Quote:
Originally Posted by John Cooper
I disagree his paper is refuting something other people has said. However he does not say who said this if anyone did.
A classic strawman arguement - you do know what I mean by this don't you.
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Yes I know what you mean by strawman. I'm old school though so when I see someone in his position I expect a certain amount, such as they have not made basic mistakes. We all do this to a certain degree, e.g. you don't go and add up all the numbers on your bank statement each month because you assume the person programming the machine is at least reasonably competent. That does not account for fraudulent action but traditionally in science there has only been one motivation and that is pursuit of the truth, meaning all the scientists are on the same side in the first place.
It's like the Hippocratic oath of a doctor and that's how it has been until recently. If he has done this to trick people then he won't be regarded very highly by his peers for much longer, much like a doctor who purposefully tries to make someone worse rather than better. So I assume he has grounds for it and I expect him to publish a paper unless of course on further inspection he finds something wrong with his work.
This is why scientists talk to one another and if they all had Clippo's attitude they would never get anywhere. It's unreasonable to suppose the best way to do science is to do it all in secret until you have the correct answer because people are far more effective working together and when someone is too frightened in making a mistake to ever say anything in the first place then what good is that? Even if his method has fault it might be taken and modified into something useful, such is the way of creative thought and scientific thought has a degree of creativity about it. You invent a new process out of nothing and that is how it is done.