Zachriel
Posts: 2723
Joined: Sep. 2006
|
| Quote | | fifth monarchy man: Saying that his biases affected his paper and were overlooked by per review borders on slander. |
Oh, boy. Let's take a look.
| Quote | Behe: This reasoning can be concisely stated as what I call “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”:
| Quote | | Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. |
It is called a “rule” in the sense of being a rule of thumb. It is a heuristic, useful generalization, rather than a strict law; other circumstances being equal, this is what is usually to be expected in adaptive evolution. |
Why call it a Rule, then?
| Quote | | KC: My comment on his rule is that it's premature, based entirely on a review of short-term laboratory studies (with Lenski's as the exception), and only on prokaryotes. I don't think that's even close to enough to justify coming up with a general "first rule" of adaptation, which Behe specifically believes can be extended to eukaryotes and natural populations as well. For one thing, a lot of factors (budgetary, what research questions are being addressed by the study, etc) contribute to why certain studies are done, and what organisms are chosen. This can skew the results for someone from the outside looking at something that the studies themselves were not specifically addressing. It's a major concern for researchers doing "meta-analyses" of data from numerous studies– they have to take great pains to analyze the conditions and methods of the studies to ensure that unseen biases are not influencing the "meta-picture" of the data. |
In other words, there are a variety of reasons data can be skewed. We tend to look for the keys where the light is best.
| Quote | | fifth monarchy man: Claiming that there is secret data is the stuff of conspiracy theorists not science. Saying that his biases affected his paper and were overlooked by per review borders on slander. |
Quite an accusation. Even though his comments concerned the data, KC clarifies further — just to make sure there is no misunderstanding.
| Quote | | KC: I didn’t mean to imply that; instead, I should have said it was only the data Behe thought was relevant. And another thing—when I talk about bias in the data, I’m not talking about Behe’s personal biases. I took special pains earlier in this thread to point out that lots of factors can influence the results when doing meta-analysis. These have nothing to do with personal bias. Yet still you assume I was impugning Behe’s motives. |
Of course he does.
| Quote | KC: You were the one who said my calling Behe’s conclusions premature was slanderous.
fifth monarchy man: Again I never said anything of the sort. Here is my exact quote:
| Quote | | Saying that his biases affected his paper and were overlooked by per review borders on slander. |
|
Parsing pretty fine there, fifth monarchy man. The comments weren't slanderous, never bordered on slander, had nothing to do with Behe or professional reputation, but with his paper.
| Quote | | fifth monarchy man: If you think Behe cherry picked data and his reviewers did not catch it…… prove it. |
Fifth monarchy man still doesn't understand the bit about how data can be skewed without any purposeful intention by the researcher.
| Quote | | fifth monarchy man: So in KC’s world claiming the peer reviewers did not bother to properly investigate the bias of a known IDer is pretty much the same thing saying a paper is premature? |
Fifth monarchy man reiterates his ignorance of peer review.
By the way, KC didn't say that the paper was premature, but that "The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution" may be premature. Fifth monarchy man keeps confusing the point. The paper does, perhaps, add a bit to the body of scientific knowledge, however, that doesn't mean it isn't subject to criticism.
| Quote | | fifth monarchy man: So if we don’t suspect fraud in this case are you saying its ok to trust the peer review process? |
Peer review just helps ensure that papers reach a *minimum* level of professional standard while advancing the goals of the publication.
| Quote | | KC: Peer review only goes so far. It’s not the last word—how can it be? |
A scientist hopes publication is the *first* word of a conversation. If it's the last word, it means the paper is being {gasp} ignored.
--------------
You never step on the same tard twice—for it's not the same tard and you're not the same person.
|
