{"id":151,"date":"2008-06-23T10:59:41","date_gmt":"2008-06-23T10:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/06\/23\/mr_and_mrs_duct_and_their_daughter_miss_con\/"},"modified":"2008-06-23T10:59:41","modified_gmt":"2008-06-23T10:59:41","slug":"mr_and_mrs_duct_and_their_daughter_miss_con","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/06\/23\/mr_and_mrs_duct_and_their_daughter_miss_con\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr and Mrs Duct, and their daughter, Miss Con"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bit of a kerfuffle<\/a> in last week’s Nature<\/em><\/a>. Turns out that we practising scientists are all making it up, or at least fiddling Western blots to make things look better than they are. According to some learn\u00e9d0<\/a><\/sup> commentators<\/a> (who is that Liu person anyway? Why does s\/he get up my nose so?) we’re all so stressed by pressure to publish that we’ll make up any old shit and send it to Nature<\/em> or JCB<\/em>, who are so pleased to get anything that it gets published.<\/p>\n

\nSorry, I’m a little aggrieved by the implications here.<\/p>\n

\nOnly last week I took a good, hard look at my young apprentice’s data, compared it with the new data I had just generated, and announced in Churchillian tones,<\/p>\n

\n“The hypothesis is dead. Long live the hypothesis!”<\/p>\n

\nWe had such a beautiful theory. It just worked. It made sense. It would have helped a freshly-minted PhD to a Nature<\/em> paper. But I went into the boss’s office with the new data and said, “This is a dead hypothesis.” And we sat down and talked about it, and I went to talk with my young apprentice, and we were all ever so slightly disappointed for a while (because, let’s face it, we’re not always<\/em> rational) and then I announced that the current data are consistent with not one but two new hypotheses.<\/p>\n

\nAnd they are eminently testable.<\/p>\n

\nRejoice! This is science. And it works<\/a>.<\/p>\n

0<\/sup> Sarcasm. It’s quite obvious most of the loudmouths haven’t been near a lab in their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bit of a kerfuffle in last week’s Nature. Turns out that we practising scientists are all making it up, or at least fiddling Western blots to make things look better than they are. According to some learn\u00e9d0 commentators (who … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}