> One of those predictions was that ecosystems move through phases of varying stability based on the number of species in the community and the degree of inter

> One of those predictions was that ecosystems move through phases of varying stability based on the number of species in the community and the degree of interaction between species. This is a serious problem with researchers entrenched in their priors. > “In order to see phase transitions in the lab, it really is necessary to have experimental communities where you can turn the knobs yourself and make quantitative measurements of what's happening,” Gore says. This presumes that phase transitions have known triggers/states. Having to manually play with the params says they're not well-determined. > The results of these experimental manipulations confirmed that the theories had correctly predicted what would happen. Well that's interesting now, isn't it? We have unsubstantiated notions about what will happen and we can only trust non-experimentally-based human tweaking to help the experiment do what's expected and then . . . it performs as expected. This shit is not science. MIT or not. This is completely bogus. Frankly, I don't know what "instability" even means in the context. Not defined.