Re:Lung Cancer and the Power of Suggestion
by zzzeek on Sunday February 10, 2013 @04:38PM
(#5198031)
> I absolutely resent that idea that "science" should only be something for the experts, and everybody without a PhD should shut up about it.
making some off the cuff, armchair observations within a particular field of study (and blogging and serially promoting them to hacker news) without even making casual efforts to familiarize oneself with at least portions the vast amounts of knowledge publicly available on that field is, generously, pretty bad "science". And less generously, it's just hubris. This is not an "amateur researcher", this is someone who apparently based on posting history has a really high blogging-to-value ratio.
Of course, we all have the right to be clueless. I only requested that perhaps Hacker News doesn't want to encourage a culture of armchair cluelessness and particularly someone who appears to be a serial armchair blogger/HN promoter (see https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=techdog).
making some off the cuff, armchair observations within a particular field of study (and blogging and serially promoting them to hacker news) without even making casual efforts to familiarize oneself with at least portions the vast amounts of knowledge publicly available on that field is, generously, pretty bad "science". And less generously, it's just hubris. This is not an "amateur researcher", this is someone who apparently based on posting history has a really high blogging-to-value ratio.
Of course, we all have the right to be clueless. I only requested that perhaps Hacker News doesn't want to encourage a culture of armchair cluelessness and particularly someone who appears to be a serial armchair blogger/HN promoter (see https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=techdog).