Hi, ACD.
Seriously, stop commentating! Just write your arguments and have some confidence that I will understand them without your help. Better yet, adopt a writing strategy that allows you to commentate in line with the rest of your writing so you don't have to interrupt yourself to get your points across. And, allusions to future comments are not helpful in any conceivable fashion.
The entire point of your reply could have been effectively conveyed in about four sentences.
-----
ACD writes:
Thank you for the first real reply. (Of course, I may be mistaken: perhaps you too are addicted to the use of a label-gun. Just a different model. If you reply, then we will see, will we not.)
Just so you know, we're in a forum called "Free for All": this is the forum where incomprehensible garbage is placed, and the moderators make very little attempt to regulate what people write in their posts. That's why nobody is going out of their way to take you seriously.
And, Brad McFall is a poster here at EvC whose posts are so grammatically contorted that each of his posts creates a new singularity in linguistic space. You can look him up with the "member search" function and read some of his posts to get an idea of the depth of the insult intended by comparing you to him.
-----
ACD writes:
(I never, once, talked about hypothesis {testing} in the statistical sense of the word. I use Hypothesis, exclusively, to mean un-proven idea. You know, what Theories are before they grow up.)
But, that is literally the
only sense of the word that there is, ACD: that was the entire point of my last post. Statistics, science and logic all use the same definition.
If you want "hypothesis" to mean something other than that definition, then you are no longer talking about the same thing that science is talking about, and your argument is nothing more than a request to shift our semantic paradigms to match yours.
-----
ACD writes:
Imagine a right triangle: to the left top, is A:'smoking'. At the bottom right, is C:'cancer'. At the bottom left, is B:'biochemical pathway: specific chemicals found in cigarettes cause cancer in cells.'
Going from A, to B, to C, is science. Going from A to C, is bullpoopy: just like psychology: which uses that exact same excuse of wanna-be, statistical H-testing 'science' to 'prove' whatever nonsense 'theory' had been dreamed up this week: hey, gotta keep giving out them sheep-skins!
The alternative, should B be missing, is a complete listing of all possible alternatives. (And even then, you would have to make real sure you got them all. And you would have to qualify your results and conclusions in any case. There are rules to all this, you know.)
There is no B for ToE. ToE is invisible.
It is generally supposed that natural selection is the main driver for ToE. Supposed. The mechanism for ToE is not known. (Do you see the problem here?)
Yes, I very clearly see the problem. The problem is that you are completely wrong. Natural selection is
not just
supposed to be the mechanism, it has been
shown to be one of the two mechanisms that are
required for evolution to occur.
It cannot be stressed enough: the process by which the connection between smoking and cancer was uncovered is
identical to the process by which the connection between natural selection and evolution was uncovered.
Here is a citation from the 1950's about the connection between lung cancer and smoking:
Breslow et al. (1954). Occupations and Cigarette Smoking as Factors in Lung Cancer. American Journal of Public Health and the Nations Health. 44(2): 171-181.
Here is the abstract:
quote:
This four-year study offers additional evidence tending to connect heavy cigarette smoking with cancer. In addition, it lists several occupations that seem to have some etiological relationship to the disease. They need further study, as it is suggested.
Nice and solid, proven stuff, isn't it? Nothing like that "statistical H-testing" crap that evolution depends on.
Here is an excerpt of the methodology:
quote:
Definitive study of whether an occupation or cigarette smoking is a causative factor in lung cancer requires that the incidence rate for the exposed group be determined. This rate is then compared with that of a control population, the most acceptable control being all the rest of the population from which the exposed group came. Assuming the same diagnostic and reporting standards for both groups, one may thus determine how the chance that a member of an exposed group will develop lung cancer compares with the chance that such a person would develop the disease if he were not a member of the exposed group. If the likelihood of developing lung cancer is substantially increased by being in the exposed group (e.g., a certain occupation) one may conclude that the exposure is a causative factor in the disease. The key to this analysis lies in determining comparative incidence rates for a suspect group and a control population.
To sum up: in order to test the hypothesis that smoking causes cancer, we should compare the incidence of cancer in smokers to the incidence of cancer in the population as a whole. Interestingly, no biochemical mechanism is proposed.
Yep, nothing like that "statistical H-testing" crap at all.
Also interestingly, by this time, natural selection and genetics were already well-known and well-documented, and the Hershey-Chase experiment that showed DNA's connection to this function was revealed two years earlier than the above study (1952).
It seems we've known the biochemical mechanism for evolution a lot longer than we've known the biochemical mechanism for lung cancer.
And, also interestingly, smoking is only known to
increase the risk of developing lung cancer, not to cause it (less than 20% of smokers develop lung cancer), so you really don't have as strong or as certain a causative link as you think you do.
-----
ACD writes:
Oh yes. Let me inter-space my remarks with the following: You are a smucl{.
You can just write, "smuck," you know: there's no rule about name-calling. But, next time, you should probably write, "schmuck," just to avoid providing me with more ammo with which to insult your education level.
Edited by Bluejay, : Emphasis.
-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.
™ Version 4.2