Carl Zimmer: prediction

Transcript context

…Shouldn’t that be one of the easiest hypotheses to establish? The seasons change, right? The pollen mostly goes away, your allergy goes away. Or you clear the field of pollen or you move house, and your allergy changes. Shouldn’t people have figured that out in 800 AD or whenever, just right away, and everyone else accepts it because it’s common sense? Are we that stupid? I think great ideas can just sit around for a long time waiting to be discovered. I don’t think that’s unique to airborne disease. I think that’s really true across the board for a lot of different sciences. Certainly, a lot of historians of science have said, “Charles Darwin, brilliant guy, but really, the evidence was there for a long time. Someone else should have figured this out first.” At least there, the church is an opponent, so you might be persecuted. It’s easier for me to understand that mistake, but even that one broke through.…

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