When Peer Review Fails: Bad Science Papers of the Week

The author appeared to be claiming that by "Creator" he only meant the design or invention of nature resulting from evolution, but if that were true he wouldn't have used the word "mystery."

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.

Peer review does not stop at publication, rather that is when peer review actually begins. In this case their may have been an error in allowing eraly publication but that error was caught and caught through peer review.

Hi, Mike.

mike the wiz writes: So you think that nature inventing something would make no sense to say? But I have read that many times in scientific literature, they often say things like the, "genius of evolution" or "evolutionary genius". Or, "nature's cleverness". These are all superb oxymorons, akin to saying, "fugacious pine trees".

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.

It's pretty obvious that nobody here is taking anything on faith. We're evaluating evidence, looking for more, and discussing possible interpretations and the reliability of what we have.

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

HTH.

Wut?

To suggest brilliant design is designed is just the height of pseudo-science and I am outraged, for if there was a creator God we would not expect evidence of design we would expect evidence of, "not design", just like we would expect that if you are a qualified scientist you should have no scientific credentials and if you are a human male you should have female genitalia.

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.

I can understand Nature translating to Creator. "Mysterious" could be translated hyperbole, like Awe Inspiring or Impressive or Very Cool.

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

What does the rest of the paper say?

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.

jar writes: Peer review does not stop at publication, rather that is when peer review actually begins.

Exactly. Getting published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal is the first and easiest step in the whole process. After that the thousands of specialists on the subject, from all over the world, step in. Scientific massacres and suicides could be involved...

Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

To be completely honest, provided that the science in the paper is on target, aren't the editorializing comments secondary anyway?

I agree.

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.

I like the idea of a "bad science paper of the week". Let me provide another. This week's bad science paper made a lot of stir when it was published. But now it's looking distinctly dodgy ...

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

Fortunately in science, peer review is an ongoing activity and even past results continue to be critically tested.

It's a useful tool.

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.