Monday, November 11, 2019

Some certainly will wish to turn and rend him

From The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century by David Salsburg. Page 51. This is a variant of the old argument that science advances one funeral at a time.
In 1947, Fisher was invited to give a series of talks on the BBC radio network about the nature of science and scientific investigation. Early in one talk, he said:
A scientific career is peculiar in some ways. Its raison d'etre is the increase of natural knowledge. Occasionally, therefore, an increase of natural knowledge occurs. But this is tactless, and feelings are hurt. For in some small degree it is inevitable that views previously expounded are shown to be either obsolete or false. Most people, I think, can recognize this and take it in good part if what they have been teaching for ten years or so comes to need a little revision; but some undoubtedly take it hard, as a blow to their amour propre, or even as an invasion of the territory they have come to think of as exclusively their own, and they must react with the same ferocity as we can see in the robins and chaffinches these spring days when they resent an intrusion into their little territories. I do not think anything can be done about it. It is inherent in the nature of our profession; but a young scientist may be warned and advised that when he has a jewel to offer for the enrichment of mankind some certainly will wish to turn and rend him.

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