About Damned Time !

[uniface]

Nobel laureate and biologist Randy Schekman has taken a stand and declared that luxury scientific journals are not furthering proper scientific method and are instead catering to trendy science, corrupted by a "tyranny" of "impact factor".

He’s calling for a boycott on ’peer-review’ science publications such as Nature, Cell, and Science which often obstruct true and valuable research in favour of supporting mainstream political and scientific consensus.

http://educate-yourself.org/cn/schekman ... ec13.shtml

[kbs2244]

Amen
They have become “Coffee Table” publications.
Not used for their content, but for the impression of intellect they are hoped for to infer.

[uniface]

I'm loving this. Hope it grows to a tidal wave!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morn ... view-ring/

[Minimalist]

BTW, did you remember to renew your subscription to CrackPot Monthly, uni?

[uniface]

Intending nothing untoward, but I get enough exposure to your & Circie's mentality here, for free.

[uniface]

Our religions institutions are now (and have been) used by the crumbling powers-that-be to divide us. We separate ourselves not just as fundamentalists, but also as 'believers' in dogma of every flavor.

Then - there's science. Truly a 'religion' in its protectionist fervor, and hell-bent on upholding the discordant, outdated, simply false projections that are supported by institutionalized information parsing. It is upheld with tactics no less pernicious than organized religious institutions.

Questioning is the most important aspect of science, and that is a direct threat to authority, and ironically scientists and the science institutions have become authorities and churches. They have become our priests of the modern era. Whatever the priest with the biology hat says must be true about life. Whatever the priest with the physics hat says must be taught as facts. . . Science is no longer serving the purpose of discovering truth. It has become the main method of control. Governments have always kept people in line by collaborating with certain institutions. It used to be organized religion, where there basically was no difference between state and religion. Now, there is no difference between science and state. Why? Because of where the funding comes from.

http://www.sott.net/article/282191-A-co ... ue-history

[Minimalist]

<yawn> same shit different day.

[uniface]

It only looks like shit because when your head's up your ass, what you're seeing IS shit.

Your own.

The problem is, you're confusing that with what I'm posting about. You're assuming the two are synonymous.

They aren't.

The matter will never be any more clearly defined and illustrated than it is right here.

[Minimalist]

Usually you are posting crackpot theories.

There is never any evidence to back them up.


IN that,judging from my experiences at other forums, you are quite religious in your approach. Belief is not knowledge.

[uniface]

judging from my experiences at other forums, you are quite religious in your approach. Belief is not knowledge.

Objection, Your Honor : the witness is hallucinating again.

In all seriousness, Min. If people are amenable to viewing history in religious terms, I'm OK with discussing it that way. If they're not, I'm OK with that too. English and metric.

HERE, all I've ever done is advocated people not assuming they know it all about stuff they don't have a clue about yet, or assuming their set of operating assumptions -- in its current configuration -- is going to get them there (to say nothing of allowing them to write entire ideas off, categorically). And especially not by regarding what they think they know as so final and absolute that it is the touchstone of wisdom itself. (All contentions they would deny rigorously if confronted with it directly).

You, on the other hand, keep displaying the behavior of someone invested in a belief system. Suggesting anything that contradicts it keys outrage on your part. No contradictory suggestion can be allowed to stand without being the target of an outraged orthodoxy poo fling.

Just so all right-thinking people will know what to believe.

Really. 10 years of internet message board buffoonery have convinced me that homo sapiens normalis is simply not hardwired for the objective rationality he is capable of. People string these moments of collective lucidity together and misrepresent it as the history of science -- as if it had been one pearl of insight after another, leaving the rest of it out. In reality, it has been a hierarchy of "scientists" tantamount to clergy preaching a set of assumptions easily shown to be defective, staging persecutions, conducting heresy trials and suppressing dissent. As in the recent BBC mandate to its presenters to stop according air time to "nut jobs" who question the reality of Global Warming as if it were not a fact conclusively established once and for all time.

IOW, to a dispassionate observer, it is you, rather than me, who are displaying belief-based thinking. Yet it is you (and "your kind") who continually attribute it to me.

The psychologists call this "projection."

[circumspice]

Shhh...

It's a vast conspiracy...

[uniface]

Never ceases to amaze me.

Like water off a duck's back.

[Frank Harrist]

I gotta agree with Uni on this. You people automatically attack anything he says. Admittedly he has posted some far out shit, but he has also posted some good articles, such as this one. Science does act like religion. Min does act like a priest defending his religion. Yall don't even give him a chance. You just dismiss anything he says out of hand. Try reading some of this stuff and dismantling it using valid, scientific and logical arguments. I'm about sick of the smart-ass remarks with no substance. If you intend to shoot someone down, be sure you have ammo with which to do it. Min and Circ have become bullies and pure assholes. I don't care who doesn't like this. Kick me out if you like, Michelle. There is no intelligent exchange going on here any more anyway.

[uniface]

It does get a little silly (and old), Frank. But if you don't keep keying that response it stops happening, and the illusion of objectivity fools people into complacency.

By every and all means, we need as much "Heads" rationality as we can manage. But until & unless we stop being human, it's equally necessary to keep reminding people -- and the best way's by showing them -- that, as it is with a coin, "Tails" might be out of sight at the moment but it is most definitely present. Always and in everything.

And if we'd simply stop trying to live in denial, & learn to identify and acknowledge it, we'd be halfway home.

The likelihood of the people deeply invested in that pattern ever changing is minimal -- too many other forces are busy reinforcing it for their own advantage. But their inadvertent example can be hugely educational for people on the sidelines watching, who walk away wondering "Do I really want to be like that ?"

And this is not a personal putdown of anybody -- people showing symptoms of a condition so commonplace that people don't even notice it unless it's pointed out are not bad. They're just incapacitated in specific areas.

If there is one thing I've learned in 66 years that's worth reiterating, it's that.

IMO

[uniface]

Or, as William Blake put it,

"As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible."