Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Peer Review and the Scientific Process
40hz:
Did a quick skim of the bios of the staff and then read a half-dozen articles on American Thinker.
From the site:
About Us
American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans. Contributors are accomplished in fields beyond journalism and animated to write for the general public out of concern for the complex and morally significant questions on the national agenda.
There is no limit to the topics appearing on American Thinker. National security in all its dimensions -- strategic, economic, diplomatic, and military -- is emphasized. The right to exist and the survival of the State of Israel are of great importance to us. Business, science, technology, medicine, management, and economics in their practical and ethical dimensions are also emphasized, as is the state of American culture.
--- End quote ---
I have a certain Uncle. He's a highly educated and well-intentioned individual. But somewhere along the line, he got fed up with many of things he was seeing in the news and became very angry. Angry to the point of where it affected his better nature and intellectual judgement and created a politico-moral lens (with a narrow angle and shallow depth of field) which he now views the world through. Beneath his visible calm, and love for quoting sources, the rage that's boiling within can clearly be seen. Another good man driven half-mad by the complexities and ambiguities of the world he lives in.
The writers at American Thinker remind me very much of him.
Maybe it's me. but do I detect a certain middle-American and strongly 'conservative' (dare I say closet far right?) agenda at work in American Thinker? ;)
IainB:
^^ ...erm, thanks, that's an interesting critique of American Thinker (though I personally couldn't care less about its political leanings), but did you happen to notice the bit about the Secret Science Reform Act of 2014?
I mean, I thought it was an absolute hoot. Or are you suggesting that I have been taken in by a spoof? If so, I apologise for being gullible, but when it popped up in my feed reader it did seem to be like a real report about a real thing. :(
Renegade:
Maybe it's me. but do I detect a certain middle-American and strongly 'conservative' (dare I say closet far right?) agenda at work in American Thinker? ;)
-40hz (December 01, 2014, 07:51 AM)
--- End quote ---
Probably. But in order to be a far-right extremist, you only have to say something like "saving money is good" or "being in debt is bad."
But the article that IainB posted is completely relevant to the thread.
It shouldn't be any kind of surprise that "science" is regularly tarnished with incompetence and fraud. While incompetence is one thing, fraud isn't so easily forgiveable.
Given the current climate, I would go so far as to say that any research that isn't completely and 100% open should be rejected out of hand and completely ignored.
If you don't have the information necessary to replicate it, then it's not worth anything. Transparency is everything.
That includes raw data.
A CDC whistleblower recently came out and exposed deliberate fraud in previous studies. They had excluded data to make a product "safe" when they knew it wasn't. Raw data matters. Transparency is everything.
There is a crisis in peer review, and the crisis isn't a "science" issue, it's a "human" issue, and largely of greed. That's neither right-wing nor left-wing.
40hz:
But in order to be a far-right extremist, you only have to say something like "saving money is good" or "being in debt is bad."
-Renegade (December 02, 2014, 12:48 PM)
--- End quote ---
Not true. But you have your agenda I suppose. :P
IainB:
Talk about "red whales"...
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version