Xref: utzoo sci.bio:1397 sci.misc:2216
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watdragon!violet!rpjday
From: rpjday@violet.waterloo.edu (Rob Day)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.misc
Subject: Re: Strange results in Nature article (fallout...)
Keywords: skepticism debunking pseudoscience
Message-ID: <8087@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 31 Jul 88 20:52:37 GMT
References: <1911@aecom.YU.EDU> <6445@megaron.arizona.edu> <492@metapsy.UUCP> <1653@microsoft.UUCP> <2368@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <19778@cornell.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: rpjday@violet.waterloo.edu (Rob Day)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 26

In article <19778@cornell.UUCP> dietz@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Paul F. Dietz) writes:
>The fact that B. reacted to the debunking team by attacking their
>knowledge of biology is to me quite damning.  Pseudoscientists often
>defend their work by personal attacks on critics.
>
>That Randi is a magician is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT.  I don't care if
>they used a witch doctor; what matters is that they spotted flaws
>in B.'s methodology.

  Just a small point here, I think the fact that Randi is a magician is
fairly relevant, not so much that he is a magician as it is that he is NOT
a researcher in the area under discussion.  Because of this, he is far less
likely to be distracted by irrelevancies.  Other investigators may, at the
critical moment of observation, be mulling over in their mind whether there
is some bizarre property of IgE while Randi is single-mindedly keeping track
of what is happening in front of him.  Randi is also far less likely to dismiss
something as unimportant, while others may be saying to themselves, "Well,
that last step was a bit odd, but I can't think of any way that it will
affect the outcome, so I'll just forget it."
  In Randi's case, ignorance of the science probably makes him a much tougher
critic to buffalo, deliberately or otherwise.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert P. J. Day	//	rpjday@violet.waterloo.{edu|cdn}
Dept. of Comp. Sci.	//	rpjday@violet.uwaterloo.ca
University of Waterloo	//	uunet!watmath!violet!rpjday
_______________________________________________________________________