John Maynard Smith, quem diria, carrasco da Nomenklatura científica, destruiu a carreira acadêmica de Warwick Collins

terça-feira, janeiro 25, 2011

Bad for the career

Today it would be virtually impossible for any scientific paper that has anti-Darwinian implications to be published in Nature or in any serious peer-reviewed scientific journal, regardless of the scientific merits of its findings. 

To be an exception to this rule an anti-Darwinian paper would have to be of paradigm shattering importance, like Cairns and Hall's experiment on directed mutation. Even then, publication of the results is likely to be hedged around with qualifications, argumenta ad hominem directed at the authors and technical quibbles that would never be directed at any paper supporting Darwinism.

A prime example of this academic censorship is the case of British biologist Warwick Collins. In 1976 Collins was studying biology at Sussex University under the eminent Darwinist Professor John Maynard Smith. Collins wrote a paper on sexual selection as an anomaly in Darwinian theory. Dr. John Thoday, professor of genetics at Cambridge, invited Collins to present an expanded version of his paper to an international conference of population geneticists -- an honour for the young undergraduate.



Collins says, 'In the paper I tried to extend further my doubts about the assumptions in Darwinian evolutionary theory. Out of courtesy I circulated the expanded paper to my distinguished tutor prior to the conference. Before I was due to take the stand, Professor Maynard Smith stood up in front of the conference and roundly denounced the premises of my paper.'

After the conference Maynard Smith told Collins that 'he would use his considerable influence to block publication of any further papers of mine which questioned the fundamental premises of Darwinian theory.'

Collins has, indeed, found it impossible to have any further papers published up to as recently as 1994, when a paper he submitted to Nature was rejected without reason. Not surprisingly, Collins has left the field of biology.

Darwinists have thus begun not merely to react to criticism by members of their own profession but have gone on the attack. As in the case above, some of their methods of attack leave a very unpleasant taste in the mouth of anyone educated in the western liberal-intellectual tradition.

Source/Fonte: Alternative Science

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NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:


Apesar ter esta nódoa em sua biografia, John Maynard Smith foi um dos maiores teóricos da evolução, ele também lia livros questionando alguns aspectos da teoria da evolução através da seleção natural de Darwin. Repare que atrás, do lado direito do rosto de Maynard, ele tinha o livro Darwin's Black Box, de Michael J. Behe, um dos teóricos do Design Inteligente.


Gente, se o Maynard leu o livro do Behe, você deve fazê-lo também.