A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice". The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs are firmly fixed in the student's mind. Scientists take great pains to defend the assumption that scientists know what the world is like...To this end, "normal science" will often suppress novelties which undermine its foundations. Research (...) is therefore not about discovering the unknown, but rather "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education". (shrink)

I examine the question of how far experiments that look for the effects of superposition of macroscopically distinct states are relevant to the classic measurement paradox of quantum mechanics. Existing experiments on superconducting devices confirm the predictions of the quantum formalism extrapolated to the macroscopic level, and to that extent provide strong circumstantial evidence for its validity at this level, but do not directly test the principle of superposition of macrostates. A more ambitious experiment, not obviously infeasible with current technology, (...) could provide a direct test between quantum mechanics and a whole class of theories embodying the postulate of realism at the macroscopic level. (shrink)