The list of commonplaces or common sense ideas or prejudices or false myths widespread in some times and places of human history, also defended on scientific grounds when scientific study lacked valid theories, is consistent and, inevitably, grows as it progresses. scientific research has theories and methods of increasing power. Ideas related to homosexuality, extraterrestrial life, animal intelligence, the relationship between brain and mind, ethnic differences, the origin of man, or even the pandemic and the circulation of the virus, which have circulated in Western culture at different times with different contributions from through a continuous competition between hypotheses and attempts to explain the observed facts, they have progressively stripped themselves of the prejudices that have also polluted the points of view of experts or scientists. To explain how a scientific attitude has challenged various ideas of common sense, Il Sole 24 Ore offers on newsstands for a month from Saturday 28 May the volume “What now we know. Every time science has changed its mind ”by Arnaldo Benini, Patrizia Caraveo, Gilberto Corbellini, Paolo Legrenzi, Vittorio Lingiardi, Sebastiano Maffettone, Giorgio Vallortigara.
“For people without adequate training it is not easy to understand how to distinguish science from pseudoscience, but perhaps the general trait that most demarcates them is that the former changes their ideas or explanations in the face of better theories or evidence, while the latter no ”, reads the introduction by Gilberto Corbellini. In this book, the authors of the chapters show how to understand how science works and its place in the human world. “Perhaps it is useful not only for those who observe science as a user, but also for those who do it. Given that in the course of the recent pandemic we have seen very good and competent scientists in a specific field, for example virologists, immunologists or epidemiologists, invade fields not within their competence and reason in those contexts with ideas of common sense that are largely outdated “.