Once the repeatablility of a result is ensured beyond all doubt, there is only the matter of logical development, interpretation, etc., which clearly has nothing to do with who funds you. (We’ve all got brains, haven’t we?) Of course, it takes time to become acquainted with a subject, and so a faulty study showing smoking is safe can give a nice sense of security.

Unfortunately, there is a sizable segment of the population with little knowledge of critical thinking and skepticism. However, the answer to “Who funds you?” is a poor substitute.

I’m only saying that not everyone is so fortunate, and just because a person doesn’t want to release sponsor details, doesn’t say anything about their science. Some very good health physicists are employed by the nuclear industry for example, and adding a manditory note to their papers saying their research is “sponsored” by the nuclear industry would not help them present their evidence!

The tobacco industry should fund research into cancer effects from its profits, similarly the nuclear industry should fund research into radiation effects and the ecology of fission products, etc.

Unfortunately, you don’t get my point, and you falsely claim that I’ve got my own axe to grind. The only axe is this: the public should be exposed to any technical details that are controversial.

They don’t need more bureaucracy to hint at political affiliations prejudicing results. The public would be more interested in science if the exact details are debated openly.

Your solution seems to be guilt by association, which I don’t think is scientific. Thanks for understanding.

I think this makes perfect sense for the reasons I said. There is no way that the public or our politicians will always be able to work through the details of all scientific studies etc., and they deserve to know, for example, whether research saying that cigarettes don’t increase the chance of lung cancer is being funded by the tobacco industry.

There is no way this is about the scientific establishment trying to keep the poor little overlooked and opressed “Einsteins” of the world down.

The question of who is funding is beside the point. Why do people have to disclose the source of their funding or anything of that sort?

It will just become another pseudo-scientific, group-think way to rank scientific papers without actually reading them. So-and-so’s research is funded by x, so we don’t need to read it. Somebody else’s is funded by y, so it is reputable. There is too much sneering at people as it is, when it is the content or lack of content that’s important.

The majority will do anything to stereotype things, and worrying about who is funding things will create additional unwanted sources of bias to slow down the acceptable of new ideas even more. I can understand your question if you were dealing with political candidates, but not for scientific work.

If there are extra scientific stakes though this does not apply.

And anyways, yes science works because of these mechanisms, too. But these mechanisms alone would be worthless if most scientists weren’t in this field for the joy of understanding and teaching.

This seems surprisingly naive to me. Of course all scientists have a very personal stake in the outcome of their research. Fame and fortune (or at least the continuation of their meagre career) depends on it.

Science doesn’t work because all its practitioners are purer than the driven snow. It works because the mistakes get uncovered, and if your work matters, they will usually get uncovered quickly. Knowing that is a strong disincentive for fraud.

Another important ingredient of good science is that scientists themselves have no personal stake in the outcome of the research.

That makes scientists sound like automatons — devoid of passion and uninterested in the success of their ideas. I suspect science would grind to a halt if that were the case. As Henry Bauer has persuasively argued, science produces reliable knowledge not by requiring its practitioners to be superhuman but by accepting their frailities and seeking to filter them out.

George

To me, Lenny has made yet ANOTHER independent derivation that supports my belief.

I want Lenny’s interpretation to stand as a valid scientific interpretation of the special implications of the AP, which actually only indicates purposeful structuring in nature… if the landscape fails.

It really burns me to see scientists *automatically* bi-pass this most-obvious, most natural, “closest at hand” answer, by reaching for more complex answers that don’t solve the problems any better.

/rant

sorry for the OT.

FYI: I don’t entirely agree with the above, as I find this to be more-true of physicists than evobiolgists, and this worries me because other scientists have rightfully supported them… but to the point that some of the same lame arguments come out.

As most here know, Lenny said that “the appearance of design is undeniable”… qualified by something like… ‘unless the landscape fails, and then we’ll find something else to blame it on…’

I don’t believe that he means anything other than another manner for rationalizing “chance occurrence” when when he says that.

I’m not saying that industrial funding of science is necessarily bad. But anyone accepting such funding needs to make that very clear when reporting results, particularly when those results have the potential for a clear financial impact on the funding source.

island. No, you need not worry. Science is not about right or left ideological agendas; it is about evidence supporting or ruling out hypotheses.

Also, from http://www.templeton.org/science_and_religion/index.asp

In pursuing research at the boundary between science and religion, the Foundation seeks to unite credible and rigorous science with the exploration of humanity’s basic spiritual and religious quests.

I’m talking about purpose in nature like they were looking for here:

http://www.templeton.org/biochem-finetuning/

Mark said:
One example that springs to mind is the Templeton Foundation, which has a particular agenda – to reconcile science and religion…

Is this really entirely true?!? I thought that templeton simply supports any crazy idea that might work to shake things loose?

As I look down the list of the above linked research plan, I see some religious motivations, but I also see that science writer, Paul Davies, is on that list, as well as others that I recognize, whom I cannot believe are motivated to do anything other than to get money to do fringe-or-beyond-science.

Based on this… I fear the worst fate of all may be in store for both, science and humanity, because it most certainly does appear that my first mentioned worst nightmare will come true if chance doesn’t rule the universe, because politics will supercede rationality, and the left has the upper hand in the manner that these matters are decided.

Tell me I’m wrong… please.

What the hell ever happened to Einstein’s purposefully structured worldview, which still, to this day, falls directly from relativity without uncertainty, and nothing has been decided for certain yet, but people sure do act like they *believe* that it has.

But that is not used to discredit the Nobel Prize today. Hitler’s funding of rocketry led, via Van Dorn and von Braun, to the Saturn V and the moon. But Hitler doesn’t deserve credit for anything because his intentions were not decent.

What matters is not the person’s name who funds the early research, but what their intentions are. If the researcher knows that more money will be forthcoming from Uncle Sam, say, if they produce a positive report about progress in string theory (or anything else), they’ll do their best to write that glowing report, to keep the bucks coming in. So I agree that we should be skeptical, but of intentions not of the person’s name or background. What matters are OBJECTIVES and RESULTS, not creed, colour, politics.