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From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Subject: Re: Why scientists popularize premature speculations?
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In article <3bngc8$300@pobox.csc.fi>, grohn@finsun.csc.fi (Lauri Gr|hn) writes:
|> 	I am sorry but I think you miss the point. The laymen
|> are not called to participate in the brainstorming meetings in
|> company boardrooms and they are not called to participate
|> in seminars where research put forward seemingly crazy ideas
|> to be developped further. The laymen dont miss anything if
|> they dont get the intermediate results which with great probability
|> eventually lose their validity and dont get to be published
|> in scientific journals.  Almost always intermediate result
|> are miss-information.

I'm sorry, but the above is simply incoherent.

|> Why should that "information" be used
|> "to educate people int the methology of choosing..."?

You should perhaps read more carefully.  I nowhere suggested
that this (whatever it is) should be the source or material
of such education.

|> The great public should have right to get bread instead of
|> eating flour.

And in addition they should have the right to eat flour instead
of getting bread, if that is their desire.  I confess that I
do not see the point of this remark of yours (as I do not grasp
the points above either).  It is one thing to falsely report
information or to distort results.  It is another to report
tentative results or speculations.  A rational person -- any
rational person, no matter the degree of technical education --
should be prepared to make judgements concerning this
distinction.  Your position is to suppress -- indeed to prohibit
the free discussion in public of -- information, whatever its
degree of support.  There is a word for people like you.
"Paternalistic" comes to mine, but it is too mild.  Likewise,
"elitist".  To control the information available to people
(the "great public") is to exert substantial control over
their lives and the decisions they make -- as every totalitarian
government realizes fully.  To withhold information -- however
ill-confirmed or speculative -- from the public domain because
you mistrust the public's ability to judge the value of that
information, or because you or a group of fellow-travelling
elitists decide that such information might not be in the
"best interests" of others, is simply autocracy.  This is not
merely unethical (a word you seem particularly fond of ) --
it is evil.

-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, Compiler and Tools Division]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
