Yeah, consensus science never fails.
The shy, 70-year-old Shechtman said he never doubted his findings and considered himself merely the latest in a long line of scientists who advanced their fields by challenging the conventional wisdom and were shunned by the establishment because of it.
…
“I was thrown out of my research group. They said I brought shame on them with what I was saying,” he recalled. “I never took it personally. I knew I was right and they were wrong.”
Full story here at Yahoo News.
Congratulations for winning the Nobel Prize, and for having the courage and stamina to stick it out Dr. Shechtman. I hope you will be an inspiration to many others to not let the intimidation of closed minded peers wear you down. Science self-corrects, sometimes taking years to do so and we are witnessing the self correction of climate science consensus slowly take place before our own eyes.
Thanks to Mary Friederichs who submitted the story via our web interface.
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UPDATE: R. Gates provides this video in comments:
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Can someone explain why it is only now that Schechtman is recognised by the Nobel committee.. Obviously his findings were replicated by many others along time ago and the practical applications of his work have been around for sometime.
What do you mean “only now”? By the standards of the Nobel Committee his recognition is fairly quick.
Even Crick, Watson and Wilkins took nine years, and that was a much more important (and obviously correct) discovery.
Injustices abound: Einstein never got one for Relativity (he got it for the photoelectric effect) despite it being THE great discovery of the day.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: For everyone who thinks that they are Galileo (or Dan Schechtman), there are probably a thousand who thinks they are but ain’t. So, those aren’t great odds.
Other lessons: If you are persistent and pursue the path of convincing your colleagues in the scientific community, then they will come around. By the account in the Yahoo News story, this process took only about 5 years at most. (And, I know for a fact that when I was in grad school in 1986-1992, quasicrystals had indeed won acceptance in the scientific community.)
Note that Schechtman did not find it necessary to write books or blogs or other such things to convince the public of the correctness of his ideas. Instead, he went through the regular scientific channels.”
Joel, you seem to be dismissing the people who think they are a Galileo and aren’t. Is it not true that for science to progress the consensus has to be challenged? And aren’t those who you dismiss doing just that? They may be failures or “losers” in your mind, but I see people who are willing to challenge the established consensus and whether they’re right or whether they’re wrong they are doing more for science than those who would have us believe “the science is settled”. At least they stand up to be counted.
I have an unpublished manuscript, People They Laughed At, which everyone should read, because people have laughed at the forerunners since we learned to laugh.
Ah, yes, the “Galileo” argument.
In order to be the ‘next Galieo’, it’s not sufficient to be laughed at, to be against the consensus.
You must also be right. And, as Shechtman did, present evidence that supports your ideas, evidence that stands the test of examination. That’s a rather higher bar.
—
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
Carl Sagan
Joel Shore says:
October 5, 2011 at 6:26 pm
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: For everyone who thinks that they are Galileo (or Dan Schechtman), there are probably a thousand who thinks they are but ain’t. So, those aren’t great odds.
==========
So, I should stop thinking, because the odds are against me ?
I suggest you look up CreateSpace, Amazon’s publishing arm for a combination of on-demand paperbooks and Kindle e-books. I’ve recommended it to another author who’s used it successfully.
(Don’t I remember you from the Social Inventions Journal?)
I remember Roger Knights from the Social Invention Journal, but do not know how to contact you again. My web-page is http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/, which is full of Social Innovations – some taken up, and others still to find backers.
The UK Social Inventions people now put out the Global Ideas Bank, for people to put up their ideas. Do you know it?
There is some discussion on blogs that Penrose had suggested theoretically that such quasi symmetries should exist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Works
“Penrose is well known for his 1974 discovery of Penrose tilings, which are formed from two tiles that can only tile the plane nonperiodically, and are the first tilings to exhibit fivefold rotational symmetry. Penrose developed these ideas based on the article Deux types fondamentaux de distribution statistique[9] (1938; an English translation Two Basic Types of Statistical Distribution) by Czech geographer, demographer and statistician Jaromír Korčák. In 1984, such patterns were observed in the arrangement of atoms in quasicrystals.[10] ”
And should have been equally honored.
The discussion and video provided by R.Gates (thanks) here, shows that the prize is also a vindication of sticking to one’s correct experimental observations, in addition to being the chemistry prize and Penrose was no chemist.
As the world becomes smaller and smaller due to the net connections, the question will become important: what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Maybe Nobel prizes should be split, with theory competing with theory and experiment with experiment. Though theory will always need experimental validation to be chosen, so it will come after or concurrently to the honoring of the corresponding experimental discovery .
Perhaps Fleischmann and Pons will get a few mentions this week. A talk at an American Physical Society conference in 1989, calling the two incompetent and delusional, was met with a standing ovation. However, Andrea Rossi’s cold fusion device is being tested again today in Bologna for a handful of scientists, with the startup of his 1MW plant scheduled for the end of this month.
“Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone!
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known.”
http://www.scriptureandmusic.com/Music/Text_Files/Dare_To_Be_A_Daniel.html
Made me think of Freeman Dyson’s article, Why I am a Heretic.”
Some discoveries take longer than others to be recognised – thats life, or is it?
Although Marshall discovered the helicobacter pylori cause for most stomach ulcers in the early eighties there was very little acceptance, and much opposition until very close to the expiration of the patent for Zantac in the late nineties. Then, suddenly – Nobel Prize for Medicine Just call me a cynic.
The speed of acceptance, although linked to funerals can also be linked to vested interests. I hope to be around to see the outcome of asthma/Buteyko and cancer/laetrile confrontations with the concensus and I may just have to hold my breath in the former!
This website http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html has a list of many cases and links to significant documentation of cases similar to Dr Schechtman’s. These cases are certainly not in short supply.
As a layman, I can only place the vindictiveness shown by non-concurring scientists at the feet of the human psyche, which drives many to react violently to threats. Whether the reaction occurs in a bar over a game or in the lab over a new theory, the reactor can end up looking pretty stupid.
Unlike Rodney King, I know we can’t all just get along, but calling people names and frothing in front of the press sure as hell ain’t science.
Dr Schechtman was apparently working at NIST when he was dropped from his research group because of his position on quasicrystals. I’m amazed that no one in that government organization saw the potential for beaucoup grant money.
I beleve it was Richard Feynman who said “The two most exciting words in science are ‘That’s Odd…'”
And if you go back through history, nearly every scientific breakthrough starts with that observation. And for each one, it preceded by dozens, hundreds, even thousands of scientists who observed the same thing, and assumed they had screwed up the experiment, ignored the observation, and even falsified the data to eliminate the effect.
The most relevant comparison for frequenters of this website is Boltzmann. He eventually committed suicide in response to the ridicule he got for his theory of statistical mechanics. He never was able to receive his Nobel because they cannot be awarded posthumously.
Merrick says:
October 6, 2011 at 7:52 am
He eventually committed suicide in response to the ridicule he got for his theory of statistical mechanics.
The wiki article on Boltzmann does not concur with your statement.
His last years were years of recognition of his work, but it seems that he was prone to depression :Boltzmann was subject to rapid alternation of depressed moods with elevated, expansive or irritable moods, likely the symptoms of undiagnosed bipolar disorder.
Reality is stranger than fiction but most people still prefer fiction.
from The Search for an Eternal Norm, Louis J. Halle, 1981, posted on Michael Prescott’s blog at http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2011/10/the-search-for-an-eternal-norm-excerpt-part-one.html
“You must also be right. And, as Shechtman did, present evidence that supports your ideas, evidence that stands the test of examination. That’s a rather higher bar.”
.
Precisely where Global Warmers fail. But in this case they have the establishmente power,
Shades of Lysenko… but thankfully we are not yet in a socialist paradise.
BJORN LOMBORG!!! All these comments without one mention of his name? Friends, do please call to mind the shameless sh1t-k1ck1ng he suffered from every establishment source. To this day Sc1ent1f1c Amer1can is not to be mentioned in my house.
it’s some people in Norway who handle the peace prize, the other are handled by swedes. .
Nearly everyone here would agree that these were wrongly attacked by the establishment
* Bjorn Lomborg
* The helicobacter team
Most here would agree that these have been wrongly attacked by the establishment
* Theodor Landscheidt
* Henrik Svensmark
Some here would agree with me that these are being wrongly attacked by the establishment
* Dr Andrew Wakefield
* Ferencz Miskolczi
* The Electric Universe theories (and I don’t have to believe all to see there is important material here)
Few here would agree with me that these are being wrongly attacked by the establishment
* Homeopathy (the best practitioners and the classic theory, that is)
* Linus Pauling’s work on Vitamin C (which saved the life of a friend of mine – and this doesn’t mean LP was infallible which clearly he was not)
It’s difficult to be a heretic sometimes. But since heresy means thinking for oneself, one can be proud of it too.
“Joel Shore says:
October 5, 2011 at 6:26 pm
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: For everyone who thinks that they are Galileo (or Dan Schechtman), there are probably a thousand who thinks they are but ain’t. So, those aren’t great odds.”
Something is wrong with this statement. Shouldn’t it be “for every man who thinks he is Galileo (or Dan Schechtman) and is, probably a thousand think they are but aren’t …”
And isn’t there only one Galileo (and Dan Schechtman)? The odds against thinking you are a man who has been dead five hundred years and actually being him are indeed daunting.
Though I know next to nothing about sociology, I can handwave with the best of us :).
Man is biologically a herd and pack animal. Herd for the cultivation herbivorous part and pack for the meat eating (sarcophagous in greek but it sounds funny in english 🙂 ) part. There are leaders in packs, and the leader keeps his position by bringing down the adversaries. There is no fairness except : I am still stronger. The fact that man has intellect rides on a meta level on these very basic social instincts.
The phenomenon that unfolded with Linus Pauling is typical of the old lions of a discipline ( even the terminology is chosen from pack vocabulary). It takes a very mature and wise old lion in a discipline to yield gracefully to new leadership, i.e. to keep learning and not only teach, not to react with pack reflexes and allow the young aspiring competitors room to develop.
Roger Knights (October 6, 2011 at 9:01 am) quotes from The Search for an Eternal Norm.
Thank you, Roger.
A nice example of the way that science is supposed to work: a researcher comes across something which challenges the current orthodoxy, is considered a crank but perseveres and provides experimental evidence that he is right and the scientific orthodoxy changes.
What I’ve observed during my research career is that peoples personalities determine the type of discoveries they make. People who are risk averse tend to go with the scientific orthodoxy and reject any experimental findings that contradict it. They are unlikely to come up with any novel discoveries but will likely make very slow but steady progress in their particular area of research. They are also likely to continue to receive research grants. Individuals who are ready to take risks will seize upon anomalies in their experiments and investigate them further. This is a far more dangerous course of action as the results might just be random noise. Those that do find something novel, however, advance science but this approach is a lot more dangerous than just sticking to the current dogma. Here the results depend as much on luck as science.
My first undergraduate research summer job was in the area of organic chemistry where I was supposed to redo some experiments in olefin synthesis using beta-sultine intermediates. Beta sultines, at the time, were considered to be extremely unstable and would immediately decompose once they were created. The chemist whose research I was duplicating was fairly dogmatic and had just indicated that certain reactions resulted in poor yields which was unexpected as decomposition of a beta sultine to olefin should result in virtually 100% yield. I duplicated one of his reactions and remember looking at dismay with the mess of peaks I saw on the NMR spectrum of the reaction product. The only thing that I did differently was to decide that I couldn’t figure out what was going on and put the NMR tube aside and went home early. The next day, for some reason, I decided to repeat the NMR of the mixture that had been in the NMR tube all night and the result was the expected olefin product spectrum. What I had found was a sterically hindered beta-sultine that decayed very slowly and I eventually isolated it in crystalline form. It was an important lesson for me in how much serendipity plays a role in scientific discovery and was the basis of the first paper that I published.
This might have been an impetus for me to push the envelope in every area of research that I did subsequently but the risk in doing so is failure, and if one is supported by research grants only, unemployment. Thus, it seems that scientific advances depend either on people getting lucky or having the financial resources to fund their own research in non-mainstream areas. From a psychologic perspective, mainstream climate researchers are the equivalent of a drunk staggering around a light post looking for his lost house keys as “there’s more light there”.
Science is supposed to be objective, but the personality of the scientist unfortunately can’t be separated from the research and the majority of scientists can’t be counted upon to produce any major advances and, unfortunately, do not realize when they’ve made a significant discovery. The converse of this is the researcher who stumbles on an anomaly which is just noise but announces a major scientific discovery. The few who have the right balance of risk-aversion and luck are the ones who win Nobel prizes. My decision was to go into medicine where I can fund my own research interests and not have to worry about sticking with current dogma. The only thing I hadn’t counted on was the impetus one got from having to publish something to continue getting funding and I’ve just been tinkering for the last couple of decades.