Via Stranger Fruit:
Unlike mathematical theorems, scientific results can't be proved. They can only be tested again and again until only a fool would refuse to believe them.
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I've been getting so many requests for "basics" posts that I'm having trouble keeping up! There are so many basic things in math that non-mathematicians are confused about.
The Pythagorean theorem made a big impression on me when I first saw it in middle school. It was probably the first genuinely non-trivial theorem that I learned. The theorem is simple to state and to understand, but it is not at all obvious.
“What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.” -Theodore Roethke
I'm away on vacation this week, taking my kids to Disney World. Since I'm not likely to have time to write while I'm away, I'm taking the opportunity to re-run some old classic posts which were first posted in the summer of 2006. These posts are mildly revised.
However ... there is certainly no shortage of people willing to fill that role.
Heh...you know it. Sadly, most science is pretty intuitive (ie, "common sense"), but inaccessible for the "masses." The larger problem is the steady supply of PT Barnums waiting to exploit them.