CNY Skeptics Presents Damian Allis, Ph.D., on Controversy in Science

Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 7:00 pm

DeWitt Community Library at Shoppingtown Mall

Buckland Community Room

Science advances one funeral at a time.
– Max Planck

The infinite unknown that is our universe is being studied by a finite number of people with finite budgets and a finite number of hours in the day, many of them with real jobs to boot. Opinion and intuition have served as double-edged swords throughout the practical application of the scientific method, often weighing down now-famous great leaps forward for reasons having nothing to do with science itself.

We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.
– Anais Nin

Damian will spend his time being both antagonistic and defensive as he discusses some of the history of now-obvious-but-previously-insane truths and facts gleaned from the scientific method, then will briefly describe his own work in the field of molecular manufacturing, an area of research previously seen as profoundly forward, then game-changing, then heretical, then highly suspect, and now increasingly academic, all without strong experimental evidence for or against for most of its history.

Damian Allis is research assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at Syracuse University.