Look at the Rodney King trial, where they showed the same video over and over and over. Did the police beat King unreasonably or not? Was he flinching or trying to attack? Different people saw VERY different things in that famous recording.
Ah, but the camera showed the same thing every time.
And hard science - chemistry, physics, geology, biology etc. - does not depend on the interpretation of motives or thought: unless, of course, you attribute thought to electrons, stars or proteins, and believe that what is happening is subject to debate...?
You obfuscate, sir. The *fact* that the camera showed was the beating. That's the science. Did anyone not see that?
Unreasonably? What were his thoughts? Flinching or preparing for attack? Those are not questions of science...
Meanwhile, technology can deceive the eye, agreed ... but you drag in another straw man here - are you saying that because special effects *might* fool a viewer who suspends disbelief, camera evidence in scientific experiments cannot be trusted because it *might be possible* to fake it?
Do you believe that nuclear warheads do not explode because a convincing reproduction was used in Terminator 2? Do you believe that the contraceptive pill is not actually working, but the effects are being deliberately misinterpreted (presumably by wonmen who are actually pregnant...)?
Or would you believe what science tells you will happen - that a nuclear explosion *will* produce such-and-such a size plasma cloud, that certain hormones *will* prevent the affixation of a fertilised embryo to the womb lining... |
