JEREMY THOMAS -- The negative effects of "group-thinking".

Jeremy Thomas

29 de Setembro de 2015

The negative effects of "group-thinking".

Any semi homogeneous human group exhibit what is called "group-thinking", it is the set of ideas or procedures that are "fashionable" inside of the given group members.

Scientists as any semi homogeneous group of humans exhibit group-thinking, sometimes that group thinking had proved to be devastating for the advancement of knowledge and the suppression of new ideas.

Yes, new ideas had been and are frequently suppressed in scientific circles and I am not taking about the reality of anomalies where this group thinking is clearly manifested with the suppression and ignoring of this reality.

There are many examples where scientific circles exhibiting a close mindeness hard to match had suppressed and ridiculed new ideas and it's exponents.

One classic example of this suppression was the denial of the reality of meteorites by the famous French chemist Lavoisier and the full support of that position by the French Academy of Science. That blunder delayed the acknowledgement of the reality of meteorites for many years.

But this is not an isolated incident, the tendency to suppress new ideas and even more the ones that challenge current entrenched paradigms had been documented widely in the scientific literature and the history of science is full of cases where known experts ridiculed new ideas that later proved to be right, so the blind belief in "experts" is not supported at all by the history of science. But we see that blind following to experts everywhere.

The continual denial of the reality of anomalies by scientific circles is the present time expression of that group-thinking but definitely is not alone in the history of science.

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Jeremy Thomas Sometimes the ridiculed person exposing ideas contradicting group-thinking can't withstand the pressure from peers and it has personal repercussions as was the case with James E. McDonald that committed suicide in 1971. He wrote a paper in 1969 titled: Science in Default(http://www.cufon.org/cufon/mcdon2.htm) where he made an analysis of the current situation around UFOs and as the title implies criticized the scientific circles for ignoring the problem. He was right in many aspects, today almost 50 years later that default is even more shameful because the reality of anomalies is an observational fact that can be verified easily for almost anyone.

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Gosto · Responder · 2 · 29 de Setembro de 2015 às 14:53 · Editado

Jeremy Thomas Being an "outsider" in this context is an advantage because you are not compromised with the ideas or positions taken by the group, that gives you the freedom to make your own ideas without feeling that you are "betraying" your group or peers. That is the position that I always try to have, the one taken from an outsider to any particular group.

Gosto · Responder · 29 de Setembro de 2015 às 16:14