Tracy P. Hamilton
Posts: 1239
Joined: May 2006
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Casey Luskin, science kibbutzer:
| Quote | Despite the high levels of skepticism of claims of arsenophilic bacteria, Nature reports that few scientists have taken the initiative to attempt to experimentally reproduce the claims made in the original paper:
However, most labs seem too busy to spend time replicating work that they feel is fundamentally flawed and is not likely to be published in high-impact journals. So principal investigators are reluctant to spend their resources, and their students' time, replicating the work. "If you extended the results to show there is no detectable arsenic, where could you publish that?" asks Simon Silver of the University of Illinois at Chicago, who critiqued the work in FEMS Microbiology Letters in January and on 24 May at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans. "How could the young person who was asked to do that work ever get a job?" Refuting another scientist's work also takes time that scientists could be spending on their own research. For instance, Helmann says he is installing a highly sensitive mass spectrometer that can measure trace amounts of elements. But, he says, "I've got my own science to do."
Such admissions do not bode well for those who blindly believe in the perfectly objective, self-correcting nature of science. Indeed, in this case, it seems safe to experimentally critique these claims since so many respected scientists have already expressed vocal skepticism. Yet experiments are apparently not yet forthcoming. |
Actually it bodes very well for science. Nobody is stopping Wolfe-Simon from further supporting their argument with more experiments (that is how you answer arguments, not with a verbal nuh-uh!). What this means is that the original paper was, how should I put it, lame.
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What about areas of science where scientists are not able to express their dissent freely? |
Translation: fields where we IDiots can't get unsupported crap published very easily. Help, help, we're being expelled!
| Quote | | For example, who would take time to experimentally critique claims that are central to neo-Darwinian theory, especially if doing so could be dangerous to one's career? |
Someone who wants to make a big splash, like Wolfe-Simon? Jeez, an example on hand, yet Luskin ignores it with his IDiotic rhetorical question.
| Quote | | One hopes that science will become more self-correcting when it comes to claims made in support of materialism. |
Actually, one hopes that Wolfe-Simon either backs up her claim, or admits the obvious - she is inadequate to the task. Like IDiots have already proven to be over how many years now?
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"Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
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