Science facts that emerged in 2016

Knowledge sharing website Science Alert has compiled a list of 23 science facts that we didn’t know at the start of 2016. The new findings related to knowledge management include that it’s possible to live a normal life without 90 percent of your brain, and that for the first time, artificial intelligence beat a human champion in the highly complex game of Go.

The debate that is emerging around another of the 23 facts – NASA’s peer-reviewed finding that the “impossible” EM drive produces thrust – highlights the complexities that exist in science and how self-correction in science benefits scientific rigour and integrity¹.

Yet another of the 23 facts highlights how attitudes and opinions can negatively influence the management of knowledge. In the 1920s, a museum director dismissed some of Leonardo da Vinci’s scribbled notes and diagrams as being irrelevant. However, a University of Cambridge professor has found that a page of these scribbles from 1493 actually contains the first written records demonstrating the laws of friction.

Be very careful what you dismiss as irrelevant!

Postscript:

Writing in the NeuroLogicaBlog, Dr. Steven Novella has raised significant concerns in regard to the Science Alert article “Meet the man who lives normally with damage to 90% of his brain” linked above.

Header image source: Scientist by Kristijonas Dirse is licensed by CC BY 2.0.

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