I was watching a TV show about a man with amnesia who was convicted of vehicular homicide (or something similar). The problem was that he was the passenger, not the driver. He "remembered" incorrectly, and confessed. The evidence in the vehicle showed that he was on the passenger side during the collision, and the first eyewitness on the scene, a person who lived nearby and had no reason to lie, also said that he was the passenger, not the driver (this evidence was not presented at the trial). Eventually, a court ordered that he be given a new trial, and the prosecutor offered him time served to plead guilty, which is what he did.
In science today, if you detect a flaw in a claim, there is no "appeals process," unless you are one of the few people who have "credentials." But even then, there is a good chance that you will do little more than "wreck your career." See the article that I cut and pasted passages from below. In a sense, there is nothing to appeal. The evidence is what it is, and the interpretation is the critical element, at least in nutrition. I'm still surprised at how terribly wrong so much "expert advice" is these days, in the sense that there is direct contradictory evidence, and in science that is supposed to be a refutation, not a signal to become more vehement in one's support for the discredited notion. What I'm trying to do on this site is to supply the necessary analysis tools to people who want to read the evidence for themselves and come to their own conclusions, which is now possible because of its availability on the internet.
QUOTE: Of some 69 letters from readers
that have been published in The
Scientist since our format and
editorial changes of last May, over
40% deal with just three subjects:
the difficulty of reconciling religion
and science (prompted by William
Provine’s provocative opinion piece
published in our September 5 edi-
tion, page 10); the issue of whether
to accept rebel or “heretic�?scientists
who espouse minority views; and
the inadequacies of peer review...
Rebellious scientists made up the
second most popular category
among those who sent us letters.
Harold Hillman of the University of
Surrey, U.K., believes that ex-
perimental results based on scan-
ning tunneling microscopy contain
significant artifacts that distort the
data. Peter Duesberg of the Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley, holds
the view that AIDS is not necessarily
caused by a virus. Just as controver-
sial, perhaps more, is the claim of
Jacques Benveniste and his col-
leagues of INSERM, Clamart,
France, that highly diluted solutions
have a “memory.�?The vehemence
with which these views, and these
scientists, have been condemned by
their colleagues has created a stir in
the general media as well. Other
scientists who have made similar
waves are NIH’s Walter Stewart and
Ned Feder—in the sense that their
activities and conclusions about the
extent of fraud in science have not
been well received by their fellow
professionals.
Science’s intolerance—if it is
that-for minority views also seems
to be evident in the third most writ-
ten-about subject: peer review. As I
have had occasion to observe in the
past, there is great dissatisfaction
with peer review throughout the
scientific community, and especial-
ly with blind reviewing and the lack
of recourse a scientist has if his or
her work is reviewed unfairly.
What all three of these topics
share is a concern with the stand-
ards, professional and ethical, that
the scientific community takes an
interest in—matters distinct from
the process of scientific investiga-
tion itself. I believe that this interest
refutes the common perception that
the scientific endeavor is a value-
free enterprise. In fact, like all other
human endeavors, science is replete
with expressions of value—moral
and ethical... UNQUOTE.
Source: THE SCIENTIST @ 2(24):10,26 December 1988.
On the internet: http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:OlPXBxOovEgJ:www.garfield.library.upenn.edu
/essays/v14p326y1991.pdf+%22harold+hillman%22+%22peter+duesberg%22&hl=
en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us |
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