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To: farmfriend; Carry_Okie
You haven't read Carry_Okie's book have you?

No, I haven't. First I've heard of it or that Carry_Okie (in real life) is the author. What does the author say about leaving science to the scientists? (Feel free to chime in, Carry_Okie, provided you can carry the tune ;-)

25 posted on 07/24/2002 1:37:05 PM PDT by cogitator
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To: cogitator
What does the author say about leaving science to the scientists?

LOL! Too much for this thread. Really. There is one reviewer of the book (Dr. Nielsen) who intends to use it as a source text in her next philosophy of science course because of the way I explain how markets organize research and chunk information into usable output variables.

The most obvious problem with "scientists" is that there is almost no science that is independent, much less accountable for its objectivity. Most of it requires expensive equipment, data collection, and number crunching. That requires grant money. Most grant money comes from government or "charitable" foundations. The latter has become a form of tax-exempt political advocacy. Thus the only accountability becomes the need to please the funding source. Go against that and the peer reviewers will have a fit. I have read way too many papers whose data disagreed with their executive summaries. It's sad.

The essence of the intellectual problem is that pre-college and undergraduate education is so bad and so ideologically socialist that there is a serious lack of what we used to call an education among the professorate (history, philosophy, the Constitution... you know, education). The very nature of post graduate study is also destructive to interdisciplinary knowledge. Thus most of our "experts" are both very narrow and very gullible. The invasion of technical departments by sociologists has made that situation far worse. "Subjective science" has become not only an approved philosophy, but chic. See "deep ecology."

I do a fair amount of research on my own. One of my more interestging recent observations is about the role of light in managing downcut erosion in steep canyons. Such research is practically verboten because of rules governing riparian access. Unfortunately, I could show you how the vegetation management rules advocated by conservation biologists will be enormously destructive to my forest, causing enormous landslides in the name of controlling erosion.

You see, there is no accountability among the professorate for a Type II error. Because of their isolated approaches they have little respect for the risks they take due to errors of inaction...

Should I go on, or should you buy a book? ;-)

26 posted on 07/24/2002 2:14:12 PM PDT by Carry_Okie
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