qetzal
Posts: 311
Joined: Feb. 2006
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| Quote (Thought Provoker @ Oct. 15 2007,22:48) | Hi qetzal,
You know I am an engineer and not a scientist, right?
That being said. In 1951, two inexperienced young scientists put together a highly speculative model for the genetics. The model was humiliatingly wrong. The two were chastised and told to quit working on it. However, they were stubborn and after "borrowing" data obtained by more experienced scientists, they got lucky and this time the model they put together resulted in them eventually being awarded the Nobel Prize.
The two scientists, of course, were Watson and Crick and the model was DNA’s double helix. |
Nice tale. Points for using Watson and Crick instead of Galileo.
Here's another. Once upon a time, there was a brilliant chemist, biochemist, crystallographer, and molecular biologist, all wrapped up in one. He was a pioneer in quantum mechanical treatments of chemistry. He won the Nobel Prize for his work on the nature of chemical bonds. Later, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts against nuclear testing. He's the only person to be the sole recipient of two Nobels.
The scientist, of course, is Linus Pauling. The list of fundamental discoveries that he made is mind-boggling. And after decades of brilliant accomplishment, do you know what idea he championed at the end of his career? Orthomolecular medicine - the idea that mega-doses of vitamin C could cure colds and cancer. He became so thoroughly enamored of this idea that he apparently forgot the #1 rule in science: data rules.
He was convinced he was right. Thus, anecdotal data that fit his convictions was offered as proof. Data that contradicted him was dismissed as the result of incompetence or even fraud.
I saw him give a talk on vitamin C when I was in grad school. It was quite sad.
The lesson? Ideas in science aren't judged on the people who propose them. They're judged on the data that supports them.
| Quote | Stuart Hameroff is 60 years old. He has been working on this for his entire professional life. Do you think he really cares whether or not you give him "the benefit of the doubt"?
Sir Rodger Penrose probably cares even less. |
I don't expect either of them to care what I think. As scientists, I *do* expect them to care about basic scientific principles, such as providing data to support your hypotheses, and fairly distinguishing fact from conjecture.
| Quote | | Jack A. Tuszynski, Avner Priel, Arnolt J. Ramos, Horacio F. Cantiello, Nancy J. Woolf, Vahid Rezania, Michael Hendzel and others might care. They are the ones doing the experiments. |
Great! Let's see some of their results! I'm quite tired of the hand-waving and speculation. What do their experiments actually show?
| Quote | | I find Orch OR interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, it makes for a good hypothetical in the ID/Darwin debates. Would either side accept this as a reasonable hypothesis? |
I get the impression that you see this as partly a philosophical debate. Personally, I couldn't care less about the philosophy. I accept the ToE because it's supported by evidence and accurately predicts what we see. I reject ID because it isn't, and it doesn't.
If you show me that Orch OR accurately predicts things that conventional models don't, I'll be much more interested. Until then...
| Quote | | Second, it is thought provoking both for others and for myself. |
Yeah, it's been a more interesting discussion than the typical ID bilge. But for me, it's now pretty tapped out (absent some data...?).
| Quote | | Third, it feels right. The details aren't as important as the fact that things fit together. Too many questions have gone unanswered for too long. Orch OR goes a long way to answering the big ones. |
Hand-waving doesn't really answer any questions. In fact, it's usually just a way to avoid really answering, so we can pretend that the answers we like are true.
If anyone can show that Orch OR accurately predicts things that other models can't, then it will be fair to say that it answers questions. Until then, it's just castles in the air.
| Quote | Besides, SteveStory said he was looking to provide you guys with something more substantial than the cotton candy opponents you a used to dealing with.
Now if you would rather argue with AfDave....
:D |
AFDave?!! OK, Uncle! You win!
;-)
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