Old truths decay and new ones are born at an astonishing rate.
saurs were cold-blooded. Increased K-12 spending and lower pupil/teacher ratios boost public school student outcomes. Most of the DNA in the human genome is junk. Saccharin causes cancer and a high fiber diet prevents it. Stars cannot be bigger than 150 solar masses.
RELATED ARTICLEShe past half-century, all of the foregoing facts have turned out to be wrong. In the modern world facts change all of the time, according to Samuel Arbesman, author of the new book The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date (Current).
Fact-making is speeding up, writes Arbesman, a senior scholar at the Kaufmann Foundation and an expert in scientometrics, the science of measuring and analyzing science. As facts are made and remade with increasing speed, Arbesman is worried that most of us don’t keep up to date. That means we’re basing decisions on facts dimly remembered from school and university classes—facts that often turn out to be wrong.
In 1947, the mathematician Derek J. de Solla Price was asked to store a complete set of The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society temporarily in his house. Price stacked them in chronological order by decade, and he noticed that the number of volumes doubled about every 15 years, i.e., scientific knowledge was apparently growing at an exponential rate. Thus the field of scientometrics was born.
OTOH perhaps everything you know is WRONG.
Hay seekers, you do not have to be stoned to laugh at this. so climb a tree and learn to play the flute.
"I've been waiting for this for years. Next week this show's gonna be called, 'Sargeant Bradshaw ..District Attorney!"
"Lieutenant..; "
"Stop! I've got Bradshaw's rod pressed against Nancy's tongue!"
Spikeidaho 1 month ago
"I'm looking for the same old place."
"You must mean the Old Same Place. It's out back. Here's the key, sonny!"
"What's all this brew-ha-ha?"
"Brew hahahaha!!"
"May I take your hat and goat?"
