Darwin’s Cathedral

Australia - On Line Opinion ^ | 23 Feb 06 | Hiram Caton

[Dark Knight]

What you are talking about is strictly a scientific bias problem. If you disagree with the mainstream it is more difficult to get published. Much more difficult. Dogma in science is still dogma. Once Murray went down the road of "qualifying" sources, you and I lost the ability to determine systemic errors in the analysis.

Here's an interesting question: What should we do about a music encyclopedia that is published by Sony?

Foghat might even get more than a footnote.

God help us all.

Economic viability over the course of time is a better measure. In biology, Darwinism is a footnote in the lab. Companies are going wild over after various bio tech issues. Rarely does Darwinism, NeoDarwinism etc, ever limit or guide the methodology. It may when we know more about the genomes, and what they mean. We don't and it doesn't.

A paradigm shift is not looked upon as a good thing by entrenched researchers. They hate it and resist it with every neuron of their very smart brains.

But the economics will prevail. I don't remember which character said it in Ghostbusters, but the idea is priceless. "Hey, I've worked in the private sector...and they want results!" to a couple of professors that just lost their positions.

Thanks for the info on Murray again.

DK

[RoadTest]

I heard he repented on his deathbed. I hope he did. His "theory" has done a lot of damage to men's souls.

[Right Wing Professor]

Kary Mullis is a nutcase, and probably the least deserving Nobelist of the last 50 years. Funny how all these AIDS patients started taking antivirals and suddenly stopped dying.

But of course, anyone who thinks the scientific evidence is consistent with the earth being created 6000 years ago could believe anything.

[Pharmboy]

See number 20--I figgered you might want to weigh in here.

[sitetest]

LOL!! Everyone KNOWS that JS Bach is the greatest!!

;-)

[Oztrich Boy]

Historian pretending he understands how science is done.

[Oztrich Boy]

Actually and incredibly this was a review article in The Australian Review section 5-6 February.

That is the Australian flagship paper of the Murdock Press actually paid Caton for this

[Oztrich Boy]

Make that 11-12 February

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The legend-credulous express dismay when challenged to produce just one instance of a Darwin discovery that was taken over by experimental biologists.

Hiram must be a scientific ignoramus. Took me all of 10 seconds to come up with "an instance". There are more all over the web.

Here's one:

"Jeffrey Podos, Joel A. Southall, and Marcos R. Rossi-Santos

Vocal mechanics in Darwin's finches: correlation of beak gape and song frequency

JEB 2004; 207(4): 607-619"

[Varda]

"Mendel believed that his discovery disproved Darwin’s theory."

Did Mendel ever mention Darwin? I've never read that he did. Mendel's work shows that he thought he was working on a different mechanism for evolution. I don't think he and Darwin were at cross purposes.

[Dark Knight]

Handel 155
Wagner 423
Haydn 74

Did Murray account for the language bias and how? I am not disparaging Murray, but that is a monumental bias to overcome.

It is a meta social construct study and Wagner appears to be a problem.

Judging sources has the systemic error in logic of appeal to authority. I have not read Murray so I really can't say he falls into that fallacy. But in movies, Wagner is certainly more important than one would gather from Murray.

Bach was still robbed.

DK

[kittymyrib]

Mendel and Pasteur were Christians, and only fools would say this limited their scientific accomplishments. That's why the secular monkey-men of today refuse to acknowledge them as superior to their imam, Darwin. You can't argue with their religious convictions.

[GSlob]

"Did Murray account for the language bias and how? "
That's why, as you could see from my partially reprinted list of his "qualified sources" on Western music, he was trying to pick English, American, Italian, German, French, Danish etc. sources - to eliminate, minimize, or average out cultural bias in the statistical treatment of the averaged totals. The French could be thought to be partial to Debussy, but why would the Americans be?

[Pharmboy]

You got that right! Johann Sebastian is in a class by hisself...

[GSlob]

Well, "appeal to the authority" is not a fallacy there - while "man on the street" [or his market preferences] could be a gage of popularity of the day, Murray made a conscious and perfectly reasonable decision that only the professionals are in any position to offer learned and informed judgment on the relative standing of truly prominent contributors in their disciplines. To order the importance of scientists in biology by the means of statistical polling, for example, the only valid "voters" ought to be biology PhDs, or still better, tenured biology professors. All others need not bother. To filter off fads, he limited his statistical work to those who were born before 1910 [and thus had reached the "acme of 40" by 1950.]

[Dark Knight]

That tends to be my point. Murray attempts to measure a social issue using his judgement to limit his data. Did he use Slavic sources, and once you go there, how do you weigh the evidence?

My simple movie search indicates Wagner was under represented. The degree of underrepresentation is vast. Wagner may be ranked above Beethoven and Bach. I doubt there was a concerted effort to insert Wagner in the movie database, so the question is always: How do you know, what you know?

ToEs have a vast following, and few applications. Genetics has a vast following and vast applications. How in the world could Darwinism have more of an impact than genetics and the discovery of DNA in biology?

DK

[webstersII]

"The reality: Darwin’s science was in the amateur mode of the naturalist, whereas the physical and biological sciences had shifted into the precision instrument mode of the modern laboratory."

And that is still true today.

[webstersII]

"Kary Mullis is a nutcase, and probably the least deserving Nobelist of the last 50 years. Funny how all these AIDS patients started taking antivirals and suddenly stopped dying."

Funny how Magic Johnson and some other high-profile types are still healthy without taking any of that stuff.

[Dark Knight]

But appeal to authority is the problem. Meta studies are particularly prone to them. While the scientific standard of a good study might be 95% confidence (1 in 20 may be completely rigorous but absolutely wrong), a meta study has no "real" standards.

He eliminated fads...why? He cut his info off at 1950...why?

I would say that as a matter of convenience, he cut off all the hard science biologists that came into being after DNA and genetics became important and biology evolved into hard science.


DK

[Right Wing Professor]

Funny how Magic Johnson and some other high-profile types are still healthy without taking any of that stuff.

False.

See, you were just complaining about creationists being called liars. And I replied that the problem is, people post falsehoods without any apparent attempt to check on their truth. And you just illustrated what I said beautifully. Magic Johnson indeed takes a cocktail of anti-HIV drugs.