John F. Allen's Blog at jfallen.org

26th January 2015

Sir Paul Nurse on Conjectures and Refutations

Filed under: About science,Diary — John Allen @ 5:58 pm

BBC Radio 3 – The Essay, The Book that Changed Me, Sir Paul Nurse on Conjectures and Refutations

Broadcast Friday 23 Jan 2015 22:45

My own revelation of the insight of Karl Popper came from second-year tutorials with Colin McClare, a lecturer in Biophysics at King’s College London. I had the temerity to argue with my tutor. He won. He was right.

I began with The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and read it from cover to cover. Conjectures and Refutations came next.

It continues to amaze me that so many people responsible for making decisions on science, funding, and research priorities seem not to have understood that “Hypotheses are nets – he who casts will catch”.

And that the purpose of every experiment is to test an hypothesis.

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