"Most scientists are probably wrong" - Dembski sees the trees, ignores the forest
- From: "noctiluca" <robertlcamp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 31 Aug 2005 09:20:21 -0700
Over at his blog William Dembski has taken up the sword for Michael
Behe by trying to suggest that the latest statements from Lehigh's
biology department don't mean much.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/289#more-289
As support for his contention that,
"Evolutionary biology has turned "selective reporting" into a science.
In fact, that's about the only way evolutionary theory is a science."
Dembski has cited an article in New Scientist called - "Most
scientific papers are probably wrong." This article discusses
conclusions in a paper by Greek epidemiologist John Ioannidis which
suggest "small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and
selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research
findings false."
Now, the validity of these observations aside (and at first glance it
appears they may be overdrawn), there is an important point taken from
Ioannidis' paper that Dembski somehow manages to ignore. Ioannidis
says, "We should accept that most research findings will be refuted.
Some will be replicated and validated. The replication process is more
important than the first discovery." In other words, Ioannidis is not
questioning whether the process delivers reliable results, just the
relative value at certain junctures in the process. It comes as no
surprise that replication is perhaps the most important part of the
methodology of science.
Note, at this point, that although Dembski gets the New Scientist
article's title correct in his blog header, he somehow manages to
refer to it as "Most scientists are probably wrong" in the body of his
post. Given the nature of the picture he's trying to paint it's
easy to imagine this is not an oversight.
Dembski, in standing over Behe's wounded form, is trying to take the
sting out of an obvious consensus among biologists by suggesting that
their informed opinions do not matter. But that's not what Ioannidis
paper implies at all. It questions the details of data and statistics,
not the overarching theory which, after voluminous experimental
replication, has come to be extraordinarily well established within the
biological community.
And, by the way, if "most scientists are probably wrong," doesn't
that call into question why Dembski and his cohorts would wish to be
considered scientists and ID a science? Moreover, don't we then have
to view with even greater skepticism the conclusions of Behe and other
ID "theorists?"
Of course in the light of their peer-reviewed output, I suppose they
are well insulated from Ioannidis' concerns.
Robert
.
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