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From: sarge@metapsy.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.misc
Subject: Re: Strange results in Nature article (fallout...)
Summary: We don't need a modern-day Inquisition
Keywords: skepticism debunking
Message-ID: <495@metapsy.UUCP>
Date: 31 Jul 88 21:55:12 GMT
References: <1911@aecom.YU.EDU> <6445@megaron.arizona.edu> <492@metapsy.UUCP> <668@ns.UUCP>
Reply-To: sarge@metapsy.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode)
Organization: Metapsychology, Woodside, CA
Lines: 42

In article <668@ns.UUCP> logajan@ns.UUCP (John Logajan x3118) writes:

>Debunkers, as distasteful as we may find them, are not police because they
>have no coercive power.

>The effect of debunkers, to the disapproval of their targets, is to scare
>away money and students.  Both of these are valuable resources.

The words "scare" seems correct.  Debunkers, like bigots, seem to me
to play on our xenophobia, our dislike of new and strange
world-views, in much the same way as McCarthyites played on our fear
of Communism.  A dread of having to live in some different sort of
world seems to be extremely common.  After all -- we fight wars to
maintain the "American Way of Life", don't we?  To me, what CSICOP
was founded to do, and what it does do, is to engage in intellectual
lynchings of people whose views are disturbing to its members.  I
believe their actions are intended to be coercive, even if not in a
physical way.

A person with a new, revolutionary theory is in a very vulnerable position,
even when not confronted by an organization whose intent appears to be
to stamp out such theories.  Why make life even more difficult for
such persons by hunting them down and pillorying them in public?

>I think it is always in the interest of ... individuals to have
>access to all sides of an argument.  To suppress one side or the
>other would lead to stagnation or quackery.

Exactly my point.

>True science has a tendency to win in the long run.  Astronomy triumphed over
>torture.  I think modern "theories" can handle a little debunking.

It would be nice, though, if, in this modern age, scientists with new
ideas or observations did not have to go through what Galileo et al
had to go through in the old days.  The last thing we need is a New
Inquisition.
-- 
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Sarge Gerbode -- UUCP:  pyramid!thirdi!metapsy!sarge
Institute for Research in Metapsychology
950 Guinda St.  Palo Alto, CA 94301