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Re: And Then There Were Eight
Posted By: Howard, on host 65.6.43.90
Date: Tuesday, August 29, 2006, at 21:23:55
In Reply To: Re: And Then There Were Eight posted by wintermute on Tuesday, August 29, 2006, at 21:16:45:

> > Good point, Dave. Scientists like to talk about how they use scientific method to find the truth and truth is all that matters, but many of them have pet theories and they look for evidence that supports those theories. If they ignore other evidence that might disprove their theory, they aren't being very scientific.
> >
> > It really does seem like somebody was looking for a set of charactistics that would eliminate Pluto. True scientists would not have done that.
> > Howard
>
> This is science; it's labelling. They're simply looking to provide a definition of the word "planet" that makes sense. We know that Pluto orbits the sun, is made mostly of ice and is far smaller than anything else we call a planet, and none of that is going to change, if we call it a planet, a dwarf planet, a Kuipier object or a pluton.
>
> As I've said before, I don't think it makes sense to call Pluto a planet, but it's not a question of whether they're being "scientific" about it.

I think I failed to make my point. I was just trying to show that scientists, such as astronomers, are human. They look for support for their own ideas. In this case, they were writing their own referrence book.
Howard

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