This is the way science should always work:

Posted 13 June 2007 by Mike Dunford

Reed Cartwright just forwarded me (and a few others) an email that was just sent out to an evolutionary biology mailing list. I'm going to quote it in full below. Don't worry if you don't understand the technical terms in there - you don't need to know what Bayesian methods are, or how they're used in phylogenetics, or even what phylogenetics is to understand why this email is important, and why all concerned should be proud of themselves.

11 Comments

Reed A. Cartwright · 13 June 2007

You're missing the link to your blog from PT.

Reed A. Cartwright · 13 June 2007

I've gone ahead and fixed the link.

Tyrannosaurus · 13 June 2007

Thanks Reed, I was already groaning and moaning about the "missing link" :-)

Henry J · 13 June 2007

Reminds me of the reported discovery of element 118 some 8 years ago, that got retracted a few months after the report. (Though it has been "re"discovered since then.)

Henry

brad daly · 13 June 2007

come on! ID works that way too!

Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 13 June 2007

ID works that way too!

False dichotomy since the post was about science, and unsubstantiated since there is no official and unequivocal 'works of ID' to look at and consequently no example proposed here. This is at the usual level of 'reasoning' we are used to see from creationists. I.e. none that can be detected.

Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 13 June 2007

False dichotomy since the post was about science

Seems my reasoning skills is on a hike as well. Fortunately I am in a position to do something about it, while ID is hopelessly lost in the strategy of being negative on science. :-) That there is a false dichotomy is true, but the bit about science should be that ID was irrelevant here (for the same basic reason).

Mike Dunford · 13 June 2007

Thanks, Reed. I'm a little jet lagged right now.

Popper's ghost · 14 June 2007

come on! ID works that way too!

Example? And are you implying that ID isn't science? And if so, how is it relevant, since this was about science, not ID?

Frank J · 14 June 2007

Since Michael Behe would probably agree that that's how science should work, the obvious question is whether he has ever retracted the period he insterted in Jerry Coyne's sentence 11 years ago.

This is especially timely as Coyne has just reviewed Behe's latest book (see thread below).

Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 15 June 2007

Frank, that was a whopper! Behe looks less and less like he ever participated in science, he must have had a total brain melt somewhere on the way. (Obviously. :-)

Thanks for sharing.