X-Message-Number: 7213
Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 11:25:11 +0100
From: John de Rivaz <>
Subject: Re: Scientific Method

Reading the debate on the nature of Scientific Method, an interesting thought 
came to me about peer review.

Isn't this dangerously close to try to acertain the truth using democracy? 
Richard Dawkins gave an excellent illustration of this in a lecture once by 
showing a map of the world and suggesting that everyone in Asia votes that 
dinosaurs existed and everyone in the Americas voted that they didn't. He 
then asked his audience how much this helps us with answering the question as 
to whether they really did exist.

All peer review does is to get some votes from a smaller population. 
Admittedly they are informed votes, but even then they can still be worng - 
articles on scientifically silly subjects do appear from time to time.

The difficulty between hard science ("If you can't get different groups in 
different labs repeating the experiment then the result you claim isn't 
true") and cryonics is that at this point in time we have only done half the 
experiment. The very nature of the process requires time for technology to 
catch up and unfreeze patients. Different groups are doing the experiment, 
these are the different cryonics organisations. The experiment won't be 
finished for decades, even centuries. But only when it is will it be possible 
to judge the different protocols.

And then there are sociological issues. Maybe a cheaper process will have a 
higher failure rate for technical reasons, but because many more people can 
use it, and as less money is involved fewer cases will be contested, it will 
actually get greater numbers through. 

-- 
Sincerely,     ****************************************
               * Publisher of        Longevity Report *
John de Rivaz  *                     Fractal Report   *
               *          details on request          *
               ****************************************
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     http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JohndeR                        
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