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marquisedemerteuil's picture

medicine, truth, and bio professors

I agree with you that Prof. Grobstein believes what he's saying. In a way, you're replying to my "are we being indoctrinated?" post.

"For instance, men can’t have babies and women can; isn’t that science?"

Yes, but that's not truth either. That's a summary of observations that has always worked out and that will probably work out for a long time. Why are there so many movies and TV shows that involve the titillating idea of men getting pregnant? Because it would be fascinating to see such a strong scientific precedent be broken.

Along those lines, a lot of people have been writing about how there must be "truth" in science because of the medical profession. I wrote an argument against that but I'd like to clarify it here: medical procedures are applied science, and experiments have taught us that certain manipulations of various bacteria, etc. yield certain results. We do not even know if those results are the best or the most efficient. Why are new, better medicines being created so often? Why has there been such progress in the medical field over just decades? Because people do more experiments and find processes that can accomplish more, that can heal more diseases more quickly and less painfully. This is experiments working out for now, not "scientific truth." Keep in mind that bacteria can get used to penicillin and get immune to it. At some point the accurate observation that penicillin can cure certain diseases ceases to be true and more medical experiments have to be done.

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