Quote Originally Posted by ganulv View Post
The scientific method is inherently skeptical but scientists are as prone to group think as anyone else. Anyone who has tried to get a truly novel idea through peer review might argue that they are more so.
I'm not entirely sure this is a bad thing: nothing wrong with imposing a high level of rigor on incoming ideas.

One prejudice that sometimes seems to creep into these discussions is the bias toward seeing new or disruptive ideas as necessarily good. The new can in fact be horribly wrong, and needs to be supported and proven before it's accepted, especially if implementation of the new idea involves risk.

Novelty or disruption doesn't in itself make thinking good. Rigor makes thinking good, new or old. Nothing wrong with new or disruptive ideas, but they shouldn't be given anything like a free pass just because they are new or disruptive.

I wish I had a peso for every article I've seen grandly declaring a "seminal shift" or a new paradigm, generation, model, etc. In many cases the declarations involved are poorly supported and seem mainly designed to portray the author as a revolutionary thinker, without being supported by any visibly revolutionary thought.

It is important to be skeptical about the old. It is equally important to be skeptical about the new.