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The Truth in Imaging

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

Jean-Paul Revel*
Affiliation:
Caltech

Extract

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Several well (and also several not so well) publicized incidents of unethical conduct have raised the concerns of scientists, politicians and common folk that the truth and only the truth may not always emerge from scientific investigation. While this is a problem which clearly needs attention, I believe that Science alone of all fields of human endeavor has built in mechanisms which ensure that truth will emerge sooner or later, usually sooner (although some frauds, for example the Piltdown hoax, survived for quite a long time). This self correcting feature arises from the fact that today's interpretations are repeatedly tested against nature, whenever new methods or hypotheses arise. Only correct beliefs survive this repeated scrutiny. The misguided workers who for whatever reasons “cheat” or get so personally involved that they fall in traps made of their own gullibility are eventually discovered and at the very least lose the recognition that they longed for.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 1993