4 ms·
What is this slander? That is a completely separate topic, one which wikipedia cannot do justice in a paragraph, and neither can you. Second, the tweet is about
by SnowProblem 5y ago
What is this slander? That is a completely separate topic, one which wikipedia cannot do justice in a paragraph, and neither can you. Second, the tweet is about Brett's censored video, not Eric. Watch the video.
- jwilber 5y agoI looked the man up, found an interesting tidbit, and posted it. I can see how it comes off as me not liking him, but I really have no idea who he is, so I’ll explain why I posted that quote I saw: If an individual is in question for taking non-standard stances in an academic field, then any history of non-standard stances from said individual in other fields, and responses to them, are relevant IMO. If you disagree no worries, downvotes can reduce the opacity to zero.
- fastball 5y agoIf all someone can come up with are "standard stances" in their capacity as a scientist, they are a worse-than-useless scientist.
- jwilber 5y agoDepends on how you define standard.
- fastball 5y agoSure, you can define standard however you want and then the conversation is meaningless. But according to the standard definition of standard, which makes it synonymous with "average" or "norm", then my point very much stands.
- jwilber 5y agoRight. Well, in that case I disagree with your assertion that scientists who put out publications of average-in-that-field’s quality are “worse than useless”. Not how science works!
- fastball 5y agoYeahhhh, that's not what you said in your original comment at all. > if an individual is in question for taking non-standard stances in an academic field If you meant to say "low quality" then say that, but that is not what anyone takes to mean from "non-standard", as non-standard can equally mean exceptional if you are talking about quality.
- jwilber 5y agoI.e. it depends on how you define standard. But in this case I didn’t mean low-quality. It just turned out that’s how his work in that moment was judged by other experts in the field. Which is exactly why I brought it up, as I literally explained in my comment above - his history of non-standard ideas doesn’t have a great track record. I think that’s relevant. (But for some reason I’m here explaining it again.) Your point about less-than-useless (so harmful?) scientists is still absolutely ridiculous, as much scientific progress (and many scientific careers) comes from improving non-exceptional ideas in straightforward manners with expected results.
- sudosysgen 5y agoScience is an incremental march. Behind every revolutionary discovery are a thousand necessary results that are the result of a standard process.
- fastball 5y agoHaving a standard process is different from only espousing standard stances. How can you ever falsify anything if you only take the standard stance.