How so? You just said the competition of ideas seems to be working.
In simplified terms, competition of ideas require people to make their arguments, put their best foots faorward. There will be others, with opposing views who will be critiquing those ideas, while presenting ideas of their own. This requires all parties to continue to develop their ideas, overcome obstacles, solve problems, etc. with so
Now of course that's simplified and in practice its never that ideal, and there are all sorts of bad ideas that get through, or abuses, etc. But with just so many ideas out there there needs to be a way to make decisions and figure out which ideas are most worth pursuing and making people make their case seems to produce less abuse than, say, systems where a unilateral power makes decisions without any requirment for justification or critique. It basically assumes that all parties are biased, but that with biases going in different directions, they will serve as checks on one another.
It is the basis of democratic government, the western legal system, the scientific method, philosophy, etc. It works far from perfectly, but to work optimally it requires people with a variety of views to actively participate.
Now, of course I need to disclose my bias here, which is being educated and working in law for over a decade, plus my time having intellectual discussions over the internet, I have spent a pretty high proportion of my life heavily involved in the competition of ideas. So I'm not saying there might not be other approaches that could also work, just that from what I know of history, politics, law in addition to my personal experience, regulated competition works better than systems that do not encourage opposition.
My opponents (in any of my various endeavours) may be pains in my necks at times, but I value them as much as I value the people on my side, and they play a critical role in helping me develop my views.
I'm just asking how you know that it is, in fact, working with regarding to the scientific research.
The Iaonnidis paper is part of science working. Iaonnidis' paper does not reveal, in my opinion, a crisis in the system, in the oh-my-god-the-entire-system-is-a sham-house-of-cards-and we've-all-been-had kind of way that some people present it as. It is much more nuanced than that. It does help us make improvements to the system to help us identify the ideas most worth pursuing and the most reliable results . I suggested having a more full discussion on it because it doesn't reduce accurately to sound-bites "its a crisis!" or "relax, everything is working as it should".
Whether we're talking about government, science or philosophy or just everyday human social interaction these are complex, immense, systems, tasked with incredibly difficult problems to solve. They are flawed systems undertaken by flawed individuals. Many mistakes get made, many abuses occur - our practical goal is not to eliminate all mistakes, or eliminate all abuse. Those are nice dreams, but not realistic in my opinion. Rather, we want to work towards minimizing the negative, and maximizing the positive.
As a science, the scientific method has made enourmous gains in figuring out how the universe, and its compenent parts, work It is a history filled with flawed, incomplete and downright wrong ideas. But slowly and gradually we idenitfy mistakes, and work things out. It is far from perfect - very far - and we are continuously learning new methods. Researchers like the cochrane group and METRICS are making great strides in looking at immense amounts of research and sussing out which methods seem to produce the more reliable results, and which do not. Evolution - not revolution. Filled with lots of problems to solve, but slowly figuring stuff out with the result being a much better quality of life for people as a whole compared to years past.
But I didn't say it contradicted any position you have? I merely asked you to clarify your position.
I thought I had, hopefully I have now clarifiied more, but any further I think we should take it out of this thread since we're getting far off topic!
What are these views then? Because earlier in this thread you seemed to suggest that things are, over all, working.
And I clarified (with the churchill quote) that I thought they were still quite flawed, just less so than alternatives.
Did Wiseman alter the protocol or not? And did he give a justification for why he altered it?Not sure why answering this would require an in depth revisiting of the papers?
Sorry, I thought you were familiar with the paper. Briefly, he made adjustments to how the data was analysed. And yes, he explained in detail in the paper. What was overstated (not in the paper itself but in comments that were made subsequently, is that WIseman's experiment should be considered to have "debunked" Sheldrakes.