User talk:Srlasky

Welcome
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Thanks
Thanks for your contributions on biology. As Jfdwolff noted on Talk:Gene regulation, we need more contributors with biological knowledge. Since I see you are with the Institute for Systems Biology, you might be interested in helping improve the systems biology entry. Cheers --Lexor|Talk 10:49, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Back
Thanks, guys, I hope that I can make some reasonable contributions. I think the wikipedia project is incredibly important and I have been surprised at the quality of the entries I have seen so far. Wikipedia has actually move google down a notch for searches on things I neeed to know about. Srlasky 02:58, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Consensus science
You keep saying things like: "Science is done by showing a preponderence of evidence for a given hypothesis, not by scientist voting on a question." These are completely true of course, that this is how science SHOULD be done. The usage of the term consensus science is not to support doing science by vote, but is actually used to criticize attempts to perform science by vote, with the point being that science should be based on evidence, and conclusions should be based on the conclusivity of that evidence. I'm just slightly confused because you seem to be agreeing with the usage of the term "consensus science", but yet calling for its deletion. &mdash; Cortonin | Talk 13:08, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * We are agreeing. You are simply thinking that the existence of the term "consensus science" supports the idea of science being done by consensus, but it does not.  It in fact, opposes the idea of science being done by consensus.  The term "consensus science" exists to DIFFERENTIATE between science done by the scientific method and assessing results on the merits of their evidence, and between attempts to do science by popular consensus.  The term separates the second approach by giving it a separate label, to make clear that it operates by a different set of rules and that conclusions produced by consensus are not of the same strength and quality as conclusions produced from scientific evidence.  The term "consensus science" is used to say, "this is not how real science is done, so this thing is not science, it is merely 'consensus science'."     &mdash; Cortonin | Talk 10:49, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, the term "consensus science" is commonly used as a criticism for a number of contemporary theories and areas of research.  I believe the term's distinctiveness of use and commonality is all that should be required for the page to exist.  We're not supposed to consider the social rammifications of a Wikipedia page existing, because we're not supposed to selectively choose the ideas we like for Wikipedia.  There are articles on slavery and child abuse, and while we don't like these ideas, we find the existence of knowledge and awareness about these issues useful in preventing them.     &mdash; Cortonin | Talk 20:04, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree that consensus science should certainly be mentioned within scientific method. In fact, the concept of consensus itself is notably absent from discussion on that page. While it is not officially an element of the textbook "scientific method", the role that consensus DOES play needs to be acknowledged, in particular for fields for which it assumes a dominant role over textbook elements of the scientific method. However, the scientific method article is rather full, and because consensus science is a topic which is only related to scientific method and not a proper subset of it, it should also have its own article. &mdash; Cortonin | Talk 05:31, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)