andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2008-10-13 08:34 pm
andrewducker) wrote2008-10-13 08:34 pm
Feedback #1 - Thanks to the science people
I'm not going to reply to everyone on the last post, so a general "thanks" to everyone that replied. Lots of interesting stuff there.
One of the interesting things in the responses was the number of people who thought they should let me know that it wasn't a peer-reviewed paper in a renowned journal. Clearly, I knew that - it was someone's personal page, with their thoughts on it. If it had been a published paper I wouldn't have bothered asking you lot, I'd have had a look to see if it had been refuted.
Similarly, some people seemed to think that because it wasn't presented as Pure Science, but also had personal opinion, it couldn't have anything to it, an approach I find frankly baffling.
However, there were also plenty of good arguments against it, and while some of the ideas are interesting, I'm certainly not taking it at face value. Cheers to all of you!
One of the interesting things in the responses was the number of people who thought they should let me know that it wasn't a peer-reviewed paper in a renowned journal. Clearly, I knew that - it was someone's personal page, with their thoughts on it. If it had been a published paper I wouldn't have bothered asking you lot, I'd have had a look to see if it had been refuted.
Similarly, some people seemed to think that because it wasn't presented as Pure Science, but also had personal opinion, it couldn't have anything to it, an approach I find frankly baffling.
However, there were also plenty of good arguments against it, and while some of the ideas are interesting, I'm certainly not taking it at face value. Cheers to all of you!
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No, I'm not.
I'm a person, interested in theories about the world. And therefore not going to dismiss something as nonsense just because it was someone's personal opinion.
And I know that peer review is flawed - that wasn't my point...
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Science can prove or disprove these kind of theories and personal opinions. This is valid no matter who you are.
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Wasn't your question whether or not the claims she was making had any validity? "I'm wondering if it's junk science, or it's something I should be paying attention to." Eh? What was your question then? That's nothing about "are personal opinions valid?" I feel like this is some sort of trick..
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My question was "Is this worth paying attention to." - the other person then said "There's personal opinion in with the sciency bits, therefore it's not a proper scientific paper, so it should be ignored."
As I hadn't thought it was a scientific paper, I couldn't actually see how that was a valid attack.
Something can be worth paying attention to, after all, even if it's not a scientific paper!
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I'd also say that citing Wikipedia doesn't make something _wrong_ - it might add to the unreliability, but Wikipedia is neither righter or wronger than anywhere else on the internet.
What I wanted was someone to either say "Yes, this links in with X and Y, and makes sense of Z" or "No, this contradicts well-known principle X, and they clearly didn't know about studies Y and Z, which tell a very different story."
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I said "I'm wondering if it's junk science, or it's something I should be paying attention to." - how could I have phrased that better to get my question across?
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