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Re: Steve Wing, a scientist?
At the risk of adding to the turmoil, I must respond due to having just read (well listened) to "small blue orb" by Carl Sagan. He mentioned that the church basically kept Gallileo under house arrest, but let students use the "mathematical short cut" of assuming the earth orbited the sun, because it made the mathematics of plotting the planets, etc much simpler, but refused to consider that maybe the earth did orbit the sun.
Heliocentric followed Occam's razor. It was a simple solution compared to an incredibly complicated solution. Most times occam's razor works.
When "scientists" resort to sneaky gas plumes that avoid all the radiation detectors, water contamination upstream from reactors, claims that somehow our bodies are much more subceptible to man-made isotopes rather than natural, etc, to support their theories, they are going against Occam's razor. As such, they better have very much BETTER proof.
Unfortunately the general public probably has never even heard of Occam's rasor, let alone applied it to trying to decide the validity of one claim versus another.
Frank R. Borger - Senior Physicist, Gammex RMI
fborger@gammex.com phn 608-828-7289 fax 608-828-7500
How many physicists does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one. According to Heisenberg, all you have to do
is observe the light bulb, and you change it.
>>> Rudi Nussbaum <d4rn@pdx.edu> August 4, 2000 14:02 >>>
If two studies based on the same raw data lead to different findings, it
clearly shows the influence (unconscious or deliberate) of methodology, in
particular the importance of identifying all important
confounders. Therefore, "preponderance", i.e. counting off number of
published studies and deciding about their validity by majority rule is
absurd. There is only valid refutation of the one study that disagrees
with the other one hundred if you can show an error in the analysis.The
other important question to ask is: who sponsors and pays for the
research?
rudi H. Nussbaum
--
Dr. Rudi Nussbaum
Please note my new email address
d4rn@odin.pdx.edu or d4rn@pdx.edu
On Fri, 4 Aug 2000, Sandy Perle wrote:
> > Yet Raabe concedes that Wing is "bright and sincere". Would that not
> > force his scientific opponents to work harder and seriously discuss and
> > if they can, refute the evidence presented in numerous papers that
> > provides reasonable explanations for the glaring discrepancies between
> > a number of studies of nuclear workers and those of the A-bomb survivors?
>
> Yes, only if there were not a preponderance of studies that support
> the conclusions supported by Otto Raabe and others. Just because Wing
> may be "bright and sincere" doesn't correlate with accepting his
> hypothesis, when a large database supports views contrary views.
>
>
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