Please Help the World's Rarest Butterfly

Chris J. Durden drdn at mail.utexas.edu
Fri Jul 28 05:07:56 EDT 2000


Thank you Bruce. I agree. The essence of the scientific method is to
question authority. I do not mean to reject it, but to re-examine it in the
light of new observations. The next level is to employ Chamberlin's
multiple working hypotheses.
.......Chris Durden


At 10:04  28/07/00 -0700, you wrote:
>My impression is that we want to tone down personal attacks here in
>leps-l.  In particular, poor Paul Cherubini gets a lot of "hits".  What is
his
>crime?
>
>One, he is opinionated, and often with a different opinion from many. 
>However, there are lots of opinionated folks her on leps-l, so that it no
>reason for personal attacks.
>
>Second,   he often asks for information to back up our claims.  For
>example, if action X is so drastic, it should be easy to indeed provide
>information that it is so.  This is simply science.  Now, one can make the
case
>that by actually asking us to show that something is a major factor, rather
>than simply ASSUMING it is, that this is somehow bad.  This is odd logic.
> We may not like Paul always asking for further information or details,
>but this is the basic nature of science.  If we regard ourselves as
>scientists, rather than just persons with strong opinions, we should
welcome the
>chance to make our case.  I'll close by simply saying that as one who as
>served as an associate editor for many of the major journals in population
>biology (Genetics, Genetical Research, Evolution, The American Naturalist,
>Theoretical Population Biology) and as a reviewer for all the rest, that
>I often ask authors to respond questions along the lines of what Paul is
>asking, EVEN WHEN I FULLY AGREE with the authors.
>
>Peace
>
>Bruce
>
>


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