James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
Much has been written, here and elsewhere in the blogosphere, about the media's willingness to give a couple of kids their 15 minutes for challenging scientific orthodoxy, despite the fact that in both cases, the young Galileo-wannabe figures were dead wrong. Now someone has finally summed it all one in one pithy sentence:
I'd like to caution especially my younger readers that you may be very smart, but you should assume that you are making a mistake if you find yourself thinking you are smarter than every scientist in the world put together. (Michael Tobis, Wired Science)Thanks, Michael. My thoughts exactly.
Comments
"You may have genius. The contrary is, of course, probable." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
Posted by: ScottH | April 20, 2008 9:06 AM
After three college years when I would think, "Hey, wait a second- I don't buy what this teacher is telling me. I bet what I'm thinking is totally new and unique!" and finding later that it hadn't been, I sorta got this message.
I'm super-fancy-smart. But me reading this chapter of the history book doesn't make me qualified to overturn it all.
Funny how the closer I got to graduation, the more I found myself respecting degrees.
Posted by: John | April 22, 2008 11:02 AM
Some things are wasted on the young, even aside from youth itself (thank you GBS), and a word of caution is among them.
Posted by: Mark P | April 22, 2008 4:59 PM