Science Debate

[DrSmellThis]

Good experiment.

I'm not sure whether other, less cosmetic surgeries to the nose (like deviated septum repair) also obliterate the

VNO, but they'd be useful either way:

1) If they don't obliterate the VNO, they'd be good controls; and
2)

If they do, they'd be a better population to choose from, as I think there would be less self-selection bias than

there would be in those who chose cosmetic surgery.

In general, it's tough to look at the effects of surgeries

in people, as it is usually unethical to do mock surgeries on the controls, as we do with animals.

Bubba is

the type of person I've interacted with many times over the years in university settings. He is an experienced

researcher.

How do I know? Because I can tell from a paragraph of him speaking. Without a doubt. He wouldn't

have said "self-selection bias" in the middle of a normal, boring sentence otherwise, for example. That's normal,

everyday scientific conversation to me. That's my language. He talks with others how I am used to talking with

other scientists. He is the first one I can remember. Specifically, he is talking the language of someone who

designs, conducts and writes up studies. He understands research from the inside-out.

JVK is literally not

anywhere remotely close to that kind of person with that expertise, education, or training. Nothing wrong with that

whatsoever, but that's the way it is. I admire anyone who is able to participate in a field being essentially self

taught, but it ain't the same thing.

I've met lots of Bubbas. Bubba is the kind of guy, like a prof, that

would have kicked my butt in grad school a thousand times if I had tried to pass BS off as science, scientific

thinking, or scientific talking. So I learned to be scientific over the ten years I was in grad school. Bubba

recognized that from one paragraph as well.

I'd like to assume everybody that talks science, especially if they

are claiming authority, would act like that. No biggie.

JVK comes across as something very, very different; not

a scientist in the way I and most others would define it. He knows a lot of current facts about pheromones, maybe

more than anybody, and has written a number of good literature reviews; some with theoretical importance; but is a

scientific technician (associates level lab tech by education and training, IIRC), who compensates in Napoleanic

fashion with extreme, escalating appeals to ego and authority. If he could just learn to be who he is, he'd be

fine. But that won't happen any day soon, sad to predict, because there is no insight into his own condition. The

ego gets even bigger when threatened.

From day one, I was more than willing to give credit where due to JVK, and

a lot is due. The problem is he oversteps his bounds so often, in so many areas, (e.g., pontificating about human

psychology, a field he has no training in whatsoever, while playing the expert card) you end up spending most of

your time dealing with hollow arrogance. (I was the only one trying to confront this, along with juggling my other

roles.)

It ends up feeling like disrespect/contempt to the forum and its members, though I assume no malicious

intent. Forum members deserve the same care with our words as conference participants, university scientists, or

anyone else. If you're that good, you should be able to be that good here. I've never seen a good scientist have

any trouble with it, maybe because they spend so much time teaching.

I've never been able to speak completely

frankly in these situations because of my historic "helping person" (if you will) role here, (the mods are in a

similar situation) and as a person selling a product. I never wanted to come across as having conflicting roles, as

having another agenda. Plus, I was the only one here with a backround in research methods/psychology (still am, as

far as psych), and there was no one to triangulate off of. It's just your word against someone else's -- and if

the other person is willing to pull out all the stops, say things to mess with people, never admit they're wrong,

and disrespect rules of scientific conversation, you can only do so much.

Even if you have them where you want

them, which I did with JVK many times, they just change the rules of the conversation.

That happened with this

conversation a lot too, the attentive reader will notice. Even when JVK is "dead to rights" wrong for all the

universe to see, he simply changes the rules; says something obscure, technical and confusing; diverts the topic;

and plays the authority card; among other sophisticated tricks (e.g., "I'm right because a Nobel winner links to my

web page"; "how dare you presume your opinion is as important as mine", etc.).

But one thing that impresses me

about Bubba is his ability to get to the meat of it in one sentence. I think that is from dealing with it every day,

and probably from teaching it to grad students every day, etc. You get good at disposing of pseudoscientific jargon

(like the redundant, "cognitive thought" from JVK's paper extract above) very quickly, for example. My hat is off

to him.

An outside person who is clearly a competent scientist coming in to add another person to the mix was

always the thing we needed here. Now you have more than one scientific person in the conversation, and the less

scientific person can't get away with creating an alternate reality, becoming a bully, and relying on enough

impressionable newbies and laypeople in the audience to buy the unscientifc fertilizer. The ethics of it are sad,

frankly, but that's why they teach you scientific ethics in grad school.