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

Gregory:
I would say that in absolute terms "a few hundred" is a significant
number of people. Yes, in relative terms that gives a small percentage.
But if you select any narrow field of scientific research you would
expect a small percentage.
Don

Gregory Arago wrote:

> 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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-- 
Donald A. Nield
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