Response to Reading: Cargo Cult Science, by Richard Feynman

I liked this essay. I agree with Richard Feynman that integrity in the scientific community is important. I believe that the more information/ knowledge one has, the higher their responsibility. Wouldn't it be great if accountability followed this logic! This accountability should be required especially from the scientific community, the government, and the media. (Please see the link to Jon Stewart on Crossfire re: Media Accountability.) The story of the cargo cult of the South Seas is a great analogy. The Cargo Cult of people saw airplanes during the war land with lots of good material, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arrainged things to imitate the runway, the wooden hut for a man to sit in, with pieces of wood on his head like headphones with a bamboo antennas and they wait for the airplanes to land. The process that makes a hypothesis become a theory is to verify it with testing (experiments) that gets repeatable, expected results. The problem with the indoctrinated theory of the cargo cult society is that it is NOT a theory, but merely an unverified hypothesis.