I am NOT suggesting that we shouldn’t discuss the concepts the characters are bandying about – I think it is good to do so, and I suspect that was one of the intents of the author – to get us to think about bias, perspective, reality, etc.

What I’m saying is that I don’t think Scott is getting on a soap box and holding up the characters (especially Alex, Dan, and Nicole) as paragons of behavior. He shows them to us as reasonably rounded people, with strengths to develop and flaws to overcome, which gives them room to grow over the course of the story. If everybody was essentially perfect at the start of a story, most stories would be very short, and not nearly as interesting – most romantic comedies would be over after come clear, mature communication, the zombie apocalypse would be averted by simply killing patient zero before it breaks out of the lab, etc. I may not agree with some of Alex, Dan and Nicole’s behavior (particularly personal ridicule), but I don’t think any of them are behaving in a way that is entirely unexpected for college-age people.

Dan is an idiot. A complete idiot. He can’t even spell science correctly (exactly how one ends up pronouncing a typo is another matter). I have yet to see him do nor say anything even remotely worthwhile. He’d get better results just bashing his head open on the desk.

Both directions also depend on your willingness to incorporate new information that shows up but seems to disagree with you expect.

100 people show up on your doorstep and claim the sky is green. Instead of crazy, might they be colorblind? (and, yes, I’m fully aware that “green” is subjective) Of course, they COULD be crazy but it remains possible that they aren’t.

In science, unlike nearly anything else, people *do* routinely admit that things they have believed all their lives are wrong. That’s its beauty. That’s the only reason it works. That’s the whole d— point of it.

It’s only human to be biased. But in modern conventional science there tends to be a rigid framework of what is and is not possible. Much of this framework comes from what’s been drilled into students. Even Eintein said that “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” Also, “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

Dismissing possibilities outright, whatever the reason, is inherently biased. If we never dared think outside the realm of what is considered “possible” or “common sense”, then we’d miss many important discoveries and scientific progress would have been tremendously stunted. We’d still think the Earth was the center of the Universe.