I think I'd better explain something about myself.
 
I spent a lot of time as an adult student working in and taking grad
classes from an anatomy dept.  since I was planning on going into
macroevolutionary theory from a primatology stand-point before I caught
a nasty tropical neuro-muscular disease during some field work and that
illness cut short my schooling.
 
Since then I have been partly hamstrung since it is harder to follow
progress without being in a university, but I still read what i can
on-line, in some scientific publications we fit into our budget, and
from a number of papers which a range of friends send to me.
 
So, in other words, my level of education itself is rather similar to
that of some of the people with whom I disagree at times.  That should
be no surprise.  We all know that when those who are admittedly more
educated that those of us verbal list members here talk -- such as
respected research professors -- they look at a problem to see its many
sides and different ones may weigh parts differently.  That is a GOOD
thing.
 
Really, it IS good, and that is why that was so throughly drummed into
me in the anatomy department.  I was taught over and over that knowing
the pitfalls in one's own arguments and being prepared to see and argue
from both sides can only be useful.  Why?  Because instead of being
blind-sided by aspects which are more comfortable to ignore it allows a
person to weigh a lot of evidence which should not be ignored, and it
reminds the person over and over which parts of a concept are based only
on hypotheses (keeping people honest with themselves), It shows where
there may be places where some lateral thinking will allow for a sudden
marked increase in learning and incredible progress.  There are even
more good things to it.  We were made to practice it on an assortment of
topics and it has serves in good stead.
 
Spending 26 years (and we are coming up to our silver anniversary in
May) with a marvelous physicist who does research into human-computer
interactions and has a string of inventions behind him has reinforced
the message that it is essential to keep an open mind that way, to be
careful to NOT invest oneself too much emotionally in any hypotheses.
 
Then that wound up being of great use as a skill for ferret medical
considerations when I was asked to help with those.  Talk about a rapidly
changing field!  A person has to be able to realize that new information
forces changes, and needs to consider that information (even though it
may take a while -- as it did when I first felt kicked in the gut when
two here got cystine stones).  It's a constant learning situation and
that is one reason I so often quote people or send folks to URLs by those
who know more.  It's very invigorating on and off, actually.  Somewhat
like canoeing rapids at times.
 
So, if a person looks back through my past posts -- for instance those on
food here -- you'll find that we DO and HAVE tried multiple hypotheses.
At times, like now, we have to then readjust according to the medical
needs of individuals, or according to new information.  THERE IS ALWAYS
NEW INFORMATION.  Because there is always new information to consider,
the arguments and how they are weighed can change -- either for a
specific situation or specific individual, or ***once enough is known***
even for an entire group or species.
[Posted in FML issue 4789]