[Taxacom] Rejoinder to a monster review

[Doug Yanega]

On 12/3/14 4:06 PM, John Grehan wrote:
> Dick,
>
> The process of science is the actions of individuals (whether as a group of
> individuals or separate individuals). If suppression is part of those
> actions then it is part of the process of science just as much as
> individuals such as yourself.
>
I try to avoid threads like this, but I think you're missing the point. 
Regardless of whether we view "suppression" or "censorship" as a routine 
thing or as an anomaly (or somewhere in between), from my perspective, 
the bottom line can be summed up this way:

In the history of MODERN science (let's say, from around 1950 or so), 
how many clear examples do we have of people whose work was initially 
suppressed/censored (irrespective of the intent of those doing the 
suppression), but then later were *completely vindicated*, as opposed to 
all the many, many examples of people whose ideas were rubbish and truly 
deserved to be suppressed? It might be hard to count the latter, if the 
evidence is (for example) only visible in papers submitted to journals 
that are never sent out for review, but - assuming we could count them - 
if over 95% of the examples are those which deserved to be suppressed, 
then we could conclude that the odds of a valid theory being 
*erroneously* suppressed are low enough that we can view suppression as 
beneficial, and even necessary - i.e., a legitimate tool to prevent 
scientists from wasting their time refuting nonsense. And, let's face 
it, there really is no point in refuting the nonsense that some 
"scientists" produce (my favorite example: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chonosuke_Okamura).

Peace,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82