quote:
Yes, there might be enough to warrent suspicion there, but such an attack to invalidate your opposition is not a noble way to do it!
Who is making an attack? I am simply pointing out the well-known and verified phenomenon that organizations with a vested interest in a particular conclusion have been able to produce scientific studies that have reached their desired conclusions. I am simply pointing out that this has occurred even when it has become clear (and was clear at the time) that the opposite conclusions were being reached in the scientific community at large. And I am simply pointing out that the research produced by the vested interests were often not up the standards considered acceptable in the field.
In the case of tobacco use, the overwhelming evidence acquired by researchers with no clear reasons to be biased in one way or the other showed that smoking was strongly linked to lung disease. The vast amount of contrary evidence were acquired by research funded by those who clearly would benefit from the conclusion that there was no such link.
This phenomenon has occurred in quite a lot of issues where the personal interest of a few powerful entities favored a certain conclusion.
Most people do not own electron microscopes, radiotelescopes, or have the means (or training) to conduct properly controlled randomly sample opinion surveys, nor the training to evaluate the methodologies involved in the data collection, the interpretation of the data according the various competing theories, or the logical inferences made from the data and the interpretations. So most people are unable to properly evaluate the competing claims if different researchers come to opposite conclusions. If the person is unable to take the time to obtain a PhD in the field and spend years acquiring actual practical experience in conducting research in that field, then it is entirely acceptable to evaluate the claims using what knowledge she has, including an understanding of how clearly biased scientific results have been used in the past.
"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
--
Ernie Cline
™ Version 4.2
