Quote Originally Posted by jvkohl
...It's highly unusual

for researchers to hide their work from other researchers, even briefly--as indicated by the ERCO abstract Irish

posted.
Huh? It's the norm to hold back in meeting abstracts, as they have to be submitted and often

are available to your peers (i.e., competitors) long before the meeting occurs. You don't want be scooped, because

a presentation at a meeting doesn't trump a manuscript. Credit goes to those with manuscripts, not

abstracts.

I have to say, from my perspective as a practicing scientist (we had a mutual friend in the late

Bob Moss), that you're coming off as more of a dogmatist than a scientist.

Quote Originally Posted by DrSmellThis
Specifically,

there has been no evidence to suggest a neural pathway for the VNO (a more recent study or two has addressed this);

and evidence of its activity has been contradictory.

The prevailing wisdom was simply that it is not

theoretically necessary to posit the VNO to exist, in order to explain a detailed pheromone effect. You can get

there with standard olfaction. So some researchers felt it was a waste of time to focus on the VNO.

That was

different from saying categorically that there is no active VNO. Last I checked I was not convinced the VNO has no

role in olfaction. Maybe the intellectual scenario has changed recently, and I'd change my mind.
Now

this is a much more scientific attitude, reminiscent of this lesson:

It is interesting, therefore, to

bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought

that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an

experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right

about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated

by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.



Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you

can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and

advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that

agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate

theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that

gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.



In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your

contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.


-Richard Feynman