From: "Henry Kuska" :

Shiva said: " You know that most serious scientists would not consider a
single study by even the most reputable group to be evidence of anything,
now
don't you? Of course you do."

No, I do not. If the results of a study are not evidence, then what are
they?

Silly man. You are playing semantics here, the last refuge of those
who have no rational let upon which to stand. The phrase was "evidence
that Rose Mosaic Virus may be transmitted in our gardens," for one
thing. Not just "evidence." The study you cited might just provide
evidence that the guys doing it didn't know what the hell they were
doing. In that sense, any study does indeed provide evidence--of
something, even if it is the sloppiness or stupidity of those
conducting it.


How can you state the above when you just gave a link for definitions
of "evidence"? Are you mixing up the concept of "accepted fact" and
"evidence"?

I think you are using the word incorrectly, and you think I am using
the word incorrectly. The fact is, any idiot knows that the single
study you cited can not be considered "evidence that Rose Mosaic Virus
may be transmitted in our gardens." Why? Because something occuring
once may simply be a fluke. This is why real scientists look for
replication of studies, examine the scientific methods used,
investigate the use of controls and the credentials of the body that
conducted the so-called study. For you to claim to be a scientist and
yet pretend that anything you find on the Internet is a study that
provides valid evidence for the topic at hand leads me to suspect that
that you might just be one of the Rose Mosaic Alarmists I have run
into before.

Meanwhile, this hairsplitting is getting on my nerves, so I imagine
others are sick of it too.

In addition to the fact that I do not believe any single study that
has never been replicated anywhere can be considered to provide
evidence that Rose Mosaic Virus may be transmitted in our gardens, the
study you cited did not convince me.



You may want to reexamine the following (please look for the appearance of
the word "evidence" in both links):
"The two links below address natural spread of RMV:
http://www.rdrop.com/~paul/tom_virus.html

and

http://www.goldcoastrose.org/pdf/clean-stock.pdf

This is what the U.C. Davis rose virus cleaning document states (the
goldcoastrose link above):
"The viruses that cause rose mosaic disease are most commonly spread through
propagation procedures such as budding an infected scion onto a healthy
understock, or a healthy scion to an infected understock. Disease symptoms
are not always obvious, which is why the use of virus-tested planting stock
is advantageous. There is some evidence that rose mosaic spreads in
commercial rose plantings. UC researchers are presently looking for possible
explanations.""

--
Henry Kuska, retired

http://home.neo.rr.com/kuska/