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Old 02-12-2012, 01:39 AM posted to aus.gardens
David Hare-Scott[_2_] David Hare-Scott[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Sep 2008
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SG1 wrote:
Peer reveiwing is like they guy who wrote it critiques it. How many
"scientists" buck the system? They all need grants and jobs!!!!


For the purpose of general education I will assume that you are serious and
not trolling.

The above statements show little idea of the scientific method or
understanding of the motives of scientists.

The peer review process specifically excludes the author and his/her
associates and is conducted anonymously.

Assuming a global conspiracy of scientists to lie in order to keep funding
is a favourite tactic of deniers. A moment of thought would show how
impossible it is.

First, there is no evidence for it and it assumes that tens of thousands of
people who have little social cohesion (and who are often in competition)
could and would keep the secret. Second, the most famous scientists are
those who bucked the system. The scientist who could overthrow some
important commonly accepted view (anthropogenic climate change, evolution as
the explanation of life as we see it, the health consequences of smoking
tobacco, etc) with evidence would be immortalised as a modern Einstein.
Every young scientist dreams that he/she will be the one who brings on the
next paradigm shift.

There are fabulous rewards waiting for the supposed scientific conspirator
who is the first to breaks ranks - but it doesn't happen. On the other hand
there are also rewards outside the scientific community for the shills of
vested interest to lie and to conduct disinformation campaigns in the
general media, but crucially NOT in the peer reviewed journals, and many
step forward to take the money and notoriety.

Scientists are merely human and have human weaknesses. They do make errors,
they do deceive themselves and sometimes they commit fraud. The point is
that the methodology is there to catch and to expose those errors. In the
long run it works and works to explain the way the universe operates much
better than saying 'I don't like the consequences of this idea therefore it
must be wrong and scientists who say so are liars'.


David