Re: "Most scientists are probably wrong" - Dembski sees the trees, ignores the forest


noctiluca wrote:
> 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.

The paper by Ioannidis appears to be about biomedical research, so it's
unclear whether it has much or any bearing on science in general.

Dembski is getting crazier by the day. Check this out where he
falsifies a quote in order to plant the idea that people who denounce
religion and embrace Darwinian evolution are masculinity threatened:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/290#more-290

.

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