Vaj, I'm close to my limit for the week. I'll get to your deceitful bafflegab about the TM research on Saturday. In the meantime, I'll deal with *this* piece of deceit from you:
--- In [email protected], Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Apr 2, 2008, at 9:57 AM, authfriend wrote: > > > So...what *do* you think the Ig Nobels are awarded for? > > It's for research that's considered laughable Oops, no, you didn't get that quite right, Vaj. >From the Ig Nobel Web site: "The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology." http://www.ignobel.com/ig/ You've gotten this wrong before, and I've corrected you. Your repetition of your error means we can chalk up to your account one more deliberate attempt to mislead. (Hugheshugo, I suspect, is simply misinformed.) > and "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced." > > Lacking reproducibility of course is one of the hallmarks of > pseudoscience. True dat. But "should not be reproduced" ain't quite the same thing, is it, now? According to Marc Abrams, the founder of the awards, in no way is the Ig Nobel intended as criticism. Among the benefits of an Ig Nobel Award, as he notes in an essay on what the awards are and are not: Your breakthrough might go unnoticed. Say you have done something that you - and some other people - believe to be very, very good and maybe even very, very important. But most people don't recognize its importance. Worse, most people don't even recognize its existence. It's different from what they expect or what they have ever run across. What you have, you believe, is a breakthrough. The classic sequence of events for any breakthrough is: (1) Most people don't recognize its existence. (2) When they do recognize it, their immediate reaction is to laugh or scoff at it. (3) Some of those people become curious about this thing that they are laughing at, and then think about it, and so come to appreciate its true worth. The Ig provides much-needed publicity. So there you have a nice little benefit of the Ig Nobel Prizes. If you've done something people chuckle at and you win an Ig, then more people will hear about it. And maybe some of those people will also become curious, and will think about what you've accomplished, and fall in love with it. http://www.ignobel.com/ig/miscellaneous/what-is-this-2000.html http://tinyurl.com/39f66o The Ig Nobel Awards are not what either Vaj or Hugheshugo claim they are. They would both benefit from reading this essay by Abrams, which is well thought out and much more faithful to the spirit of scientific research than either of them are.
