Thursday, November 8, 2012

Ignorance in stroke rehab

I've been reading a great book, Ignorance by Stuart Firestein
One of the better lines is that when scientists get together at seminars they don't discuss the latest and greatest pieces of knowledge - they discuss what hasn't been discovered yet.

Working scientists don’t get bogged down in factual swamps, he says, because they don’t care all that much for facts. Facts are not what science is all about. It’s only when the facts fail that scientists really put on their thinking caps.
Scientists, Dr. Firestein says, are driven by ignorance.
In this sense, ignorance is not stupidity. Rather, it is a particular condition of knowledge: the absence of fact, understanding, insight or clarity about something. It is a case where data don’t exist, or more commonly, where the existing data don’t make sense.

He teaches a course at Columbia called SNC3429 Ignorance. Do you want an A or an F in that course?

And boy do we have a lot of ignorance in stroke rehab and research.

Who is going to change that? Your doctor?

Your stroke associations, WSO? Don't make me laugh, You are going to change that by demanding that all the medical staff you are in contact with come up with answers to their ignorance.

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