Re: Peer review and AIDS research

Keith Miller wrote:

> These publications deny that AIDS is contagious,
> that AIDS is sexually transmitted, that HIV causes
> AIDS, that anti-HIV drugs are effective, and that
> AIDS is responsible for the high mortalities in Africa.

The only thing I would agree with on the list
is that "anti-HIV drugs are [not] effective", but
that is because of our IGNORANCE about how to combat
a pernicious retrovirus of this tenacity.

HIV is not a joke and a disease ignored will
eventually find a way to infect an entire
population. Moreover, because reverse transcriptase
has an error rate of about 1/10000, and the virus
is about 10000 bp, every copy has some mutation. A
Billion copies are proliferated each day in an
AIDS patient. The adaptation rate of the virus
is frightening.

Moreover, ignoring Africa because of its lack of
direct economic influence is dumber than dumb. 96%
of the human genome is in Africa. The loss will be
everyone's.

It would be impossible to tell now, but disease could
have been an easy way to wipe out the Neanderthal
population in a very short time. About 2/3rds of the
population in western Europe died of the black death
in 1100 AD.

>
>AIDS researchers are concerned that these articles appearing on the
>website of a respected science journal will mislead policy makers and
>the public into thinking that a real controversy exists over the above
>issues.

I'm not directly involved with AIDS research, but
that is part of the interests of the people in my
institute. I know enough to find that there is
not much substance in the arguments against HIV,
and it does begin to resemble creationist arguments:
making mountains out of small descrepencies that
are currently not 100% positively pinned down to
10 significant figures, selectively pulling out
evidence, ignoring contrary information and
sometimes even (I suspect) distorting information.

Granted, there is a place for descenting views and
sometimes, what is considered true by the majority
of rank and file is quite profoundly
wrong. Ambiguities have make things seem reasonably
plausible even with evidence that somewhat contradicts
it. But all parties have to be honest about this,
or progress is mostly political and not scientific.

>
>I find this very reminiscent of the efforts of some ID advocates to
>influence the public and policy makers without first establishing the
>validity of their arguments through standard peer-reviewed channels.
>It is also significant, I believe, that Phil Johnson is a supporter of
>the HIV dissenters.

The truth is a powerful sword. I think the reason
a true and opposing theory eventually wins is because
it is right and anyone who stands in the path
(including peer reviewers who try to preserve the status
quo or their own pet theories) get smitten by
the sheer force of its power. It is good to question
all things, even the "graven images" or science (because
some of them _can_ be wrong), but there a limits. One
should also be willing to test their own "graven images".
That is the refiner's fire, and what is gold lasts and
we all should be willing to let the "straw" be burned
away.

I don't think retroviral researchers are particularly
wrong about the general points of HIV and I don't see
much substance in the counter arguments. In fact, I
think here, it's really a bit like kicking the goad.

By Grace alone we proceed
Wayne
Received on Fri Dec 12 00:47:11 2003