El método científico y la intuición del ciudadano

Abstract

The exhibition entitled “Mars-Earth: A compared anatomy” (2007) at CosmoCaixa (Barcelona) displayed an object which had much to do with the public perception of science. The object in question had been sought and found to illustrate a very abstract concept. For decades, all over the world the theory circulated that a certain unknown culture had left an unusual monument to Mars, visible from our planet: a human face sculpted in a giant mountain. The arguments in favor of this moving hypothesis are based on the presumed “improbability” that a geographic accident could spontaneously acquire the form of a face. That's too much of a coincidence, isn't it? A nose, a mouth, two eyes, a forehead... Who isn't tempted to turn coincidence into causality? The scientific community can do little with regard to such speculation. It is much more exciting to believe than to disbelieve. Then the day came when a better photograph showed that the face was only an illusion with was derived from a technological imperfection, but it is worth going back in time to before having such evidence in order to compare the two postures: the scientific posture and the, shall we say, super-, para-, pseudo- o meta-scientific posture.