Scientific research is just like looking for a flying donkey. To take a step forward must make thousands of attempts (we have made steps forward eh?) And only some of these overcome all the rocks, that dell'osservabilità (in medicine, if I have a fever and eat willow leaves fever decreases ), that of repeatability (whenever I have a fever and I eat willow, the temperature decreases) and of measurability (every time I have a fever and I eat willow, the temperature taken with the thermometer, decreases by two degrees).
I might not even know the reasons for these effects but I can not deny them: they exist.
I do not know why, I do not have the tools to analyze the willow but punctually, every time the same thing happens. If the willow makes me feel better than it can make me feel bad the next time I need it I could use it to lower the fever and I could also recommend it to my neighbors, my friends and family and they too will have the same results of minimum and bearable inconveniences. Then I extend the experience to my work colleagues so I have tried my remedy on about 200 people. I discovered Aspirin. But that is not all.
I must be sure that the effects of this remedy are not the result of mental conditioning, which is not all imagination and I have only one choice to understand it with the greatest possible confidence: to experiment it.
As I have done so far I have not had any scientific proof that my remedy can work, I only have a personal meter that could be affected by many factors and even those who want to use my new product for its fever can not be sure of the result. How do you experiment correctly? I'll talk about it later.
There is a question, however, that is bothering so many scientists: how long can we "discover" something new? How far will we go?Perhaps not everyone is aware of it, but only in the last 200 years (two centuries) have we taken such enormous and unimaginable steps that now, by necessity, the pace slows down, becomes ever finer, we do not aim at great achievements as for small improvements. .
Four generations ago (therefore for the fathers of our grandparents or for the grandparents of those who are less young) the most clamorous invention was the radio, experimented by Marconi in 1895 a practically impossible enterprise until then. Photography did not exist and was presented for the first time in those years, as was cinema, a great and amazing human invention. It was always in those years that the electric light bulb was patented, which today is "the norm" in all the houses and with it also "superfluous" goods like Coca-Cola.
Then came the Aspirin, just that. The tablet that now seems a trivial pill, outdated, yet from that onwards it was a cascade of discoveries, patents, inventions that lead us to the present day.
This story is fascinating and engaging. To think that in just a few years we have managed to move from the first plane to the Space Shuttle is genuinely amazing.
IMAGE DONKEY
MAQ/June 2018 /178