[...] The Monte Carlo simulation has became the major means of visualization of not only detector performance, but also physics phenomena. So far so good. But it often happens that the physics simulation provided by the Monte Carlo generators carry the authority of data itself. They look like data and feel like data, and if one is not careful they are accepted as if they were data.
[...] I am prepared to believe that the computer-literate generation [...] is in principle no less competent and, in fact, benefits relative to us in the older generation by having these marvelous tools. They do allow one to look at, indeed visualize, the problem in new ways. But I also fear a kind of "terminal illness", perhaps traceable to the influence of television at an early age. There the way one learns is simply to passively stare into a screen and wait for the thruth to be delivered. A number of physicists nowadays seem to just do this.
J. D. Bjorken (from a talk at the 75th anniversary celebration of the Max-Planck Institute of Physics, Munich, Germany, December 10th 1992. As quoted in Beam Line, Winter 1992, Vol. 22, nº 4)
Verborreado por nuno às 15:47 | 
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Maier's Law:
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
-- N.R. Maier, "American Psychologist", March 1960
Corollaries:
(1) The bigger the theory, the better.
(2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
obtain a correspondence with the theory.
(Substituindo theory por Monte Carlo simulation vai dar ao mesmo)
~Oo°~