- #1
Old Smuggler
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Pythagorean said:It can also be said that in some instances, scientific skepticism has slowed down the scientific process, because the skeptics (even though they were being rational) were being rational about the wrong things.
Right. Even well-documented observations that do not fit easily into a
preconceived notion of how the world should work, may be rationalized away
or just neglected. One example of this is the observed mean acceleration
[tex] {\dot n} [/tex] of the Moon; from lunar laser ranging experiments this has the value of about -13.8 arcseconds/(century)^2. Furthermore, the
mean motion of the Moon [tex] n [/tex] is about .549 arcseconds/s.
Now the interesting part is that to within one standard deviation,
[tex]{\dot n}=-Hn[/tex], where H is the Hubble parameter.
How should a real skeptic react to this fact?