Re: OOL: was [asa] Quoting Evolution [was Darwin] out of context

Hello Don,
   
  Thanks for digging into this question a bit more and coming up with some numbers based on the Web of Science database.
   
  You wrote: "I think that that means that there are a few hundred active OOL researchers."
   
  In what numerical range of active science researchers do those 'active OOL researchers' consist? I'm guessing you are referring to hundreds of thousands of scientists - or am I misunderstanding the context?

  What I'm suggesting is that there are a miniscule percentage of total scientists(e.g. a few hundred out of hundreds of thousands) who call themselves OOL (or origin(s) of human consciousness) scientists. Is this assumption valid or are there a lot more OOL researchers out there?
   
  Thanks for feeding the curiosity of someone not in that field.
   
  Gregory
   
  
Don Nield <d.nield@auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
  Gregory Arago wrote

>
> Don's claim that "the number of OOL researchers is substantial" I am
> both surprised and intruiged by - I would have thought the opposite.
> What does 'substantial' mean - 2%, 10%, 50%? I'm curious to hear what
> percentage of natural scientists actually *do research* on origins of
> life. Surely engineers rarely do OOL or OOH(uman consciousness) research.
>

DN: I am talking about scientists, not engineers.
I have just checked the Web of Science database. I chose the decade 1996-2005, and the subject "origin of life". For title plus abstract that turned up 4974 documents. For title only, there were 276 documents.
Allowing for muliple authors of a paper, multiple papers by an author, and general noise, I think that that means that there are a few hundred active OOL researchers.
Don

                                 
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Received on Wed Aug 23 12:52:10 2006