In a message dated 9/18/2006 11:06:33 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Assuming that a large number of people can't be wrong about something > because they are smart and well-connected is a tautology. I think > there are many examples of large numbers of smart, well-connected > people who turned a blind eye to an inconvenient truth. Not that I > arguing that that's the case with 9/11... but I've generally found it > more profitable to question authority than to make the kind of > assumption that you are arguing. Isn't that not a tautology at all, but one of the basic assumptions about peer-review in science? What is the assumption? That one must always question authority or that peer review has is based on consensus and not open to new data? It is certainly true that individuals who do peer reviews (like me) are people with expertise who therefore probably believe in the mainstream notions. Too often a novel idea will be rejected because it is well novel but this is not universally true and will not be true for long. When a paper is rejected the author has a choice of dropping the idea curse the stupid bastards who don't understand brilliance when they see it or go back and get more evidence. Even a negative and unfair review and rejection (I have had a few of these) can be of value because in the critique of the paper there are questions that can be addressed. New ideas are tested in the world not in the minds of experts. New evidence is collected, new experiments performed new predictions made and confirmed. The essence of peer review has to do with assessment of evidence. Most reviewers try to be fair even when they don't agree with the results of the paper. It is an imperfect process but it does better than most other ways of deciding things. This argument is very similar to the argument used by Creationists when I start pointing out the tremendous geological evidence against the young-Earth hypothesis. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l