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Author
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Topic: Frank J. Tipler: Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?
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Mike Gene
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Member # 149
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posted 02. July 2003 20:26
Brauer: quote:
But I'd take his thesis a lot more seriously if there was any evidence presented that ID research was actually being done. As it stands, we observe a lack of ID papers in the literature. This could be due to a number of causes:
Your list is incomplete. Keep in mind that Tipler does not only focus on peer review, but also discusses two related sociological phenomena that share the same dynamics – funding and the ability to secure a position in academia.
With that it mind, there is plenty to add to the debate.
I do this on ARN (the thread with the same title). Feel free to check it out.
[ 02. July 2003, 20:27: Message edited by: Mike Gene ]
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Mike Gene
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posted 02. July 2003 23:43
Here’s another interesting find, which again, independently raises some of the same arguments/concerns I have aired here over the years.
Excerpts from “New Ideas in Science” by Dr. Thomas Gold -->
( http://www.amasci.com/freenrg/newidea1.html )
This question of how the support of science - and I don't mean only the financial support but also the journals, the judgment of referees, the invitations to conferences, acknowledgments of every kind - how that interacts with the question of herd behavior, is what I will now discuss.
[I like Gold’s “herd” metaphor – MG]
It is important to recognize how strong this interaction really is. Suppose that you have a subject in which there is no clear-cut decision to be made between a variety of opinions and therefore no clear-cut decision to be made in which direction you should put money or which direction you should favor for publications, and so on. No doubt opinions would need a multidimensional space to be presented, but I will at the moment just represent them in a one-dimensional situation.
Suppose you have some curve between the extreme of this opinion and the extreme of that opinion. You have some indefinite, statistically quite insignificant distribution of opinions. Now in that situation, suppose that the refereeing procedure has to decide where to put money in research, which papers to publish, and so on. What would happen? Well, people would say, "We can't really tell, but surely we shouldn't take anybody who is out here. Slightly more people believe in this position than in any other, so we will select our speakers at the next conference from this position on the opinion curve, and we will judge to whom to give research funds," because the referees themselves will of course be included in great numbers in some such curve. "We will select some region there to supply the funds."
And so, a year later what will have happened? You will have combed out some of the people who were out there, and you will have put more people into this region. Each round of decision making has the consequence of essentially taking the initial curve and multiplying it by itself.
Now we understand the mathematical consequence of taking a shallow curve and multiplying it by itself a large number of times. What happens? In the mathematical limit it becomes a delta function at the value of the initial peak. What does that mean? If you go for long enough, you will have created the appearance of unanimity. It will look as if you have solved the problem because all agree, and of course you have got absolutely nothing. If no new fact has come to light and the subject has gone on for long enough, - this is what happens. And it does happen! I am presenting it in its clearest form, and it is by no means a joke. If many years go by in a field in which no significant new facts come to light, the field sharpens up the opinions and gives the appearance that the problem is solved.
I believe that our present way of conducting science is deeply afflicted by this tendency. The peer review system, which we regard as the only fair way we know of to distribute money (I don't think it is, but it is generally thought to be) is an absolute disaster. It is a completely unstable method. It is completely prone to this tendency; there is no getting out of it. The more reviews you require for a proposal - now the NSF requires seven reviewers for a proposal - the more you require, the more certain it is that you will follow the statistical tendency dictated by this principle. If you had noise in the situation, it would be much better. There used to be in the United States many different agencies, and there was perhaps an odd-ball over here who gave out some money for one agency, and a funny fellow over there for another. This was a noisy situation, and it was not driving quite as hard towards unanimity. But now we have it all streamlined and know exactly to whom we have to go for a particular subject and, of course, it is an absolute disaster.
Once a herd is established, by whatever historical evolution this has come about, it obtains such firm control that it is extremely difficult to do anything about it. And even if it were appreciated that that is the situation, one just doesn't know how to interfere. Where then is the right to free speech if every journal has to send each article out to a number of people to review, and the bulk of the people are with the herd? Usually with just one-third of the reviewers very negative, the paper does not get published.
So there is no free speech in the sense that you cannot publish diverse viewpoints. There is also no free speech at conferences because the same is true there. Would all those who have a divergent opinion be able to organize their own conference? Very rarely. We (note: meaning the SSE) represent perhaps an example here showing that it is possible, but it is pretty rare that one can raise funds to run conferences. Essentially once the herd is established, it will interfere in any one of the activities that one would need to further that science.
Would the Dean of a university be willing to promote somebody to tenure who was outside the pack? He can't, because he has to send out letters to the leading persons in the field - he may inquire from 20 people before he gets permission to appoint somebody to tenure - and how can he get that when the pack is running in another direction than this person? It is absolutely hopeless! So you establish the situation more and more.
[Note how closely the following point maps to one of the basic arguments I have been making –MG]-->
Once a herd has been established in a subject, it can only be broken by the most crass confrontation with opposing evidence. There is no gentle way that I have ever seen in the history of science where a herd once established has been broken up.
In many subjects such clear evidence is very hard to come by. In the complex subjects, especially I always think of the earth sciences in this respect, there are always different ways of interpreting any one fact; so many complicated things have taken place that any one fact can have three or four interpretations and the crass confrontation is very rare.
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 03. July 2003 02:16
Mike quotes: In many subjects such clear evidence is very hard to come by. In the complex subjects, especially I always think of the earth sciences in this respect, there are always different ways of interpreting any one fact; so many complicated things have taken place that any one fact can have three or four interpretations and the crass confrontation is very rare.
What relevance does this have for ID? Especially the form of ID which depends on an eliminative approach? One may ask, are there Intelligent Design papers out there which provide an scientific alternative to the so far mainly eliminative approach to infering intelligent design?
Let me state that I do not consider front loading a useful concept to infer intelligent design but I do want to accept Mike's suggestion that a design like thinking can be helpful in understanding 'design in nature'.
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nosivad
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posted 03. July 2003 07:29
The question of who gets invited to conferences is critical. The conferences that led ultimately to the acceptance of the "modern synthesis" are notable for who was NOT invited even though they were all alive at the time. Here is a partial list. Richard Goldschmidt, Leo Berg, Pierre Grasse, Otto Schindewolf and Robert Broom. There is not a Darwinian among them. nosivad
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 03. July 2003 13:05
Davison, are you suggested that these conferences are closed to outside attendance? I would like to see some evidence that these people were not allowed to attend. But in the end that's all irrelevant. Neo-Darwinism 'won' based on the facts. Other ideas failed based on the lack thereof.
It's not being invited or not that matters but having something scientifically relevant to tell that matters
It's often that simple.
[ 03. July 2003, 13:06: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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andyg
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posted 03. July 2003 14:41
I think the example of Peter Mitchell's chemiosmotic hypothesis is an instructive one in this discussion. Mitchell was ridiculed - really ridiculed - by bioenergetic biochemists over his chemiosmotic ideas.
At first glance, Mitchell had many of the hallmarks of a kook to the biased or cruel:
1. He published his works privately in monographs (harking back to the days of Victorian scientists)
2. He did not belong to a university, but did his experiments in a converted shed on his dairy farm.
3. His funding came from his family.
4. His writings were notoriously difficult to read.
But the thing which saved Mitchell is that he made a number of predictions in his works for other scientists to test. In particular,
he outlined experiments which could falsify his hypothesis. By the time his critics had finished trying to disprove him, he had been
awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It didn't hurt that one of Mitchell's collaborators wrote a review of his privately published work in the late 60s.
Chemiosmosis 1 Nobel citation
AndyG
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nosivad
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posted 03. July 2003 14:55
Pim, do you actually believe that scholars with the dimensions of those I listed are going to attend a conference by a bunch of ideologues when they have already exposed the darwinian fantasy with their own books and publications? How naive can you be? The "modern synthesis" was a closed union shop then and remains so to this day. nosivad
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brauer
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posted 03. July 2003 15:36
nosivad stated that Richard Goldschmidt, Leo Berg, Pierre Grasse, Otto Schindewolf and Robert Broom were not "invited" to certain conferences. Pim van Meurs asked if the contention was that the conferences were closed to anyone in particular, as nosivad's statement would seem to imply, or if the "univited" simply had nothing in particular to add. nosivad responded that these scientists wouldn't want to attend such conferences "attended by idealogues".
This exchange is similar to others on this topic. For instance, I (and others) have suggested that the peer review process might be part of the story for a dearth of ID publications, but only a part of the story. Another part would be the lack of meaningful submissions.
In response to this we've been told, "the authors don't want to expose themselves to ridicule." (This, AFAICT, is why the ISCID bibliography remains closed to non-members.)
Well, you know what? Exposing yourself to possible ridicule is part of what scientists do. It is the necessary price to pay to have one's ideas critically evaluated. There's no way around this: if you believe strongly enough in your work, you have to stand up and proclaim it.
I repeat my assertion that there is nothing in the literature primarily because there have not (yet) been any ID results of note. The scientific community is uninterested because nothing interesting has (yet) been said. Maybe this is because not enough ID researcher have been given grants, or tenure. That doesn't matter. For whatever reason, nothing interesting has been said, so no-one's paying attention.
Say something interesting, folks, and you'll be listened to.
[Note: rightly or wrongly, sociological expositions on the nature of academic peer review are not likely to be considered all that interesting by practicing scientists. I would humbly suggest that the effort be spent elsewhere. In other words, change science by doing science.]
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Mike Gene
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posted 03. July 2003 15:49
The link andyg provides provides a little more light:
quote:
Mitchell's 1961 paper outlined the hypothesis in the form of several postulates which could be subjected to test. In retrospect, it was a great strength of this first paper that Peter did not go into too much detail; the ideas were new and strange, and were introduced to a field dominated by a few major laboratories with their own different ideas about how the coupling between electron transport and phosphorylation occurred. It is interesting to look back and remember how sparse the clues were on which the hypothesis was based.
Yet ID requires “extraordinary evidence”, especially given the fact that 91% of the scientific community equates ID with religion (a stereotype). The Mitchell story is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant. This has already been discussed:
http://www.idthink.net/back/bugs/index.html
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Mike Gene
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posted 03. July 2003 16:09
brauer suggests that ID theorists should be willing to expose themselves to ridicule. If it was only an issue of ridicule, there would be no problem. After all, the Polanyi Institute was shut down not because Dembski backed away from it because he was ridiculed. Remember?
Brian Martin has been looking into the phenomena of dissent in science for years:
quote:
Textbooks present science as a noble search for truth, in which progress depends on questioning established ideas. But for many scientists, this is a cruel myth. They know from bitter experience that disagreeing with the dominant view is dangerous -- especially when that view is backed by powerful interest groups. Call it suppression of intellectual dissent. The usual pattern is that someone does research or speaks out in a way that threatens a powerful interest group, typically a government, industry or professional body. As a result, representatives of that group attack the critic's ideas or the critic personally--by censoring writing, blocking publications, denying appointments or promotions, withdrawing research grants, taking legal actions, harassing, blacklisting, spreading rumors.
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/93nw.html
Ridicule? If only it were about ridicule.
quote:
The scientific community is uninterested because nothing interesting has (yet) been said. Maybe this is because not enough ID researcher have been given grants, or tenure. That doesn't matter. For whatever reason, nothing interesting has been said, so no-one's paying attention.
Since brauer finds a sociological analysis of science to be uninteresting, it is no surprise that he offers us such a naïve perspective. Gold offers a much more sophisticated analysis. It’s not a question of “interesting.” It’s a question of coming up with something crass enough to break up the herd. Anything less that this and the herd will not be interested. I’ll comment more about this on ARN later tonight.
Finally, note the reliance on subjectivity. ID theorists must submit something that is “meaningful” and “interesting.” But those boil down to subjective judgment calls that are dependent on previously held background beliefs. Y’see, Behe’s thesis is not interesting enough to be in the literature. But responses to Behe’s thesis are interesting enough to be in the literature. Go figure.
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brauer
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posted 03. July 2003 17:31
Mike, just give me SOMETHING I can look at and say: "wow, that's neat stuff" about. ID is being ignored by the scientific mainstream because IT IS BORING and INTELLECTUALLY STERILE. (Yes, that's a subjective evaluation, but I have a subjective point of view.)
It's a lot like the Duesberg/Mullis HIV/AIDS controversy, actually.
The idea was interesting at first, when the skeptics raised lots of new possibilities. (Also, there were the same freedom of speech and funding issues at first. There were even similar letters to the editor and petitions.) If they had delivered on any of them, they would have become golden in the eyes of the establisment.
But they didn't, and 16 years later nothing has come of it. Maybe we should relax the peer review system to allow the HIV skeptics to get more of their speculations into print? Perhaps we could stir up interest by having "HIV does not cause AIDS" taught in high school?
Or maybe there's no science forthcoming because the idea leads nowhere. Just my naive and highly subjective opinion, of course.
It's the height of disingenuity for films like the DI's "Unlocking the Mysteries of Life" (and the ISCID bibliography, too) to portray the ID movement as if it's had this tremendous impact on biology -- as if something, anything has been accomplished by ID -- while at the same time singing the refrain that no-one is paying attention.
There may be something to ID. But, for whatever reasons, the work hasn't been done that would allow us to evaluate that possibility. The fairness of peer review is the least of the problems the science of ID has.
Anyway, please pardon the rant. I do sympathize with the dilemma. I just think that to escape it we need a legitimate breakthrough rather than a retooling of the scientific endeavor. And I don't yet see where that breakthrough will possibly come from.
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nosivad
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posted 03. July 2003 17:32
Does anyone really expect to find direct evidence for ID? I see ID everywhere in the universe. It is a given and certainly not debatable. Once it is accepted many otherwise baffling biological phenomena become crystal clear. I refer you to my home page and my 2000 paper in Rivista di Biologia, "Ontogeny, phylogeny and the origin of biological information". nosivad
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andyg
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posted 03. July 2003 17:44
quote:
Yet ID requires “extraordinary evidence”, especially given the fact that 91% of the scientific community equates ID with religion (a stereotype). The Mitchell story is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant.
ID doesn't require any more evidence to be accepted than Mitchell's chemiosmotic theory, or the link between H. pylorii and stomach ulcers. In both cases, the evidence became undeniable. If and when ID reaches the same point, it will be accepted. Scientists will simply have no choice.
I suggest you take your complaint about scientists unfairly equating ID with religion to the more widely published members of the ID movement - in particular the Discovery Institute - who have promoted such ideas. By their words shall ye know them.
AndyG
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charlie d.
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posted 03. July 2003 18:03
Wait a minute. Who are these scientists who do not want to expose themselves to ridicule or retribution? Behe? Minnich? Axe? Macosko? Denton? All on record to support ID (though some may have changed their mind since).
Any one of them could have come out with ID-supporting evidence without fear of (further) ridicule or retribution, and still can. Indeed, if any of them suffered at the hand of the "darwinian inquisition", coming out with the evidence would be the way to prove their persecutors wrong. Those guys should all be out there wearing their thumbs on their pipettors, night and day, to get the data that would make them "respectable" again, if not popular, rather than eating dinners at the DI expenses (and the DI, instead of paying for dinners, leaflets, pamphlets, documentaries, lawyers and P.R. people, could actually fund research - ever thought of that? How revolutionary that would be.)
Those scientists are not enough? Oh well, there's the list of 100, of course. They were not afraid of ridicule either. Aren't they scientists, after all? Or perhaps they are only when it's convenient to say so, for PR purposes.
How many ID scientist/year of work does it take to get one (1) paper with positive ID evidence? To run one (1) single lousy well-designed experiment? How many ideas for ID research have even ever been proposed?
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brauer
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posted 03. July 2003 18:13
nosivad:
quote:
Does anyone really expect to find direct evidence for ID? I see ID everywhere in the universe. It is a given and certainly not debatable. Once it is accepted many otherwise baffling biological phenomena become crystal clear. I refer you to my home page and my 2000 paper in Rivista di Biologia, "Ontogeny, phylogeny and the origin of biological information".
OK, then. You hold a particular axiom that is not seen as necessary by the vast majority of practitioners of science.
Don't you feel like you ought to take some responsibility for showing why adopting this particular axiom might be useful? (By which I mean scientifically useful.)
And if ID is indeed "a given and certainly not debatable", if finding direct evidence of ID is not possible, then I guess I can understand how it is that ID -- the science of detecting evidence of design -- has nothing meaningful to say.
[punctuation edit]
[ 03. July 2003, 18:14: Message edited by: brauer ]
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