Feedback #1 - Thanks to the science people

[andrewducker]

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!

Comments

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

Mixing science and personal opinion, without any clear demarcation, is pretty much equivalent to tabloid journalism. Also it wasn't that the article presented science and personal opinion to a large extent it presented personal opinion as science.

[andrewducker]

And, to reiterate, I am _fine_ with that. I wasn't reading Nature, I was reading someone's personal web page. If I say, on my journal, that I've been reading about Stuff, and I've spotted a link between X and Y, then that's _also fine_.

Heck - you mix science and personal opinion on your journal all the time!

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

I'd be shocked and appalled if it turned out I'd presented personal opinion as science though.