Re:The inconvenient truth about malaria
by Periodic on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @01:15PM
(#999336)
Science is constantly testing ideas, but until we get contrary evidence we tend to go with the model that fits the data. Right now we still haven't figured out why galaxies are accelerating faster than they should and we are actively exploring that, but there are plenty of phenomena that GR explains very well. You can't go around claiming that GR simply doesn't exist because the data is there, but you could argue that it needs revisions.
Climate change seems to still be a very binary argument. There are some people arguing about how much is man made, but there are still those arguing about whether it exists at all.
I think in that way it doesn't make a good comparison.
In fact, the opposite. Challenges to relativity not only get attention from the scientific community, they are _encouraged and funded_ - the community would be beside itself in glee (and someone would probably pick up a Serious Cred) if someone could disprove elements of relativity.
The challenge, of course, is coming up with new and interesting ways to disprove relativity.
Bad: http://xkcd.org/675/
Good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_Gamma-ray_Space_Telescope