The "Stage Theory of Theories" - Cause for Concern?

[exchemist]

Just an alert where this focus on Alex Gomez-Marin will probably go eventually...

He's a Spanish theoretical physicist turned neuroscientist.

He seems to have some degree of interaction with "infamous" Rupert Sheldrake, that appears amiable, and thereby might or might not shed partial light on his fulmination.

Due to its philosophical liberalness, or balance, or whatever motive for tossing caution to the wind occasionally -- iai is noted for giving platforms to celebrated iconoclasts with a pedigree. Like Denis Noble, for instance. (Really, any enterprise with one leg in the humanities doesn't need an excuse or apology for showcasing contrarianism -- it's in the nature of it.)
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Yes I saw that. This guy may be at the flaky end of the spectrum. Sheldrake is a total crank and charlatan.

But it’s fair enough to have someone taking a pop at the mechanical drudgery of pressure to publish, the way peer review works (or doesn’t work) and so forth, in the industry that science research has, in some ways sadly, become. As your perennial thread on “Compromised Science” continually reminds us, there are problems with the modern conventions in the practice of science.

 

[axocanth]

Yes I saw that. This guy may be at the flaky end of the spectrum. Sheldrake is a total crank and charlatan.

I posted the following a couple of hours ago in another thread:

"Oh, and the very same thing can, not infrequently, be seen being played out in our little microcosm here. The Red Guards of scientism have been conditioned to believe that it is acceptable to treat fellow humans this way. To the Red Guards, opponents are never just wrong, but dishonest, less than fully human, a vermin to be eradicated, and they're just the force to do it. Onward scientistic soldiers!"

 

[James R]

I look forward to reading axocanth's detailed attempt to defend Sheldrake against the accusation that he is a crank and a charlatan. It seems we have a difference of opinion here. Somebody must be wrong.

 

[axocanth]

It's been another action-packed day, but surely the highlight was this:

Lawrence Krauss explains his recent work on "something coming from nothing", which Richard Dawkins -- almost at a loss for words, but finally settling on the mot juste -- describes at 50:35 as "mind-numbing".

He took the words right out of my mouth!

 

[Pinball1970]

It's been another action-packed day, but surely the highlight was this:

Lawrence Krauss explains his recent work on "something coming from nothing", which Richard Dawkins -- almost at a loss for words, but finally settling on the mot juste -- describes at 50:35 as "mind-numbing".

He took the words right out of my mouth!

Hardly recent (2012) it's pop science and made him a few quid.

 

[axocanth]

Hardly recent (2012) it's pop science and made him a few quid.

To be clear, Pinball, I have no objection to your suggestion that some scientists talk a lot of manifest rubbish and make enormous amounts of money by doing so. And I can think of no clearer example than Lawrence Krauss. Neil deGrasse Tyson puts up stiff competition though. I wouldn't spend a penny on it myself, but was given his most recent book as a gift on my last trip back to Scotland, the Christmas before last. I felt I should be seen reading it too, so as not to hurt my lovely niece's feelings.

Conclusion: Absolute drivel of the lowest order imaginable. Mind-numbing pablum. Not a single thought provoking or intelligent comment in the entire 200 pages (which probably set my niece back 30 quid or more.)

(Hope she's not reading this lol)

But I hasten to emphasize the word some scientists.

David Bohm? Not a bit of it, not a trace. Einstein? Do you even need to ask? - scientific and philosophical writing of the very highest caliber. And these are the very people, among others (d'Espagnat, Wheeler, etc.), who assert that classical Newtonian physics was overthrown.