Bias

When scientists in my profession publish results of their investigations they try not to reference other studies more than twenty or thirty years old. Those works are considered outdated, superseded by later investigations presumed more worth because more recent. Like the echoing mantra of Eminent Domain, the science that guides us seems anxious to discard the old, bring in the new. This casting aside of history may partly explain why, the older I get, the more I’m fascinated by it.

An old book I have describes the invasion of the Great Plains by cattle. The book smells like the libraries I inhabited during my dispersal years and where I first discovered girls who like reading. Does that bias my appreciation for it?

~page 80, Grass: In Search of Human Habitat by Joe C. Truett