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From: alex@cs.qmc.ac.uk (Alex Kashko)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.misc
Subject: Re: Strange results in Nature article (fallout...)
Keywords: skepticism debunking pseudoscience
Message-ID: <558@sequent.cs.qmc.ac.uk>
Date: 3 Aug 88 09:26:21 GMT
References: <1911@aecom.YU.EDU> <6445@megaron.arizona.edu> <492@metapsy.UUCP> <19778@cornell.UUCP> <1931@aecom.YU.EDU>
Reply-To: alex@cs.qmc.ac.uk (Alex Kashko)
Organization: Computer Science Dept, Queen Mary College, University of London, UK.
Lines: 13


 Considering that, as shown by Broadbent and Wade, in their book,
"Betrayers of the truth", fraud is endemic in mainstream science,
we should all ask ourselves whether our own work would stand up to 
an investigation by Randi. Computer Science is harder to fake, but not , I suspect impossible (I haven't even thaught how I could fake a result involving a working program unless I had control of the input, which is not always possible with, say, a compiler). Maybe every research team should include
someone to check for fraud by the research team, or the funding bodies 
should employ profesional magicians to investigate ALL results. More generally
maybe the speed with which most mainstream researchers cry fraud represents a
guilty conscience ( What Freudians call projection ). Reverting to Beneviste's
article, not only has the result been replicated elsewhere (Nature specifically
asked for that) but Beneviste quotes older work showing similar results. 
I suggest that, despite the investigator's report, Beneviste's work still
presents a case to answer.