I told that I would not answer because that would put people’s work in jeopardy.
I’m trying to understand how that would happen.
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Let me give you a hypothetical. Suppose I were to disclose enough information about what to look for and where, could you devise a search strategy to identify researchers working on similar projects? If you were hard core enough, could you check out their backgrounds? What would happen then?
Here is an example. You are talking about a being. This is not the design argument.
Yeah Bill, we all know ID’s Number One rule:
IXSNAY ON THE ODGAY!
Levels of small molecules not produced by transcription translation that affect the organisms function.
Don’t be coy. Just tell me what you mean rather than asking me to guess.
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@Agauger Real Science is must be open to confirmation, falsification, collaboration. You can’t keep results secret forever. For a result to be accepted it must be confirmed independently by others. This may take decades but you can’t continue to put the cloak of secrecy forever. By default, one has to assume that this are no results to report. That DI is just pouring research money down the drain, with nothing to show for it. That is how a religious organization operates.
@Patrick. @John_Harshman. The work is not done. It is not finished. When it is then it will be submitted for peer review and ultimately receive confirmation or not. We know this is necessary. But at this stage, while the work is being done, it remains undisclosed. And frankly, you have no right to ask that it be disclosed.
It is a cheap debating trick to say that I won’t answer because I have no answer, and is a form of ad hominem addressed at both me and ID.
If you ask out of amazement or curiosity, good. Be amazed or curious. We will find out the results together. And that’s the thing. The results are what they are—then comes the discussion. As we have seen, it may be that even a voice from heaven saying, “I made this man” would be argued over.
Props to @jongarvey
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I fail to understand why you won’t tell us about this work. I fail to understand the need for secrecy. I fail to understand why you won’t even tell us why secrecy is necessary, though you seem to think the reason is obvious. (It isn’t.)
Just give it time.
It is common for accomplished and well-seasoned scientists to devalue secrecy early on in a project. We have the ability to move quickly, get things published before our competitors, and our reputations are already established. In fact, publicly acknowledging we are working on something can even produce a chilling effect on the field, as new investigators do their best to steer clear.
New investigators, on the other hand, are much more concerned about secrecy because they don’t have the experience yet to manage the uncertainty, can’t move as fast as their large competitors, and have much more to loose.
In the end, time tells. Those who have been in ID for decades have produced very little. @Agauger says there are some new people who are trying to do better. Give it time, and I’m sure we will see. There is no reason to press the point right now.
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You are an editor of DI’s Biocomplexity Journal which published only 3 papers in 2018, the authors of which were also on the editorial board. See below:
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/issue/current
Since you are an editor and it is a peer reviewed journal, what is the acceptance ratio? Most peer reviewed journals accept no more than 40% of the papers submitted. With just 3 papers published, how many were submitted and rejected for publication? As an editor do you track “impact factor”? What is the impact factor of the 3 papers published this year? Historically, what paper in the history of the journal has the highest impact factor?
Sure research takes time and funding so you say it is not finished. That’s okay. But are you trying to “overhang the field” by alluding to “any day now” results when you know full well that it going to be a long long time before results will be coming out? It is more a question of honesty and integrity. Can you honestly say when you realistically expect to have results? We won’t hold you to the exact date but how about a range: is it months away, years away or never unless it get substantial funding which doesn’t look likely? Just be honest, it will make you more credible that you are right now.
Scientists who overhang the market" are being dishonest. I was a research leader during the telecom bubble days. Overhanging the market by saying you have research results nearing publication could be considered stock manipulation and be illegal. Because publicly acknowledging that you are working on something will overhang the field and will impact other labs and their funding. Nobody whats to be funding research that is second.
I was a new investigator once. I don’t recall any such thing. Do you? Even when I was a grad student and people asked me what I was working on, I never replied “some day it will become known”.
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@Agauger You work there. You should have a good assessment of when results will be forthcoming. It is dishonest to say “soon” when you know that it isn’t “soon”. But saying the you don’t know is okay as long as you really don’t know. If you know that nothing is going on, well it is dishonest to say I don’t know or results will be coming soon. Be honest.
I didn’t ask for the names of the researchers or where the work was being done. I didn’t ask for a detailed review of results to date. All I asked for was a simple, high level conceptual explanation for the claim the when, where and how a “designed” genome was manufactured can be determined just by finding a pattern in the genome. Given the angry and defensive reply you would have thought I’d asked someone to cut off their leg.
The lady doth protest too much methinks.
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@Patrick
Oh, soon for a few. I don’t know for others. It’s not that I don’t like you and wouldn’t like to tell you. I also talked about my project freely when I was a grad student or postdoc. But it wasn’t about ID back then, and it wasn’t other people’s work either.
As a symptom of the prejudice we face, someone here said he thought it was justifiable to can students who had attended the summer seminar, because “if you were a hospital would you hire a doctor who rejected the germ theory of disease in lieu of voodoo chants and reading chicken entrails?”
- None of us reject the germ theory. We are highly qualified.
- This isn’t about voodoo or chicken entrails. It is a dispute about how to interpret what we see in nature, and it is not resolved. We will marshal the best arguments we can using the best data we can. And I will tell you as soon as I can.
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But the ID position does reject the theory of evolution, arguably the most well supported scientific theory of all time, despite there being no scientific reason to do so, right?
How is that different from rejecting germ theory for voodoo?
I am all for keep proprietary information tight. Also am big proponent of individual privacy rights. I have worked on classified projects. There is a strict “need to know” requirement. I worked in industry on cutting edge research. Billions of dollars at play. I understand answers of 'that’s classified, that’s proprietary, that’s against HIPPA - an individual’s privacy. These are honest answers build around the law, SEC rules and policies.
But I see you doing the secrecy game as a purposeful diversion and deflection, a three card Monty where you keep moving the shells around knowing that there is no pea under any shell.
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Dr. Gauger that is a blatant falsehood on your part. Here is our actual exchange
NOWHERE did I say or imply students should be canned for attending seminars. You complained you though that would happen and I merely asked you why do you think that is?
Your twisting of words and making up imaginary conversations is getting rather annoying.