Re: Experts Worry

Biochmborg@aol.com
Tue, 21 Sep 1999 12:30:37 EDT

In a message dated 9/21/99 9:27:20 AM Mountain Daylight Time, Bertvan@aol.com
writes:

> Brian wrote:
> >>As offensive as this sounds, it is nonetheless true that you really do
not
> >>know or understand this issue as much as you claim to. My best advice
> >>would thus be: READ THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE!
>

Brian Harper didn't write that, I wrote it. If you are going to take someone
to task for what you perceive to be an offensive remark, at least take the
trouble to yell at the right person.

>
> Bertvan:
> It is as offensive as it sounds, and seems typical among those people
> zealously defending Neo Darwinism.
>

Since my remark was to defend scientific integrity and the scientific method,
not neo-Darwinism, it seems to me that that is what you are really upset
about.

>
> I'd like to think real scientists, those who have
> more to do than defend the present dogma....
>

Only a non-scientist would confuse a legitimate, generally accepted
explanation of a natural phenomenon for dogma.

>
> ...are less ruled by their
> "certainties", and are at work looking for reasonable alternatives.
>

Only a non-scientist calls for "alternative explanations" after the real
explanation has been discovered. And why is it only evolution that demands
alternatives? Why not seek out alternatives to germ theory, immunology,
electromagnetism, gravity, etc.? Why are these explanations any stronger
than the accepted evolutionary explanations? Or is it that they are simply
safer; that they do not challenge your prejudices the way that evolution does?

Kevin L. O'Brien