Originally Posted by jvkohl
James-
I respect you a lot, I am a huge fan of SOE, and your input to this forum has clearly been invaluable
over the years.
Having said that, I must say your response is confusing to me, because it seems dismissive and
self-righteous. I was trained as a scientist too (molecular biology)-- worked at Cold Spring Harbor Lab at one point
in fact. And I think it is absurd to believe that science does not include opinions. Is that what you were trying to
say?
Scientists are some of the most opinionated, arguementative people I've met. There is constant debate in
scientific journals based on opinion. Interpretation of data and results always involves judgment and opinion at
some level. Science is not pure or objective. Science is a human paradigm, and humans are by nature subjective.
And no less so when you are dealing with the effects of chemicals on human behvior. This is anything but
objective. Even randomized, double-blind studies are subject to interpretation. The conclusions of any research are
never fact, but are the opinion of the researcher--theoretically they are based on pure logic, but if that were the
case we wouldn't have so much debate in every field of science.
We could take this into a whole debate over
epistemology (how we know what we know), but actually I don't even think we were giving opinions anyway. We were
describing anecdotal evidence that seems to contradict the science you were sharing, and we were simply asking how
you might explain this anecdotal evidence in light of the research.
The fact is that NOT ALL women lose their
sex drive when they lose their cycle, so we were curious how that fits into the science you are trying to share. I
don't think that is expressing opinion so much as trying to understand how the sophisticated study you were sharing
fits in with other observations.
Respectfully,
-CAt
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