This would be fine except that often the claim is that
the 'credible' scientific sources are involved in some
kind of conspiricy, or are systematically unable to
appreciate the field for some reason.
I see where you're going with this, and I agree with
you on a personal level, but we are picking and
choosing which sources are 'credible' based on what we
believe to be right.
Mark
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
Mark Richards wrote:
I think we may be at cross purposes. I think the
difficulty is in identifying who the credible
sources
are, and with whom they are credible when you
are
dealing with things that some people think are
pseudoscience and others think are suppressed
truth.
Why is it difficult in this case? Are there
articles in journals
which meet standard practices of peer-reviewed
academic research?
Credible. Are there articles in the National
Enquirer? Not credible.
Are there books published by respectable acacemic
presses? Credible.
Are there books published by "New Age" publishers
who appear to
publish anything which will sell? Not credible.
With ESP, the question is often framed in terms of
statistical
probabilities that thus-and-such could have been the
result of chance
or not. While we may not be qualified to directly
assess the
statistical evidence itself, we are qualified to
look at such
questions of: what is the training of the author?
Does this person
have a PhD in statistics from a reputable
University? Does this
person publish work in peer-reviewed journals?
I don't see any difficulty at all here, as long as
we abandon the idea
that neutrality requires epistemological nihilism.
In most cases, it is sufficient to simple state the
unconversial facts
in a reasonably complete manner. "A study conducted
by Professor
Smith at Harvard University and published in _Review
of Statistical
Psychology_ found thus-and-such. While this
reflects the broad
consensus of the scientific community, it is also
true that a vast
popular literature continues to promote..."
--Jimbo
--
"La n�fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th
article on
fr.wikipedia.org
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