Posted: Aug 22, 2017 2:40 pm
Calilasseia wrote:
No I don't. I never said the process was perfect, because no process involving human beings ever is. However it's reliable, and far more reliable than apologetics.
Is this true for all journals, for all types of papers?
Actually, I think you'll find the "hit rate" is better than 95%.
Most scientists 'can't replicate studies by their peers: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39054778
More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments: http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scient ... ty-1.19970
Scientific Findings Often Fail To Be Replicated, Researchers Say: http://www.npr.org/2015/08/28/435416046 ... rchers-say
Ah, the "here's some rare instances of failure, that I'm going to inflate to dismiss the entire enterprise" trope we see all too often from creationists ...
Not so. Read above. And you might also wish to read "The great betrayal - Fraud in science": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC546437/
Item one: the New Scientist article's click-bait headline doesn't actually point to a fundamental problem with the scientific method, nor, as we read the article, with peer review, rather, it points to a problem with significance statistics, and moreover, the author of the paper in question is primarily concerned with the medical field (hence his paper being published in PLoS Medicine). Even more problematic for your apologetics, is that the article contains this telling response from a senior editor at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, viz:
Oh look. His focus was medical research articles, not articles across the whole of empirical science.
Yes, because medical research affects lives. A broken peer review process matters here the most.
Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/
Peer review is a flawed process, full of easily identified defects with little evidence that it works. Nevertheless, it is likely to remain central to science and journals because there is no obvious alternative, and scientists and editors have a continuing belief in peer review. How odd that science should be rooted in belief.
So there you go. Science is predicated upon faith in scientific review.
So you can drop the duplicitous creationist trope, because those of us who paid attention in science class know it's another piece of blatant and duplicitous misrepresentation, one I've branded using the term "quantifier abuse" - namely, latching on to a small number of rare instances of a phenomenon, then asserting that the phenomenon in question is a universal problem for the discipline in question, tranforming a very restricted "there exists" into "for all" via apologetic sleight of hand.
You are trying to cling to an idealistic vision of what science ought to be like rather than the unfortunate reality.
Oh, you posture as being in a position to teach the rest of us this? Despite the fact that we learned about the provisional nature of scientific findings a lot earlier? Ah, the smell of hubris ...
All I am saying is that you ought to judge a scientific paper not on the fact that it has been published but whether it has been cited and its results corroborated by other scientists conducting research independently. Your standards are just too low.
Once again, read my previous post. I was referring to the entire evolutionary process. Don't add to the track record of duplicity that has already followed your postings here.
So you accept that natural selection is not a blind watchmaker but more of a crude sieve?
Oh actually, it turns out that this piece of "speculation" is now supported by molecular data. I have numerous papers on the development of lungs from Sarcopterygian swim bladders, several of which I've presented here in the past.
That's nice. Do you have any evidence that swimbladders were converted into lungs by Darwinian cumulative selection?
Ah, more misrepresentation. I never claimed in my above exposition, that the individuals in question did not apply thought to the matter, merely that they applied incorrect thought as a result of knowledge gaps. But keep demonstrating how the process of apologetics twists the statements of others out of recognition.
But evolution is a mindless, thoughtless and blind process (according to Darwinism).
Quite simply, the notion I have presented here, one understood without such misrepresentation by everyone else, is that with an infant technology, key pieces of knowledge are, by definition, absent at the beginning of the enterprise, and await discovery. The trouble being, of course, that discovery thereof is made all the more difficult, if clues pointing in the right direction are also absent, which is sometimes the case. Those early aircraft experiments point to [1] absence of key pieces of knowledge, [2] a shortage of clues available to those responsible for the documented failures, and [3] insufficient specialist knowledge on the part of the same persons, that might have pointed them in a better direction. I have no doubt whatsoever that they had ideas from the start, and a determination to test those ideas empirically. The problem is that the ideas in question were wrong, the evidence for this being the dismal failure of their artefacts.
As for steam engines, well Heron of Alexandria constructed a toy model that could have produced a small amount of mechanical power around 50 CE, but it wasn't especially practical. Likewise, prior to the Industrial revolution, there are a number of early attempts to produce steam engines that enjoyed a chequered degree of success. An early steam turbine, used as a roasting jack, was described by an Ottoman polymath, one Taqi al-Din, back in 1551. Likewise, Thomas Savery's steam pump from 1698 didn't have pistons, and indeed had no moving parts other than taps. Had it worked, it would have been quite an achievement, but unfortunately, it had serious flaws. Meanwhile, the Frenchman Denis Papin, having successfully constructed a pressure cooker, and witnessed first hand the power of steam under pressure, developed the first prototype steam engine with a piston in 1690, and was given no credit for his insight when he came to London, despite having, in 1704, built a modestly successful steam-powered boat (indeed, Papin's vessel employed a rudimentary version of a steam turbine).
Inventions obviously require some experimentation. But that isn't trial and error, it is trial and redesign.
No it doesn't, as you would know if you bothered to read the papers in question. This wasn't an "act of will" on the part of the fish, rather, it was the consequence of one set of mutations affecting the Pax6 gene (among others), resulting in loss of functional eyes that wasn't a hindrance in a totally dark cave, followed by the karst window fishes acquiring other mutations in Pax6 that restored eye functionality, and became useful in that environment.
Wrong. The fish decided to move into the cave environment as a source of food or to evade predators. It selected its own environment and then became subject to the pressures of that environment.
No it doesn't. Because what really happens is niche migration. Namely, organisms find something new to eat. When that new food item is accompanied by few or no competitors, this is frequently the trigger for adaptive radiation and speciation. The Cichlid literature is particualrly informative here.
Do not beavers create their own niche by building dams?
The first of those articles isn't a detailed account of tool use and manufacture, rather a history of interaction with fire. The second is merely an overview of the history of tool use and manufacture, and again does not cover details. So, once again, what distinctive features differentiate a rock shaped by natural forces, and a rock shaped by humans?
By markings showing the rock or stone was used to cut meat with or to hammer roots.
Actually, if those distinguishing features are present, as asserted, then it should be possible to place them in a quantitative framework. But even in the absence of this principle, I'm still waiting for details.
Possibly. But the design inference criteria could not be applied across the board.
This assertion in itself is highly debatable, and again points more to your ideological predilections than to the facts. In general, the first task that is pursued by humans is "can we make something that works?" The question "can we make it work better?" arises later. See those early aircraft again.
Except that some designs only do work when they are optimally designed. There's no point in making a car engine if it fails after 100 miles on the road. It has to be built to last for at least 5 years.
Hmm, so you don't think natural selection, acting as a high-pass filter, acts to improve function, despite implying earlier that this was actually so? Interesting the twists and turns that apologetics takes ...
Natural selection acts to preserve function with improvements coming only later where needed. As Darwin stated, selection doesn't strive for perfection in a way a designing agency would.
This is vague to the point of being nebulous. Detail again?
On a case by case basis. Some scientists claim the human eye is sub-optimal, others claim it is optimal. Obviously, to settle this dispute requires being able to conceive of something better designed.
I don't propose to post all 18 pages of that chapter to reinforce the point, but the above is a suitably illustrative excerpt.
That's nice, but the fact is that Dawkins does define biology as the study of complicated things that appear to be designed. Even if he doesn't believe they were actually designed...they still appear designed.
Ahem, what "intelligence" is responsible for mirage illusions? Er, none. It's light refraction.
The human brain deceives us with the appearance of the mirage. It isn't light refraction that creates the image.