Re: [asa] Is Peer-Review the Be All and End All of Science?

Has anyone read Lee Smolin's book "The Trouble With Physics?" Smolin
is a
theoretical physicist, not a Christian of any sort as far as I can
tell, wh=
o
rejects ID out of hand. Yet, there are two chapters in Smolin's book
about
the problems with peer review and the culture of institutional science.
Apparently, according to Smolin, cosmological theories outside string
theor=
y
don't get any play in the establishment, so folks like Smolin have
established their own funded institutes to study alternatives. If
you took
out the few places in this book where Smolin jabs at ID, you'd think
it was
written by a Discovery Institute blogger. Reviewers reject
non-string-theory ideas out of fear and bias; government agencies
don't fun=
d
non-string-theory projects out of inertia and politics; etc, etc. Could
there be a bit more to the critique of the culture of academic
science than
we'd like to admit?

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Wed Nov 22 00:19:15 2006