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From: pell@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Anthony Pelletier)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.misc,sci.research
Subject: Re: Strange results in Nature article
Message-ID: <2301@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 27 Jul 88 16:45:38 GMT
References: <10465@lll-winken.llnl.gov> <20850@beta.lanl.gov> <2444@cxsea.UUCP> <4520@ut-emx.UUCP>
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In article <4520@ut-emx.UUCP> ethan@ut-emx.UUCP (Ethan Tecumseh Vishniac) writes:
>I see in today's newspaper that an investigation by Nature  discovered
>that there were at least two problems (fatal problems) with the
>laboratory protocol.  First, the experimenters knew at all times
>which solutions were which (i.e. control and experiment) and
>this is well known to produce biased results.

This does not sound right.  I hate to suggest that you do someting radical
like read the original paper, but they state in the paper that each initial
tube was coded with two different codes by two different pairs of observers
(not actually doing the experiment).  They do point out that, not long after
the experiments were begun, it was possible for the experimenter to tell
which was which from the results.  This is a problem that is hard to overcome,
believe me.  Even if someone else labels your samples in code, the experimental
sample can have an appearance so distict that you can tell which it is.
From that point on, you know which tube is which.

>Second, the laboratory
>notebooks revealed a large number of cases that produced negative
>results but were not included in the statistics. 

This could be a big problem; or it could be that it does not work all the time.
Do your expermints work all the time?  Unless you have never tossed a
data point, don't be too quick to judge.  
But, this requires some explanation.

>This is all supposed to come
>out in Nature in the near future.  The author (Benveniste ?) is
>standing by the work and has denounced the investigation as sloppy
>and unprofessional.
>
>As with any truly startling result, the sensible thing is to believe it
>only when such questions have been cleared.

No argument there.  I am a bit surprised that someone who seems to be proud
of his skepticism has assumed that "the Amazing Randi" and Co. have
the definitive, final word on the accuracy of a scientific work.
What did they have to say about the fact that 6 independent labs got the
same result?  Or, does that mot matter?  


> I'm not afraid of dying     Ethan Vishniac, Dept of Astronomy, Univ. of Texas
> I just don't want to be     {charm,ut-sally,ut-ngp,noao}!utastro!ethan
> there when it happens.      (arpanet) ethan@astro.AS.UTEXAS.EDU
>    - Woody Allen            (bitnet) ethan%astro.as.utexas.edu@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU


Let's wait until all the data are in--I don't think they are yet.

-tony