Monday, November 15, 2004

'First' Americans?

Clayton Cramer has a post touching on the question of 'who got here first?'.

Interesting question. And the piece points out the hostility that tends to be directed at those who question the 'accepted wisdom' on scientific issues.
As I recall, Jenner and his vaccinations were mostly stomped on by various eminent scientists and doctors, and the germ theory of disease almost got its discoverer run out of medicine- again, by eminent scientists and doctors who didn't like their beliefs being questioned.

Read a book called "America B.C." some years ago, and it presented evidence of Celtic contact with North America. It struck me then that a lot of the criticism of the idea sounded a lot like "It can't be, I tell you! So shut up!".

Not a good way to reasearch anything.

There has to be skepticism of new ideas, I have no problem with that. When new ideas, new evidence, are dismissed out-of-hand simply because they break with or contrast with what we already 'know', there's a big problem.

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