That’s who’s making the video I told Tour about. Tour is under the impression that Dr. Hurd is part of a vast conspiracy to destroy his career, which I “control.” I told Gary about that on Facebook. I hope he got a chuckle from it.
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This may be true, but it does not appear we can verify it. Until we can it should be treated as hearsay.
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Hahahaha oh my goodness Tour is straightforwardly bonkers. Isn’t it ironic that by him sending such emails, it’s Tour that’s actually guilty of extortion?
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I think dr. Tour did this exact same talk at least half a dozen times, always wanting for somebody to correct his erroneous statements, if any.
His basic complaint is that the public is being deceived into believing that there is progress in the field of origin of life, whereas in fact, there’s hardly any progress at all. So in this context his complaint about the Nature article is exactly the thing he was looking for. He did not erroneously thought that it was part of the body of science.
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Tour may claim that with his words, but apparently his behavior reveals that he doesn’t want that, because his response to such corrections is the rather insane idea that he’s suddenly being persecuted and threated with extortion.
Tour may like to think of himself as a person who will change his mind when offered a correction. But his behavior reveals something else.
His basic complaint is that the public is being deceived into believing that there is progress in the field of origin of life, whereas in fact, there’s hardly any progress at all.
That’s one of his complaints, yes. Out of curiosity, can you point out where scientists are deceiving the public about the origin of life?
So in this context his complaint about the Nature article is exactly the thing he was looking for.
In what way is this article decieving anyone? Please be very specific. Point out what sentence contains a falsehood.
He did not erroneously thought that it was part of the body of science.
Uhh yes he literally did say that. He said explicitly that it was part of the primary literature, when it is in fact not, and he accused the author of lying.
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The drawing could make it a bit clearer that it’s a scenario. I think though the type of people who are interested in processing such information will generally understand that it is a scenario. FWIW it is attested to one Matthew Twombly, who seems to be a freelance graphic artist. I would guess he made it with information he received from Nature and not Szostak directly, but that’s a guess.
I would have thought that the last part of the drawing would be more controversial.
39 posts were split to a new topic: Does OOL research need a disclaimer?
Who are you calling a liar? Me or Tour?
Please clarify, in the spirit of “Peaceful Science.”
I will add one other pertinent piece of information, which is that Tour had not even heard of the Ritson and Sutherland article until I brought it to his attention. He claims in the lecture he is presenting the best OOL research from the “primary literature”, but he had no even done a rudimentary search of that literature it would appear.
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Let’s say, that Tour is wrong about Szostak’s article you’re equating this with
james-tour-accuses-origin-of-life-researchers-of-lying.
I would need Tour to repeatedly and forcefully make the same wrong statement without correcting himself, before I can accept that.
@jety I’m a personal friend of Tour, anf I’m not the one calling him out. But this isn’t reasonable. If Tour accused Sostack of lying one time he accused Sostack of lying. If he did so and retracted, that would be a good thing (assuming it wasn’t true), but he still would have accused him of lying. If he did so repeatedly, then he he repeatedly accused him of lying.
The fact that it may have happened one time does not undermine the claim. The far more important question is if Sostack did or did not lie. If he didn’t (and I don’t see evidence yet he did), then this really is up to Tour to deal with, as this would not be collegial behaivior.
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Did you watch the video in the OP? Tour does say repeatedly and forcefully Szostak and the other OOL researchers are lying. Not just mistaken, Tour accuses them of flat out lying. That’s a disgraceful and unacceptable behavior for a science professional like Tour.
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Which is why I think there might just be a wee, tiny bit of projection involved in his response to my emails.
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Not if it is true. I don’t see evidence it’s true, but accusing people of lying when they really are is acceptable.
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It’s obviously not true as we’ve all examined Szostak’s presentation and Tour’s blatant misrepresentation of it. Someone was sure lying but it wasn’t Szostak.
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I’m speaking generally here. Accusations of lying can be true. People do lie. The accusations themselves are justified if they are accurate. That is all I’m saying.
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43:22 to paraphrase Nature is a journal that publishes primary literature. He didn’t say it that way, and it indeed can be misunderstood, if one wills to do so.
44:23 the pimary objection here is the word “nudge” which is ill-defined. Allowing this word in the journal Nature was a major oversight.
44:47 “some stages of RNA production are still not well understood” This is misleading insofar as this is not, and there is not a disclaimer about combinatorial complexity. Here the “some stages” is basically all stages, and “not well understood” is not understood at all. In order for a process to get from stage x to stage x+1 some purification of the reaction products is an absolute requirement. Without purification the individual reactions do not form a comprehensive chain, and thus calling them stages is 100% misleading. The audience understands this, and that’s why they are laughing.
45:19 By the time we get to the infamous slide there are already three major objections to the article.
45:59 So, basically, this could be a misunderstanding on dr. Tour’s part, being colorblind. Come to think of it, the graph does resemble the Ishihara test, so I wouldn’t exclude the possibility dr. Tour misunderstanding the graph, in which case YOU’re railing against Him because of a disability he has. How charitable of you. He even says “maybe” a couple of times, which means that he is not 100% sure about this graph.
46:10 So already, the “he’s lying to you” has been taken out of context, and is irrelevant to the objection dr. Tour actually has with this graph. The graph says that the reaction product is an RNA nucleotide, but the picture shown is not an RNA nucleotide. Could’ve been an oversight on the part of the illustrator.
In the presentation dr. Tour has three objections to the text of the article in Nature, and two additional objections to the graph in the article, and he’s definitely right about the reaction product shown not being an RNA nucleotide. Again, the way to avoid his objection with the graph is to include a disclaimer about combinatorial complexity regarding the precise role of “heat” and “uv light”.
So far you’re saying that of the five objections that dr. Tour has with the article, number four is questionable. I can agree with that. However, not discussing the other objections in the context of No.4 as I call it is… wrong.
People lie a lot.
What do you think of Ajit Varki’s view of lying as an integral part of humanity?
So I watched the clip and dr. Tour did forcefully and repeatedly called him a liar, but not without correcting himself. Everybody here seems to think that “he’s lying to you” is referring to the graph. An understandable view, but no, dr. Tour corrected himself saying that he’s colorblind, and that he’s not sure about the graph. At this point in the presentation dr. Tour already had three other reasons to call the author a liar, and yes, dr. Tour was wrongfully accentuating on the graph which he was unsure of when making the statement, but the graph itself also had an error on it just not the one he was pointing to when making this accusation.