Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

PART ONE STANDARDS FOR SCIENTISTS AND HISTORIANS
It Is Valuable to a Society To Have a Consensus As to What Constitutes
‘Science.’
8. It is well established that scientific research is a particular endeavor
requiring disciplined thought. One is expected to ‘follow the rules of
science.’ The acceptance of the results of a scientist’s research is
dependent, in the first instance, on a showing that she, for example, used a
properly selected a control group for comparison with the subjects of her
experiment, or that she made scrupulously careful measurements.
9. It is also undisputed that a person can start with any theory about the
world, marshal facts and arguments in support of it, and draw a conclusion
as to whether he has proved his point. Others will then agree or disagree
with his methods or his conclusion; they may offer an alternative theory to
explain the same set of empirical facts.
10. The integrity of the existing body of science, and the validity of yet-tobe-produced
scientific work, are protected by a culture within the scientific
community that jumps at sloppiness of research and erroneous
conclusions, and praises careful work.
11. Young students need to be made aware of how science works. In a
famous case in Louisiana, United States, concerning so-called Creation
Science, 72 Nobel laureates (31 in physics, 13 in chemistry, and 28 in
physiology and medicine) submitted an amici curiae whose key paragraph
is as follows:
12. This case is crucial to the future of scientific education in this nation.
As researchers in many different branches of advanced science, amici
share a concern for the basic scientific education of this nation's publicschool
students. Scientific education should accurately portray the current
state of substantive scientific knowledge. Even more importantly, scientific
education should accurately portray the premises and processes of
science. Teaching religious ideas mislabeled as science is detrimental to
scientific education: It sets up a false conflict between science and religion,
misleads our youth about the nature of scientific inquiry, and thereby
compromises our ability to respond to the problems of an increasingly
technological world. Our capacity to cope with problems of food
production, health care, and even national defense will be jeopardized if
we deliberately strip our citizens of the power to distinguish between the
phenomena of nature and supernatural articles of faith. [emphasis added]
-- Don Aguillard v Edwin Edwards, No. 85-1513, 1986 US Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
A Welcoming Environment for New Scientific Ideas Has Helped Australia
13. Today, Australia is among the leaders in many fields of science and
technology.
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