Jared v. Hovind

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Ph.D is a Ph.D no matter where it comes from.

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No, it really isn't.

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What about the mediocre Ph.D's from prestigious universities?

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It is well-known within each academic field which PhD programs and which particular professors/researchers are at the top of the pile, quality-wise.Also, remember that at least in the sciences you have publications and original research that you have conducted that all of your peers and prospective employers can examine to see how your work is going.The work is actually more interesting to most employers than where your degree came from.

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I have to agree, Inkorrekt. Were it not for Hovind, Gish, Morris, and a host of other counterparts, regardless of their faults, the established science would be left much less accountable for their own claims.

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In your dreams does the scientific community pay this much attention to any of those science-hating religious wackos.I am almost certain that the vast majority of scientific researchers have never even heard of Gish, Morris, Hovind, and the rest.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-25-2006 03:13 PMThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-25-2006 03:14 PM

Well naturally a PhD is a PhD is a PhD. However, if a university offers a PhD for eating pizzas and sticking bits of textbooks onto a loose collection of rambling drivel then we would be right to not trust PhDs that were given by that university.I went to university, but my qualifications are not as respectable as someone with the equivalent qualifications from Cambridge or Harvard etc. However, given the nature of the establishments anyone can be sure that I met a certain standard of academic knowledge in order to have passed.Unfortunately, Hovind 'went to' a university whose credentials are questionable. For all we know, the university will award PhDs for anyone that coughs up enough money. We get to see Hovind's thesis, note it is of exceptionally poor standards, and realise that the questionable credentials are well justified.If I produced something like Hovind's thesis whilst I was at university, it would not have even been marked, let alone get me a PhD. I have a few friends who are getting their PhDs (two of them in bioinformatics), and I've seen the difference in academic quality between Hovind and them. If you say so but by this same merit we should give the same level of compliment to David Irving and Robert Faurisson.

Science is a prestigious journal. It also published an article by Anton LaVey. In his quest for finding out the cause for AIDS and homosexuality, he did an experiment and got the paper published in Science .He demonstrated that the hypothalamus in homosexuals is smaller than those of normal heterosexual men. There was almost no control. The experimental subjects did not qualify as subjects. The experimental design was so sloppy. This man was criticised from every corner in the scientific community. Anton Lavey quit his prestigious position in the Salk institute. He also quit Science. So much for the credibility of Science and the Scientist.Nature also published a paper in which a new fertility factor was identified in Seminal fluid. After the paper was published, the principal author had requests from all over the world for samples. The author persuaded the Graduate Student to make more of this factor. He could not repeat that experiment. REASON:It was discovered that During Summer, the power went off. The freezer failed. Semen was kept thawed for 3 days.Some bacteria settled in. The semen contaminated with bacteria was used for the study and the factor was identified. Later on, all precautions were taken to preserve the semen samples. The experiment could never be repeated. No one knows what this factor is. Yet,he got his Ph.D anyway. Many years prior to this,the principal author plagiarised the work of a well known protein chemist. Somehow, he escaped punishment. He was rewarded. He is a director of a prestigious laboratory getting lots of grants.This is unbelievable. yet true. So much for the credibility of our Scientists. If this is competitive endeavor, then where is ETHICS in Science?This message has been edited by inkorrekt, 04-25-2006 11:16 PM

I don't find it unbelievable. Are you saying every single scientist is dishonest? That the entire body of science is faked data and totally false? That each and every scientist lacks credibility?Fudging data is a problem in science. Misappropriation of funds is a problem amongst lawyers. Killing patients is a problem amongst doctors. Brutality is a problem amongst police. Lying and pork barreling is a problem amongst politicians.Accountability is an ongoing challenge. Who exposed these frauds? Was it Hovind? Hovind however is part of the problem not part of solution.If you would think logically and look at cases instead of over generalizing you might not be so incorrect so often.
lfen

Thank God it was you that said that, or else I might have taken it seriously. No offense, but you do have a habit of getting things a little muddled. I'm assuming you don't mean Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan. Instead I think you mean Simon Levay, a neuroscientist, who wrote this article.This is hardly the thread for it, so if you want to discuss the paper and the implications of the experimental design we can open a new thread. However, I'm not sure how you have refuted the phrase: By using an example where a scientist You also seemed to have equivocated slightly from science (the endevour) and Science (a magazine).

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This seems more on topic, but without a name, it is impossible for us to verify. How do we know the rationale behind him getting the PhD? Maybe he got it for different work, or maybe he got it for work associated with the seminal fluid? Where did he get his qualifications from, was it a prestigious university or a diploma mill? Which prestigious lab? Surely the more competitive the endevour, the less ethics we'd expect to find (assuming no ethics boards exist). There are ethics in science, otherwise we'd be cloning humans and mating humans with chimpanzees and generally creating races of atomic supermen which will conquer the world.This message has been edited by Modulous, Wed, 26-April-2006 11:47 AM

A kettle/pot/black moment Mod? As a pantheist there is presumably no one for you to thank. {AbE} Hey! I became a Christian via Zen. I took the circuitous route...This message has been edited by iano, 26-Apr-2006 12:06 PM

Huh?This message has been edited by Modulous, Wed, 26-April-2006 12:14 PM

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Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.

Huh what Mod?{AbE} Actually, I get what you mean. I am incorrect. If God is everything then one can thank anything (no slight intended by using such a compressed statement of the pantheist position)Carry on!This message has been edited by iano, 26-Apr-2006 12:21 PMThis message has been edited by iano, 26-Apr-2006 12:29 PMThis message has been edited by iano, 26-Apr-2006 12:34 PM

Oh right, you were referring to me saying "Thank God". OK, glad that's cleared up.

Just keeping the establishment accountable

Are you sure of your information? Anton Lavey was a famous Satanist, and the only match to your claim found by Google was at EagleForum.org in words surprisingly close to your own: I doubt Dr. Anton Lavey exists. You've provided no name. This sounds made up. Yes, no names again, truly unbelievable.There's no need to make up examples of scientific misbehavior because there are actual for-real examples out there. Most recently is the cloning fraud by the Korean researcher who's been in the headlines.Whether real or made up, you cannot indict an entire field with stories like this. Imperfect human beings inhabit all realms of life, no more or less so than in science. That science includes the necessity for replication makes fraud difficult to perpetrate. It was the inability of other scientists to replicate the Korean cloning results that ultimately led to Dr. Hwang's fraud being uncovered.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, Wed, 04-26-2006 09:51 AM

I recieved an email a couple of weeks back from a supposedly reputable internet based University, offering to sell me a Ph.D (or many other kinds of degrees) for a price.
They claim it to be a genuine (if entirely unearned) qualification that pretty much anybody can buy for less than the actual tuition costs of doing it the right way.
They ask for the absolute minimum of submitted work which they will pretty much rewrite for you to make it look legit. You don't need to attend college or anything and the whole process takes a few weeks from start to finish.
they even sent a price list.Unfortunately I don't have the email any more or I would post it. I just had a good laugh then deleted it without another thought.I guess the point is that unless you know how, why and where someone gets their degree, Ph.D and can freely examine the work that went into getting it, then it's just a piece of worthless paper.

*cough*

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"We had survived to turn on the History Channel
And ask our esteemed panel, Why are we alive? And here's how they replied:
You're what happens when two substances collide
And by all accounts you really should have died."
-Andrew Bird

And this shows what? how human beings are sometimes faulty? that science corrects itself?
i vote just trying to take shots at science it seems