ET visitation? Nonsense!!

Re: thed

Originally posted by spookz
do you disagree?
Click to expand...

Disagree with what? A bunch of sociological claptrap. The one thing I'll give the author is that they didn't use the phrase 'paradigm shift'.

They appear to be saying that acceptance by your peers is a Very Bad Thing(tm). That only work sanctioned by The Peerage(tm) is accepted. I submit that there is vast amounts of scientific work that started out contradicting the accepted norm but was then shown to be correct, at which point people started listening.

Understand one thing, the majority of work in science is incorrect to begin with. Scientists accept this, realise their peers are necessary in weeding out false assumptions, and are (more than average) willing to accept corrections. Specifically I am reminded of a description by a Pharmaceutical Chemist I heard, "Science is 99.9% failure. I live for the 0.1%".

The issue is that if you have a radically new idea that contravenes accepted thought you have to be willing to defend it against everyones objections. If you are right, you are right, the idea will eventually be accepted once the facts start defending you. In short, science is by nature very adversarial. The author of the previous claptrap has completely missed this point, IMO.

As I pointed out in the Homeopathy thread, science has made huge blunders, Polywater for example. Peer review is about trying to minimise these foul ups. perfect it is not and mistakes happen. Hopefully it works better than alternatives.

All the sceptic asks is that UFOlogists accept the same level of questioning or peer review as the average scientist has to. Corollary, it is not acceptable to make statements and just accept people to accept them. Expect detailed questioning and give answers without disseminating by claiming the method is some sort of closed clique.
 
...science has made huge blunders

i in turn submit that these "huge blunders" are precisely due to the wonderfully telling, "sociological claptrap"

the arena? peer review of course:D
 
Nevertheless Nature was vilified by pro-Quist and Chapela (QC hereafter) forces for siding with industrial interests. One criticism that stung Nature more than any other was the suggestion that an advertising brand partnership with a handful of biotechnology companies was a force leading the journal to ostensibly side with those who attacked Quist and Chapela. Nature, of course, finds odious any charges that it sides with anyone when it comes to publishing research.

http://www.biotech-info.net/maize_genes_peerreview.html

elitism and status quo are some factors that indicate peer review is merely a system that engages in censorship, that which goes against existing frameworks.

Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?

*a few excerpts.....

* One example is Rosalyn Yalow, who described how her Nobel-prize-winning paper was received by the journals. "In 1955 we submitted the paper to Science.... The paper was held there for eight months before it was reviewed. It was finally rejected. We submitted it to the Journal of Clinical Investigations, which also rejected it." (Quoted from The Joys of Research, edited by Walter Shropshire, p. 109).

*Another example is Günter Blobel, who in a news conference given just after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, said that the main problem one encounters in one's research is "when your grants and papers are rejected because some stupid reviewer rejected them for dogmatic adherence to old ideas." According to the New York Times (October 12, 1999, p. A29), these comments "drew thunderous applause from the hundreds of sympathetic colleagues and younger scientists in the auditorium."

*In an article for Twentieth Century Physics, a book commissioned by the American Physical Society (the professional organization for U. S. physicists) to describe the great achievements of 20 th century physics, the inventor of chaos theory, Mitchell J. Feigenbaum, described the reception that his revolutionary papers on chaos theory received: Both papers were rejected, the first after a half-year delay. By then, in 1977, over a thousand copies of the first preprint had been shipped. This has been my full experience. Papers on established subjects are immediately accepted. Every novel paper of mine, without exception, has been rejected by the refereeing process. The reader can easily gather that I regard this entire process as a false guardian and wastefully dishonest. (Volume III, p. 1850).

*Earlier in the same volume on 20th century physics, in a history of the development of optical physics, the invention of the laser by Theodore Maiman was described. The result was so important that it was announced in the New York Times on July 7, 1960. But the leading American physics journal, Physical Review Letters, rejected Maiman's paper on how to make a laser (p. 1426).

*Scientific eminence is no protection from a peer review system gone wild. John Bardeen, the only man to ever have won two Nobel Prizes in physics, had difficulty publishing a theory in low-temperature solid state physics (the area of one of his Prizes) that went against the established view. But rank hath its privileges. Bardeen appealed to his friend David Lazarus, who was editor in chief for the American Physical Society. Lazarus investigated and found that "the referee was totally out of line. I couldn't believe it. John really did have a hard time with [his] last few papers and it was not his fault at all. They were important papers, they did get published, but they gave him a harder time than he should have had." (True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen, p. 300).

*Stephen W. Hawking is the world's most famous physicist. According to his first wife Jane (Music to Move the Stars: A Life with Stephen Hawking, p. 239), when Hawking submitted to Nature what is generally regarded as his most important paper, the paper on black hole evaporation, the paper was initially rejected. I have heard from colleagues who must remain nameless that when Hawking submitted to Physical Review what I personally regard as his most important paper, his paper showing that a most fundamental law of physics called "unitarity" would be violated in black hole evaporation, it, too, was initially rejected. (The word on the street is that the initial referee was the Institute for Advanced Study physicist Freeman Dyson.)

*Today it is known that the Hawaiian Islands were formed sequentially as the Pacific plate moved over a hot spot deep inside the Earth. The theory was first developed in the paper by an eminent Princeton geophysicist, Tuzo Wilson: "I … sent [my paper] to the Journal of Geophysical Research. They turned it down…. They said my paper had no mathematics in it, no new data, and that it didn't agree with the current views. Therefore, it must be no good. Apparently, whether one gets turned down or not depends largely on the reviewer. The editors, too, if they don't see it your way, or if they think it's something unusual, may turn it down. Well, this annoyed me, and instead of keeping the rejection letter, I threw it into the wastepaper basket. I sent the manuscript to the newly founded Canadian Journal of Physics. That was not a very obvious place to send it, but I was a Canadian physicist. I thought they would publish almost anything I wrote, so I sent it there and they published it!" (Quoted from The Joys of Research, p. 130.)

*The most important development in cloning after the original breakthrough of Dolly the Sheep was the cloning of mice. The result was once again described on the front page of the New York Times, where it was also mentioned that the paper was rejected for publication by the leading American science journal, Science.

*Everyone knows today that the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago when a giant asteroid hit the Earth. Science did publish the article presenting this theory, but only after a fierce fight with the referees, as one of these referees later confessed. On the Nobel Prize web page one can read the autobiographies of recent laureates. Quite a few complain that they had great difficulty publishing the ideas that won them the Prize. One does not find similar statements by Nobel Prize winners earlier in the century. Why is there more resistance to new ideas today?

why thed? should i rant?
 
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Spookz

Outstanding series of posts. And relentless. Well done.

Thed, I've actually appreciated a number of your posts. However, Disagree with what? A bunch of sociological claptrap. - that was pure avoidance on your part. Spookz was presenting an Epistemological review of "science" and its fallibility in part as a response to your question about the Institution of science. So when the discussion suddenly starts showing the weaknesses of science, suddenly its just a bunch of claptrap.
 
Spookz

When are you going to give me your thoughts based on your experiences rather than quoting a bunch of other peoples.

The examples you quote are facile, to me. They got rejected but where later accepted. Why was that? As I said, radical ideas have to be fought. Scientists are still humans with human preconceptions and faults. When will a UFologist admit they made a mistake or error in analysis? General answer, never, for to do so will be to admit they are wrong.

I would like to think that the likes of Condon will say, "I was wrong", if ET was proven. That does not mean his ideas are worthy of scorn after the fact or that later work was dismissed because of an error. mistakes happen.

One of the few UFologist's I've met who appear to embody the real scientific method is Ives on this board. They admit when something is wrong but still want to find an answer. Hopefully, one day, they may find the damning evidence for or against either side. Hopefully, when they do, both sides will see the facts for what they are.

Now try responding to me without quoting somebody elses work.
 
Re: Spookz

Originally posted by Ives
Thed, I've actually appreciated a number of your posts. However, Disagree with what? A bunch of sociological claptrap. - that was pure avoidance on your part.
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Not pure avoidance, really. I feel people mistake the inherently adversarial system of Science as an attempt to stifle new thought. I was trying to present what I felt was a misunderstanding on the authors part. Maybe I presented the point badly.

I also feel a lot of non-scientists think that the Sekrit Cabal of Science(tm) read a paper and all nod their head wisely assuming that The Truth has been uncovered. It can not be further from the truth. If you learn the language used in papers there are carefully guarded phrases that amount to nothing more than "the other team thought this, they where wrong" or "You are all patently wrong, the data says we are right". The purpose of peer review is to ensure that these logical fallacies are weeded out or are put in a less nasty way. It does not always work of course.

Sometimes someone comes along that is so far out the box they are in a circle, but are right anyway.

To paraphrase my tutor, "By 40 yrs old you find it hard to except new ideas", he put it better. I then went on to disprove a long held belief of his. A large argument ensued in public. Then I learned the adverserial nature of the game.
 
Re: Spookz

When are you going to give me your thoughts based on your experiences rather than quoting a bunch of other peoples.

heh, so now i have to actually experience that which was outlined earlier before i can comment? i fortunately know how to acknowledge and utilize a superior presentation that coincides with my attitude. it is simple expediency. why paraphrase shit when the internet make it easy to reproduce the original work? focus on the msg and not on the personalities! what a frikkin cheapshot! shame on you thed.

The examples you quote are facile, to me.

but of course

They got rejected but where later accepted.

by the same board? why the frikkin excuses thed?

Why was that? As I said, radical ideas have to be fought.

you make this sound as if it is a good thing. this is a flaw in the system that has to be fixed, not accepted as the norm. you guys are a bunch of sheep!

Scientists are still humans with human preconceptions and faults.

enough with the defensiveness. it is not very becoming

When will a UFologist admit they made a mistake or error in analysis?

crap rhetoric. When will a scientistt admit they made a mistake or error in analysis

General answer, never, for to do so will be to admit they are wrong.

dude. give it up. this is a pathetic showing on your part

I would like to think that the likes of Condon will say, "I was wrong", if ET was proven.

fantasies and wishful thinking. condon did not make any errors. he had an agenda that was fulfilled in his report. he engaged in a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts

That does not mean his ideas are worthy of scorn after the fact or that later work was dismissed because of an error. mistakes happen.

you crack me up

One of the few UFologist's I've met who appear to embody the real scientific method is Ives on this board.
They admit when something is wrong but still want to find an answer. Hopefully, one day, they may find the damning evidence for or against either side. Hopefully, when they do, both sides will see the facts for what they are.

rambling now?

Now try responding to me without quoting somebody elses work.

heh. you wanna make this personal eh? the effort i expend on my posts are for me to decide. if you do not like, fuck off. nobody forces you to respond
 
Spookz and other believers: At least one author of The Jupiter Effect did not get hurt much, if at all. He has managed to publish at least two successful books after signing his name to absolute nonsense and giving the fundamentalist religious types support for their End Times prophecies.

If he got away with it, I find it hard to believe that any establishment scientist would be afraid to publish a book on Ufology if he thought he could make a buck or two on it.

Von (Van?) Daniken has made a lot of money in the last 30 years publishing follow-ups on his original book about ancient astronauts.

There are numerous books published on Ufology, ESP, OBE, the Bermuda triangle, channeling, and other pseudo science. I see no problem for those who want to publish books about off beat subjects. Once published anywhere, I would expect a valid idea to be recognized as such.

Some of your examples of publishing problems for new ideas are interesting. Note that most of your examples involved ideas that were accepted after being initially rejected. It almost looks like an argument that a valid idea will overcome the forces favoring the status quo. It also suggests that it does not take 50 years for a good idea to be validated.

Sometimes I get the impression that current believers think that Ufology is some new discovery of information long covered up by the government or some other establishment.

It has been going on for at least 50 years. A major or colonel with a name something like Defoe published a book on the subject in about 1953, which might have been the first book on the subject. I do not think there were any serious books prior to the Defoe book describing theWW2 Foo Fighters, which are the oldest UFO reports I remember.

In over 50 years, all the believers have are unsupported anecdotes and unconvincing photos/videos.

Are there unexplained sighting? Probably, but so what? Unexplained is just that: Unexplained, not evidence of anything significant. Are there anecdotes about observations which indicate intelligence behind the object described? Yes, there are a lot of stories about alien abductions and UFO’s operating at high speed with amazing maneuverability. The problem is that these are merely interesting stories.

Historically, there are also interesting stories about ghosts, vampires, leprechauns, witches, trolls, ancient technologies lost and not reinvented, et cetera. Are we to accept such stories as evidence? Must resources be allocated to investigate every story about some strange phenomenon? It seems to me that the burden of proof or the requirement for supplying evidence is on those advocating new ideas.

When cold fusion was first described, every knowledgeable physicist dismissed it as nonsense, yet there were some attempts by others to reproduce the effect. There were funds provided to companies intending to develop the nonsense. Anything remotely plausible seems to be able to find an audience and at least minimal funding. The claim that ideas are being suppressed does not seem valid to me.
 
thed - shove this quote up your ass

"It is not just a problem of fraud," he says. "I and colleagues have seen sheer nonsense published in journals such as Physical Review Letters, papers with gaping method-ological flaws from prestige institutions." Because journals have a limited number of pages and government agencies have lim-ited funds for research, too lenient reviews of the established and the orthodox can mean too severe reviews of relatively unknown scientists or novel ideas. The unorthodox can be frozen out, not only from the most visible publications but also from research funding. Not only does less-than- sound work get circulated, but also important, if maverick, work does not get done at all. The peer-review system's bias-es, highlighted in the Schön case, tend to enforce a herd instinct among scientists problem. As Samuel Pierpont Langley, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, wrote in 1889, the scientific community sometimes acts as "a pack of hounds....where the louder-voiced bring many to follow them nearly as often in a wrong path as in a right one, where the entire pack even has been known to move off bodily on a false scent."

Fraud Shows Peer-Review Flaws

http://www.aera.net/gov/archive/n0199-01.htm

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030128/05/
 
Re: Spookz

Originally posted by spookz
When are you going to give me your thoughts based on your experiences rather than quoting a bunch of other peoples.

heh, so now i have to actually experience that which was outlined earlier before i can comment? i fortunately know how to acknowledge and utilize a superior presentation that coincides with my attitude. it is simple expediency. why paraphrase shit when the internet make it easy to reproduce the original work? focus on the msg and not on the personalities! what a frikkin cheapshot! shame on you thed. ::rest of the post deleted::
Click to expand...

There are so many ways I could answer that, I'll be polite instead. I was endeavouring to engage you on the principle of peer review and it's validity but instead you decided to launch a cheap shot cross my bows. Funny how an attempt at meaningfull dialogue is interpreted as pap. Shame on you instead.

Can you have an original thought without referring to others?

Notes that you think my positive responses to Ives are ramblings. Who has the problems here?
 
Re: Re: Spookz

Originally posted by thed
There are so many ways I could answer that, I'll be polite instead. I was endeavouring to engage you on the principle of peer review and it's validity but instead you decided to launch a cheap shot cross my bows. Funny how an attempt at meaningfull dialogue is interpreted as pap. Shame on you instead.

Can you have an original thought without referring to others?

Notes that you think my positive responses to Ives are ramblings. Who has the problems here?
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i am not a scientist. i have never gone thru the peer review process. i have never sat on a peer review panel. how do you think i would know about these matters if i do not reference others who have actual experience.?

peer review and its validity? i simply demonstrated it's failures. you had an issue with that because the failures were quotes and not my words.

* focus on the frikkin msg and not the messenger dolt.
* there is no need to be polite. i am a big boy now
 
Re: Re: Re: Spookz

Originally posted by spookz
i am a big boy now
Click to expand...

Then use proper English and grammar, turd.

You obviously want this to devolve into a flame war. I for one refuse to engage a complete idiot, just out of high school, in this sort of debate. Your only response to my questions so far has been insulting or someone elses quotes. Fuck Off.
 
dino

Some of your examples of publishing problems for new ideas are interesting. Note that most of your examples involved ideas that were accepted after being initially rejected. It almost looks like an argument that a valid idea will overcome the forces favoring the status quo. It also suggests that it does not take 50 years for a good idea to be validated.

can we tell for a certainty that there are'nt other valuable ideas that were dumped simply because a discouraged author met with a unfavorable assesment?

i mean sure we hear about that ones that got lucky but is that a guarantee that other good ideas that are rejected will meet with the same good fortune?

there are ideas on how to overhaul the system. lets get on it. human fallibility is never an excuse
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Spookz

Originally posted by thed
Then use proper English and grammar, turd.

You obviously want this to devolve into a flame war. I for one refuse to engage a complete idiot, just out of high school, in this sort of debate. Your only response to my questions so far has been insulting or someone elses quotes. Fuck Off.
Click to expand...


arf arf:D

I for one refuse to engage....

you already have

:D
 
Aliens.

Here is what I have to say about aliens since Im too lazy to read the rest of posts. While I believe that there are flying saucers. (not to be mistaken with "UFOS" (which fall under any catagory of flying objects)) I believe aliens exist too, but I believe they have NEVER come to this planet, and never will. And i believe flying saucers are man made. (hence my name)
 
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