just common courtesy to tell them, so they can
go home and play Xbox?
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