Why are evolutionists such hypocrites?

Hi, Stephen!One has to wonder what masochistic impulses are moving you these days. People who visit discussion boards pretending to be something they aren't usually work hard at creating a convincing persona, but you don't seem to be putting any effort at all into this "I'm a scientist" pose.You'd expect someone trying to pose as a scientist to at least have his facts straight so as to build some credibility, but you make one factual mistake after another, one of your more recent being this comment about vitamin C requirements: First, in the United States, the National Academy of Sciences does not set dietary requirements. That is the job of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).Second, the vitamin C requirement for non-human primates is 72-108 mg per kg of diet (see page 18 of Not Found |The National Academies Press, the conversion factor from Interational Units for vitamin C is 139 iu per mg). The FDA sets the MDR (Minimum Daily Requirement) for people at 60 mg. The vitamin C requirement from the above cited paper is not the same thing as an MDR, so equating them directly isn't possible, but the minimum human requirement is only slightly less (assuming a human diet of 1 kg/day) than the primate requirement. This makes you dead wrong to state that we have set the "Vitamin C requirements for humans at a level that is about one-tenth that required by every other mammal or primate studied," at least as far as primates go. On the contrary, the requirements appear to be roughly the same, sort of what you'd expect given common descent.Third, you included all mammals in your statement, and since most mammals aside from the higher primates possess the ability to synthesize vitamin C, you are wrong again.You're wrong so many times one would almost think you're making it up off the top of your head. Or perhaps it's just that you're using Creationist websites as a research source. This brought to mind an image of blindfolded twins feeling their way around a fossil dig.Pardon me for presuming to correct as brilliant a scientist as yourself, but you've obviously confused your prayer experiments, which since they're performed on people must be double-blind, with evolutionary research and investigation, which since it usually doesn't involve people rarely needs to be double blind. If you're digging up or interpreting fossils, double-blind plays no role. If you're experimenting on bacteria, you use a control group and some experimental groups. Double-blind issues don't usually apply to evolutionary research, coming up only when evolutionary research is performed on actual living people, usually because of the placebo effect and the possibility of subjective interpretion by the experimenters. Perhaps you've confused double-blind with the more general scientific requirement of replication? An odd statement coming from someone as deep into a pose, poorly done as it is, as you are. Can we assume you've given up defending the indefensible and advocating the ridiculous in the other threads?--Percy

Are "biosynthetic rates of ascorbate" the same thing as recommended daily intake? Anyway, your source doesn't appear to be on the Internet. Please post a copy somewhere on the net and provide a link, or type the relevant passages into a message, particularly the part you mention above, so that we may see if you're making a correct interpretation.In an odd coincidence, your words here: Are echoed almost word for word by Gary Wade in his web article VITAMIN C STORY: IT’S PAST USE AND ITS CURRENT ACTIVE SUPPRESSION: Amazing similarity, don't you think? And he even references the same paper by M. Levine that you do, another amazing coincidence!By the way, this extract from an editorial titled New insights into the physiology and pharmacology of vitamin C coauthored by the very Mark Levine whose paper you and Wade cited appeared much more recently in a 2001 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal says: In other words, the very same Mark Levine that you claim wrote an article back in 1986 advocating ultra-high vitamin C doses says here that the human body makes little use of the additional oral vitamin C in doses above 500 mg. It's a different story for introvenously administered vitamin C, but this is discussed primarily in a cancer-fighting, not nutritional, context, and that's not what we're talking about anyway.So let's sum up here. You've provided a reference to an article unavailable to anyone without access to a university medical library, claimed it says things that the author himself doesn't seem to believe in his other writings, and established that you and Gary Wade use very similar syntax and references. Quite a record for so brilliant a scientist! Do you know Wirth personally, or are you guys just simpatico?--Percy

If you recall, your "data" for demons was the Bible. Is this the "data" you think is going to impress scientists?When you return from your journey into fantasyland perhaps you'll remember that you're at a science site already inhabited by scientists and many science-oriented laypeople. You're doing just as good a job convincing people that the Bible is a scientific reference book as Alan Cresswell is in convincing people he's invented a perpetual motion machine. You're both doing an excellent job coming across as quacks.I'm not even going to address your vitamen C stuff because now you're just changing your story. Instead of defending your claim that "the Subcommittee on Laboratory Animal Nutrition of the National Research Council recommends that most primates be fed 1.75 to 3.5 grams of ascorbate per day", you just move on to new arguments. You seem to be making it up as you go along. I could address your new vitamen C claims, but what would be the point since you'll just make different unsubstantiated claims. Say what you mean the first time, stick with it, and when you make citations, cite something that other people can actually access. I notice you haven't replied to my post about the problems with your M. Levine citation. Sure, Stephen, sure. You won all the debates and you're a scientist. Right.Click on your name, Stephen. That will bring you to a webpage that tells you if you have replies waiting for you. Guess what? You have messages you haven't replied to yet in those other threads. Rather than winning, you appear to have cut and run. But you're not defending them. I called them indefensible and ridiculous because you appear to have cut and run in those threads. You advocated the existence of demons, and you claimed the Bible as a science reference source because The Bible Code proves it, and instead of sticking around to defend those positions you opened this new thread. If you sincerely believe these positions aren't indefensible and ridiculous then get in there and defend them and show they're not ridiculous. Abandoning the field is what the loser does when he's out of ammo.--Percy

In Message 168 of The best scientific method thread, Stephen and I had this exchange. Stephen never replied, but I'd be interested to know if other people think I got it right: --Percy

The placebo effect fascinates me, and joint operations also fascinate me, at least since I had a total hip replacement (THR) last April.This has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion, but I've become pretty suspicious of the feedback doctors get about the results of surgery. There's no way to disguise THR, so there can be no single-blind studies. If you've had THR there is no possible way to disguise it because you can't walk unassisted for at least a few weeks, and the prosthesis shows up on X-rays.I've talked to other THR patients about their results, and leaving out those who have run into complications almost everyone says how great it is. But there's a serious downside that either no one mentions, or that only I am prone to. The muscles are considerably weakened afterwards (they're severed and resewn doing surgery, plus one important muscle, the temper fascia latae (spelling probably way off) is completely de-enervated and has to have nerves recover before you can regain full strength, and this is unlikely to happen fully.The decrease in strength is not any factor whatsoever unless you're trying to resume sports, which I am. I'm a tournament tennis player, and I hope to resume tournament play later this year. I'm not as fast to the ball, if I try to move too fast the muscles hurt, and the muscles can tire and significantly affect play, something that never, ever used to happen for that muscle set.No other THR patient I've talked to, and I've talked to plenty at discussion boards, ever mentions this. Even other THR tennis players never mention this. So the possibilty is that I'm the only one, meaning my THR was less successful than most, or, and I believe more likely, most people won't admit such complaints, not even to themselves, because there is nothing to be done about it. However, I'm pretty sure I'm not very susceptible to the placebo effect. If you give me a placebo instead of asperin, my headache does not go away (I know this because the few times I've been given Tylenol or Ibuprofen when I thought I was getting asperin, I absolutely noticed that the headache did not go away). If you give me a placebo instead of a pain killer, the pain does not go away. I know this because when they switched me from Hydro-something-or-other to codeine a few days after surgery, the pain did not go away, and I fully expected the codeine to work since the switch was because my stomache wasn't tolerating the other medication.So I'm assuming that all the other hip patients, including atheletes, are having the same problems as me, they just don't mention them or even acknowledge them. This likely gives doctors the wrong impression about the success of their surgeries. They need to collect much more objective data and not pay any attention post-surgery when the patient says, "Fine", when asked, "How ya doin'?"--Percy [Fix spelling. --Percy][This message has been edited by Percy, 01-29-2004]

You can make all the excuses you like, Stephen, but science is a consensus activity. New ideas become accepted by gradually building a consensus within the scientific community. It is your job, not ours, to build a consensus for your ideas by gathering evidence and forming cogent arguments around that evidence to help you build that consensus. The first step is to perform experiments with intriguing enough results that other investigators are motivated to replicate them. You keep urging us to do the experiments when it is actually your responsibility to do the experiments that build the interest, and to this point you haven't described anything resembling scientific experiments that support your ideas. Yes, of course. You've done none of this. You *do* realize, I hope, that you're describing yourself.--Percy

Your ignored the primary point of my post. I described for you how science is a consensus activity, and that it is your job to produce experimental results that catch the interests of that community. It matters not that you believe you have presented sufficient experimental results, because it isn't your opinion that matters. New ideas become accepted when they're generally accepted by the community of scientists sufficiently trained in the relevant field to have a valid opinion. The deafening silence and lack of interest from the scientific community says that, regardless of your own personal opinion, you have not presented scientific experiments that support your ideas. In fact, you haven't presented any scientific experiments for demons at all.Why don't you remedy this deficiency and describe for us a scientific experiment where the outcome confirms that demons exist?--Percy

That you can't even answer a simple question but instead have to go through a lengthy set of special pleadings unrelated to science should tell you something about your position.First, let's make clear we're talking about scientific evidence.I asked you for scientific evidence of demons. You produced none.Let me provide an example of how easy this should be: Now, let's you try it: Come on, give it a try. Or are you just like the salesman who, since he doesn't have what the customer actually needs, instead sells what he has all the while concocting a stream of malarkey designed to bewilder the customer into thinking a turnip twaddler is just what he needs to mow the front lawn.--Percy

I can see rational debate is quite a challenge for you. Instead of addressing the objections raised to this "evidence", you're just parrotting your original premise over and over and over again.The Bible codes, theomatics and prayer studies have been addressed without rebuttal by you in so many places and so many times I won't even attempt to enumerate.Your false distinction concerning "evidence of" versus "evidence for" is addressed in Message 184 of The best scientific method thread.You continue your mode of dishonorable debate by asserting positions that have been called into question and then ignoring those questions. Until you address the rebuttals, you have no right to continue making these assertions. Miracles are always consistent with any evidence, but until they themselves leave behind some kind of evidence they're not science.--Percy

Hi, Stephen!This is the Free For All forum, a poor venue for constructive dialogue as there are no guidelines or moderation here, plus I'm attempting to centralize H-D discussions in a single thread:The best scientific method (Bayesian form of H-D). I replied to you in Message 216.--Percy

This is the Free For All forum. There's no moderation on threads in this forum, though Moose tends to get a bit crotchety if you wander too far off the main topic. Knock yourself out.--Percy