tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8483622.post114530061162887369..comments2024-02-29T20:00:59.902-08:00Comments on Cartago Delenda Est: Striking A Brave Blow For Freedom Of InquiryMatteohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05393908406875742989noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8483622.post-1145480108156458662006-04-19T13:55:00.000-07:002006-04-19T13:55:00.000-07:00No doubt there are problems with peer review. But...No doubt there are problems with peer review. But the supression of "new ideas" is not a bad thing. I know, that sounds crazy. But if you have a new idea that you can't get published in a Science or a Nature, you try to get it published in a smaller journal. But beyond that, you go to meetings and physically pursuade people. It's difficult, but this "grassroots" effort helps to ensure that science doesn't move too fast and roughshod in some crazy far-out there way. It doesn't promote orthodoxy as much as it promotes confidence. A lot of papers rushed to press in vanity journals turn out to the horribly, horribly wrong. But until William Demsbki is short on funding (he isn't) and until he has tried to get his work published in a mainstream journal (he hasn't), he has nothing to complain about.<BR/><BR/>Second, it's not that "Darwinists" claim to be sole aribiters of data intepretation; when looking at the data you must not ignore vast chunks of it. Not all intepretations are valid.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, I won't belabor the point. You've got a nice blog here and I really don't want to do a drive-by to you. But I will say one more thing, because I considered it a mission to convince fellow Catholics of a few things. Seriously, and I mean seriously, think about the philosophical implications of ID. Dembski's philosophy is poisonous and his science vacuous.Michael Brunohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15655880596203333230noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8483622.post-1145423580802928182006-04-18T22:13:00.000-07:002006-04-18T22:13:00.000-07:00Michael (second comment),Thanks for stopping by. F...Michael (second comment),<BR/><BR/>Thanks for stopping by. Frank Tipler has written a good article about the peer review process. It appears in Dembski's book "Uncommon Dissent". I think it is also available here (PDF):<BR/><BR/>http://tinyurl.com/naykc<BR/><BR/>Also, I think that a book like "Darwin's Black Box" effectively becomes massively peer reviewed after publication. Quite a lot on both sides has been written about it, with arguments and rebuttals available all over the web. The book and its arguments have received vastly more scrutiny than any paper tucked away in some specialized journal. Not much different than what happened to Darwin's book, which also wasn't "peer reviewed" in any formal sense before publication.<BR/><BR/>BTW, I don't regard Darwinists as "owning" the basic data of experimental science (molecular biology for example), data which more and more points to a design inference. That data does, in fact, come out in peer reviewed journals, and it's not the fault of IDists that it is badly misinterpreted as supporting Blind Watchmaker evolution.<BR/><BR/>To anyone who asks, "Where are the experiments?", I answer, they're being done all over the world, day in and day out, by researchers relatively unconcerned with the whole Darwin/ID controversy. Hardcore Darwinist idealogues simply insist that they be the sole interpreters of all this experimental data, even though they had very little to do with generating it in the first place.Matteohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05393908406875742989noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8483622.post-1145401731029910772006-04-18T16:08:00.000-07:002006-04-18T16:08:00.000-07:00Hey, I just stumbled her from Dembski's blog and I...Hey, I just stumbled her from Dembski's blog and I have a quick comment about peer review and ID. It's true, a main criticism is that ID has produced no peer reviewed literature and guys like PZ are reviewers; but the point of that criticism is that ID will never get peer-reviewed and accepted because peers think it's a bunch of crap. Pulling out ID's peer reviewed status is a response to the fact that ID has been published in various forms; the criticism is basically, so what if you got a book publisher to publish it because all your peers completely disagree.<BR/><BR/>As to grant getting, the Discovery Institute has enough money to fund a moderate to big lab for years; as do private companies who have their own grant-readers. ID can start there.Michael Brunohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15655880596203333230noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8483622.post-1145316907816270312006-04-17T16:35:00.000-07:002006-04-17T16:35:00.000-07:00That criticism does not make a lot of sense. The ...That criticism does not make a lot of sense. The ultimate job of a professor is not to elicit good evaluations, grants or publications -- those are just tools. The ultimate job of a professor is to broaden the horizons of knowledge -- in that professor's field, in the minds of students, or both. Because of that, claiming that ID is science -- when even ID advocates like Michael Behe acknowledge that it is not -- impairs a professor's job performance.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com