In 1620 Francis Bacon wrote a great treatise on academic confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, associated irrational reasoning and cherry-picking pseudo-scholarship:
‘The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.’
1. In order to test potential truths, or hypotheses, Bacon devised a method whereby scientists set up experiments to manipulate nature and attempt to prove their hypotheses wrong.2. Bacon who was an English philosopher, used inductive reasoning in an attempt to improve the mistakes made by Aristotle, and is known to promote (scientific) method. In other words, Bacon believed that scientists should use inductive (not deductive) reasoning.3. This new way of thinking was to stop the old way of simply coming up with a hypothesis or knowledge claim, simply out of your own head, or one based simply on what others in positions of authority said.
This is the approach taken in all my research on whether or not Darwin/ Wallace were influenced by Patrick Matthew's prior published theory of evolution by natural selection.
On the basis of empirical data observation we can now use inductive (scientific) reasoning to absolutely disprove the knowledge claims made by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace that what they were forced to admit (forced by Matthew laying claim to his theory in the press in 1860) Patrick Matthew had in 1831 published the full and complete theory of evolution by natural selection that Darwin and Wallace claimed as their own independent conceptions.
To date the scientific community has simply accepted the deductive story told by Darwin out of his own head that Matthew's theory went unread until Matthew laid claim to it. Darwin made this story up in order to deny that Matthew could in any way have possibly influenced either he or Wallace in their replication of Matthew's prior published work.
In fact, not only has it now been discovered by my original inductive research that at least 30 people (including influencers and facilitators of Darwin and Wallace had read and cited Matthew's theory (see Sutton 2022), we also know Darwin knowingly lied when he wrote this excuse.
The discovery of Darwin's lies and the 30 who we know read Matthew's book, and who they were, and the roles they played influencing Darwin and Wallace and their own influencers and their influencer's influencers is empirical evidence. Unlike Darwin's explanation for his replication it is not simply made up out of my own head. Unlike the Darwinists writing to support the lucrative Darwin Industry, I have actually tested Darwin's claim to see if it could be proven wrong. That is the scientific method. The scientific method proves Darwin's claim wrong. The scientific method proves knowledge contamination was possible. I argue on the basis of further detailed evidence of what Darwin replicated that knowledge contamination and deliberate plagiary is proven beyond all reasonable doubt, and is certainly proven on the basis of reasonable probability (Sutton 2015).
