Unworthy of Study (from Jay)

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I am frequently dismayed to hear people credentialed in the sciences refuse to entertain ideas which they take to be the product of superstitious thinking and therefore unworthy of scientific scrutiny. From the perspective of the scientific method, all hypotheses fall into one of three categories: proven true, proven false, and unknown. To discount an as yet unproven idea, such as telepathy or life after death, without having demonstrated it to be false is to engage in the same kind of prejudgment that science is meant to eschew.

If centuries of scientific exploration have taught us anything, it is to question our assumptions: that the world is flat; that earth is the center of the universe; that time and motion are absolute; that (to borrow an example from current research) weird observable quantum effects, such as the instantaneous transfer of information over long distances, belong only to the realm of fantasy.

The fact that science sprang from the necessity of testing faith and superstition against a reasoned measure of the cosmos should not blind us to the possibility that seemingly irrational beliefs sometimes warrant serious scientific investigation.