Joel Pitt wrote:
On 12/21/06, Philip Goetz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
That in itself is quite bad. But what proves to me that Gould had no
interest in the scientific merits of the book is that, if he had, he
could at any time during those months have walked down one flight of
stairs and down a hall to E. O. Wilson's office, and asked him about
it. He never did. He never even told him they were meeting each week
to condemn it.
This one act, in my mind, is quite damning to Gould.
Definitely. I strongly dislike academics that behave like that.
Have open communication between individuals and groups instead of
running around stabbing each other's theories in the back. It just
common courtesy. Unless of course they slept with your wife or
something, in which case such behaviour could possibly be excused
(even if it is scientifically/rationally the wrong way to go, we're
still slave to our emotions).
You might check into the history of Russel's Principia Mathematica.
Such activities are unpleasant, but have long been a part of the
scientific community's politics. (I'd be more explicit, but I'm not
totally sure of the name of the mathematician who knew for long before
Russel's publication that the work was flawed in it's basic principles,
and don't want to slander a named individual out of carelessness. [And
I could be mis-remembering the details...it's the kind of activity I
generally ignore.])
That someone is a politician and manipulative does not mean that they
aren't a good scientist...or we'd have very few good scientists. If you
aren't a politician, you can't rise in a bureaucracy. Merit doesn't
suffice.
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