The priestly hierarchy of "approved thought" that shows up in scientific journals is not infallible, and there are many instances of trustworthy documentation of facts outside the scientific world. Business, law, individual agreements, friendships which involve property transactions and marriages are a few simple examples where adequate and sufficient documentation of fact occurs and proves reliable in the actual event.

I think we need to differentiate between the analytical rigor of scientific thought, and the formalization into institutions and habits. Organized science is no more impeccable (compared to basic scientific thinking) than organized religion is compared to basic spiritual insight. The question that must be answered in both cases is what constitutes valid data, and given a set of data, whether validated or partially validated or simply raw, how can one draw meaningful approximations of truth from it?

And I DID bill Mull, but the lazy so-and-so just stiffed me...



A