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Home > Miscellaneous Articles > Scientific Impartiality

Scientific Impartiality

In Australia, as in many Western countries, there is an emphasis on keeping to an arbitrary speed limit. The stated reason for this is to reduce accident tolls. Scientific studies in Australia have consistently found that lower speed limits result in lower accident rates.

In Germany, however, the scientific studies have found that having no speed limits at all result in lower accident rates. This isn't just an anomaly of German conditions as this US study shows. In reality much of the motivation behind speeding fines is to raise revenue. I pointed out (‘Guilt Free’) that people like to justify their actions with an altruistic motivation. This applies to governments as well who, with speeding fines, can raise revenue and kid themselves that they are saving lives. In Australia state governments also raise money through gambling taxes but arguments on the dangers of gambling to the community fall on deaf ears.

There is another point here though. If science is impartial and objective, how is it that studies in one country can reach such different conclusions to studies in another country? The reason, of course, is that scientific impartiality is a myth. Scientists simply reflect the prevailing thought of the day.

Research has found far reaching effects from something that scientists call ‘quantum entanglement’. In a nutshell, they have found that the ramifications of quantum mechanics, which was previously thought to be merely an attribute of small-particle physics, have influences on the ‘real’ world. I have previously pointed out how this works in ‘The Nature of Reality’, but scientists don't change their basic understanding of the world. They are like religious zealots who, having formed a view of how something works, don't change it even when the view becomes untenable. I've dealt with this before in ‘Scepticism and Anosognosia’.

© 2012 Philip Braham Writings