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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (35706)	4/23/1999 9:29:00 AM
From: nihil	Respond to of 108807

Maybe you and yours went to really bad colleges and didn't meet the real thing but Joan was perhaps too generous is say "any ...worth his salt." There are lots of really bad guys with Ph.D.s running around loose. I am working on a business plan for a start up with a D.M.D.(doctor minus dissertation) who has some of the most important fundamental patents I have ever read. I think their potential value ranges into the billions. One of these ideas he presented as his Ph.D. research project in one of the hottest areas of modern research. His (chemistry) committee refused to approve the project because they couldn't understand his theoretical physics. The new class of compounds he predicted were discovered empirically (just screwing around in the lab with government money) at another university and published in the right journal. His professor and his university tried to steal his ideas and patent them illegally (only the inventor can patent) and refused to grant him his doctorate. It surprises me that more graduate students don't go postal, but the fact remains that our open entrepreneurial business community provides another kind of review. There is an immense amount of scientific fraud that is rejected by the referral process or isn't even tried by it. The patent process, as you know, is no guarantee that anything works as described or predicted. PTMO won't issue a patent on perpetual motion, but may perhaps allow a patent on an extremely efficient machine. Silk Road is an interesting thread to examine for fraud. It walks like a duck. It quacks like a duck. We only need to see what it tastes like with orange sauce to decide if it is a fraud. But somewhere mixed in with the frauds there are some great ideas. They, like the frauds, are desperate for funds. Things are exaggerated, and scientists are forced to turn into promoters and hustlers. Cold fusion comes to mind. Breeder reactors come to mind. Ocean-Thermal Energy Conversion, Bio-energy, Airships, Sailing ships, PowerPC, Merced, K-7, masses of new technology representing the hopes and dreams of researchers and capitalists have to run the risks of the market. The academic market place is gentler and has a different definition of truth. Eventually the false hypothesis is rejected. Eventually the unrejected hypothesis is subjected to critical tests that it survives and becomes part of the accepted (not yet rejected) body of truth on sufferance.

To: Ilaine who wrote (35706)	4/23/1999 10:45:00 AM
From: Chuzzlewit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Blue, try reading any peer review journal and you will find lots of "these birds" in the sciences. Try Science or Nature for a start. The philosophical approach to science is to generate a falsifiable hypothesis and then pick it apart based on predictions that arise from the hypothesis. Hypotheses that don't generate testable predictions are useless. So a great deal of time is spent trying to disprove a theory. For some reason there is a popular idea that perfectly good science is rejected because it challenges "accepted" ideas. I have yet to see a single case of that sort of thing in biochemistry, genetics or evolutionary science. I have seen grant money doled out for political reasons. There was a journal established about forty years ago which served as a forum for unconventional ideas. It is called The Journal of Theoretical Biology. TTFN, CTC