X-Message-Number: 23459
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 08:03:45 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Paul Pagnato's funny story, and Ben Best

HI again!

Now Paul Pagnato has written a good humorous piece, with a libertarian
angle. 

Ben Best makes some good points, especially for relatively isolated
cryonicists. I will add that I believe the experiments of Mike and 
Steve. One major point to keep in mind is the Society of Cryobiology's
attitude to cryonics: they refuse to publish anything by known
cryonicists. When he was active, Mike Darwin was certainly a known
cryonicist. YES, this does make the evaluation of cryonics scientific
work far harder. I will add that even in my own experience as a 
mathematician, referees are too often allowed to make quite false
statements about the content of a paper (clearly false if they've
actually read it), ask that their own papers be cited (whether or not
they played any role in the work reported in a paper), and generally
fail to answer any complaints by an author. So peer-reviewed evaluation
doesn't come up to what it should be, in any case. Ultimately if you
wonder about the accuracy of a paper, you may have to repeat the
experiments or closely read the proofs and think about their meaning.

In short, even scientists aren't as pure as the driven snow. So if
you doubt the work of Darwin and Harris, the only thing you can
really do is either repeat their work, or think about their character
and decide on your knowledge of that character.

(And incidentally, for those reading this who are scientists, to
some unknown degree I find hard to objectively evaluate, a referee's
requirement that his own work be cited raises questions about the 
system used by SCIENCE CITATION INDEX (now renamed the Web of Science)
as a way to evaluate work by a particular scientist. Maybe he just
worked himself into a position in which he could insist on citation
by every author whose work he refereed. Referees are anonymous, you
know).

               Best wishes and long long life to all,

                    Thomas Donaldson

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