I read Google News (news.google.com) every day. Part of the site is devoted to fake news, rumors, untruths and questionable statements. I am impressed at all the outlandish ideas that Snopes and other anti-fakes deal with. If I get vaccinated, will I sprout wings? Did Biden make a rule that all newborns must be registered as Communists?
Then, I realized that imaginative and often outlandish ideas and speculations are exactly what scientists use when evaluating research results and trying to solve problems. Maybe you have heard of Giordano Bruno, burned alive at the stake in 1600 as a stubborn heretic who held and espoused beliefs not acceptable at the time. Or, maybe you have heard the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian-German who did some observing and some analysis and began advocating that physicians wash their hands after examining and working with corpses and before working with women about to deliver babies. It did turn out that better sanitation dropped the death rate from childbed fever but that was in spite of indignant physicians stating that of course they didn't transmit disease - they were doctors!
Human life and human bodies as well as human imagination are complex. It takes us time to evaluate an idea or an action and decide if it is an asset.
