Academia, You Know Too Much

This article discusses on what I'd call the knowledge paradox: the more we know, the less important (and often the less true) our new findings are.
(Unfortunately it is written in my mother tongue Dutch instead of our world tongue English. Reference on top of first page. Click on images to see readable version.)

I'm not sure about the opinion of the author of this article —is there a way out of this paradox?— but I do think that any modern scientist should be aware of this.

There were times when all science was basic, and known only to the happy few. This basic knowledge has turned into school book wisdom for ages now.
Scientists nowadays are more concerned with non-basic, advanced problems —and they should, given these weird quantum effects and DNA inside us, and relativity all over the universe. A modern scientist is to solve very difficult problems, in the best possible way. This implies (rather serious) mistakes, all over —shit happens, when you're solving a billion pieces jigsaw puzzle.
Other pitfalls lure, however. In a worst case scenario, the scientist is still tackling the same old problem (that might be insolvable, or, worse, non-existing), and keeps himself busy complicating his theory of it. That is perhaps the largest (and most common) threat to scientific quality work nowadays.




PS These are pictures of sheets that I discovered hanging on the bulletin board of the ELIS Department of our university —thanks guys for sharing this.