Yes, Mr Hawkes, medical science fits well besides other sciences; hence we now have Imperial College of Science, Technology and «Medicine» (although IC is now a University in its own right rather than a constituent college of London University it's decided to continue with the College part of its strong brand name).When visiting LENS - the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy - near Florence with a Friends of IC science trip one of the research physicists working with a multidisciplinary biochemistry team noted that it was a new experience from her physics research where one always expected the same, repeatable results because in biochemistry one may get varying experimental results depending on variances in DNA, hormones, etc - I guess that's how we learn about individual responses to drugs and other medical procedures? If viruses, bacteria, etc affect individuals differently the it's likely that medicines, vaccines and othe treatments do?That's why medical research is looking at tailoring drugs and other treatments to individuals' biological needs.There is no fixed science, just current knowledge. Sometimes, as with Einstein's General Relativity Theory, a hypothesis will be proposed and then we spend time testing it - and Einstein hasn't failed yet in over a century (the journey to Pisa & Florence was primarily to visit the Virgo gravitational observatory that provides more proof of relativity); then we have quantum theory, again tested by experimental physics and in practice (what would we do withoutlasers?), although statistics plays a large part in results, such as the probability of a particle being in a particular position - however, we also know both theories are incomplete as they haven't yet been reconciled :-) (Athough superseded by both these theories, Newton's and Kepler's theories still work for many purposes.) Then we have stellar seismology, as featured in today's R4 the Life Scientific, where theories are developed from observational physics. Science is a continuous process of refining knowledge from both hypotheses and experimental observations.So with regards to climate science and global warming scientists are developing and refining models from observed evidence coupled with general scientific knowledge of, for example, how the greenhouse effect works.Ignore the the climate scientists at one's peril, and think about why the Exxon researchers - or perhaps their managers? - were keen to bury their evidence for climate change - presumably in favour of profit?
Michael Ixer ● 588d