When Peer Review Fails: Bad Science Papers of the Week

Message 16 of 27 (779469) 03-04-2016 2:33 PM

Reply to: Message 14 by Percy 03-04-2016 2:15 PM

Hmmm. I'm not saying you're wrong but then I have heard evolutionary scientists use superlatives pertaining to the mysteries of science, when they didn't really mean anything that alludes to a supernatural God.

I would say your reductio-ad-absurdum was valid but the rule is with a conditional implication, that the consequent must CERTAINLY follow.

Example:

"If you are a human therefore you are a female."

The problem is, if you have a human you may well have a female, but technically speaking it is a false implication because it doesn't follow 100% of the time. (non-sequitur)

Now if he used in the article, a word that certainly IMPLIES some kind of religious statement, then you would have a stronger case that he was saying something none-evolution.

The point to be careful of though, is that even if he did MEAN an intelligent designer, (creator) this doesn't mean that he said something pseudo-scientific, because he could be an agnostic.

I know agnostics, (though I admit they are a minority), that accept that there is an intelligent designer of organisms but this doesn't mean that they believe that the intelligent designer is a supernatural designer. Therefore when people say that it would be a "pseudo-scientific" statement, they are using that phrase as a question-begging-epithet, because they are not clever enough to delineate the difference between arguing a supernatural designer, and merely arguing an intelligent designer, whomever or whatever that designer might be. So their argument might not include a specific designer, but only the conclusion that it was intelligently designed by an intelligence.

Strictly speaking, I myself would not make a religious syllogism for my intelligent design argument. Usually I use the law-of-identity, and the final conclusion of my argument, which does not involve God, is that, "therefore there is an intelligent designer".

When I speak outspokenly about God being that designer, obviously I would admit that I do that by faith, I do that through personal conviction.

So it could be a religious-arguer. But if he doesn't mention who the creator is, then technically speaking the only problem evolutionists have with this paper is their prejudice against something that would only POSSIBLY SUPPORT theism.

That is the key with these types of public outcries, if this matter did not allude to God existing, I doubt you guys would be talking about peer reviews failing. In my experience evolutionists use peer-review as something to proverbially CLOUT creationists over the head with, I strongly suspect they would only detract from the peer-review epithet, IF and only IF something theistically flavoured worked it's way in there.

This is the first time I have ever known evolutionists to complain about peer review.

Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

Message 18 of 27 (779478) 03-04-2016 3:40 PM

Reply to: Message 13 by mike the wiz 03-04-2016 2:01 PM

Can you give examples? In my experience, this kind of expressive language is exactly the kind of thing that's discouraged in the technical literature. Science journals often publish opinion papers, editorials, special features and even some concept papers that might use this kind of language; but it's highly atypical for idioms and metaphorical language like that to appear in an experimental manuscript.

That said, lapses and weird things do happen. I once reviewed a certain paper written by foreign authors, which had good English grammar throughout; but they kept using the phrase "to the tune of" whenever they mentioned a sum of money (they were comparing the profit margins of insecticidal products, or something like that).

But, even taking that into account, this "design/mystery of the Creator" incident seems like quite a conspicuous outlier.

Edited by Blue Jay, : No reason given.

Message 19 of 27 (779480) 03-04-2016 3:47 PM

Reply to: Message 10 by mike the wiz 03-04-2016 1:47 PM

It's creationists that unquestioningly seize on any straw and refuse to question it.

HTH.

Message 20 of 27 (779481) 03-04-2016 4:01 PM

Reply to: Message 8 by mike the wiz 03-04-2016 1:40 PM

Dewd, I hold rather unorthodox views when it comes to the origin of biochemical complexity, as the record of my past threads will demonstrate. That doesn't mean I shouldn't point out sloppy science papers, does it? Anyways, you can get back to trolling the internets.

Edited by Genomicus, : No reason given.

Message 21 of 27 (779501) 03-05-2016 4:21 AM

Reply to: Message 14 by Percy 03-04-2016 2:15 PM

But it does seem strange that these 2 awkward translations appeared in the same context.

Message 22 of 27 (779682) 03-07-2016 1:14 AM

To be completely honest, provided that the science in the paper is on target, aren't the editorializing comments secondary anyway? I'd certainly be willing to accept the explanation of a bad translation if the actual paper made sense.

Message 23 of 27 (779691) 03-07-2016 5:59 AM

Reply to: Message 17 by jar 03-04-2016 3:40 PM

Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

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Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Message 24 of 27 (779707) 03-07-2016 10:09 AM

Reply to: Message 22 by NoNukes 03-07-2016 1:14 AM

This seems to be an engineering paper. That is to say, it looks at hand coordination from an engineering perspective. And engineering is a design system.

Yes, the language used was unfortunate. But I think the criticism has been a tad excessive.

Message 25 of 27 (779719) 03-07-2016 11:39 AM

http://news.harvard.edu/...ercut-psych-research-got-it-wrong

Message 26 of 27 (779721) 03-07-2016 11:44 AM

Reply to: Message 25 by Dr Adequate 03-07-2016 11:39 AM

It's a useful tool.

Message 27 of 27 (779765) 03-08-2016 6:36 AM

Reply to: Message 25 by Dr Adequate 03-07-2016 11:39 AM

quote:

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...the Open Science Collaboration (OSC) tried to reproduce the results of 100 published studies. More than half of them failed, creating sensational headlines worldwide about the “replication crisis” in psychology.
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But an in-depth examination of the data ... has revealed that the OSC made some serious mistakes that make its pessimistic conclusion completely unwarranted.

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Seems to me the OSC has just created another data point supporting their own conclusions.