EDIT: A seperate website is being built for this issue as it has become overtly political for a science blog. When the website is built next year the blog below will provide an article feed to it.
http://rationalskepticism-forum.blogspot.com/
Following the review by Juan Carlos Pinto (log into facebook) , founder of the Strong Ai group, another artificial intelligence researcher Paul Almond ( www.paul-almond.com ) has completely misrepresented this theory on RationalSkepticism forums and posted it in the pseudoscience section. Interesting move considering his works were posted as pseudoscience in the very same section over a year ago.
His stated reason is that the central concept for my research is based on nothing more than brain imaging. There are strong grounds to suspect that this is a pretext to further a preexisting political dispute I had with this group, (while anonymous) questioning the political ethos of atheist activism which underlies their activities, such that i was suspended as a forum member long before their so called review. This thread against me was posted just 6 hours after i revealed my identity to Paul Almond, and was clearly a 30 minute botch job, designed to irritate their strongest critic.
First of all to tackle these hastily manufactured revenge points of contention around my work, the Brain imaging was one of many cross discipline results and played no part in generation of the project concept. Any images used are a means to pick out morphogenetic features, (as do other neurodevelopment theories) or put together for conference posters. However If i had taken that approach mentioned it would still have been a valid means to proceed anyway. Basing theories of neuro function on visual structure has lead to one of the biggest computational neuroscience breakthroughs of recent time.
All of this has been clearly stated in my papers starting sections. Clearly Mr Almond had not even started to read the work he is critiquing. This jumping to conclusions is a trait that is exceedingly common in (but not limited to) atheist groups and confirms my initial criticism of their activities. Further misrepresentations I have to correct Paul Almond and friends on are:
1. The VZ Cortex dipole is not a quantum mind theory. It is a neurodevelopment theory with physical mechanisms based on growing support for glial magnetic models i.e. (Ingber & Nunez, 2010 , Bokkon & Banaclocha, 2010 , Pereira & Furlan, 2010, Størmera & Laanec, 2009)
2. The concept has not been based primarily on how the brain looks, but on how the brain develops its structure and functionally processes information.
The VZ calcium wave to dipole concept IS fully science interactive. It has undergone peer review, multiple independent review by dozens of experts, scrutiny at high level neuroscience conferences and is an on going project with further plans for publication, PHD summarization, falsification and experimental design.
If this model is successful there could well be a considerable advancement over previous neurodevelopment theory. This has a possible potential to lead to a deeper understanding of how the brain developed its structure by integrating fundamental principles of physics over evolutionary time scales. There will also be a demand in about 2020 for completion of a top down neuro structural model in the increasingly active area of whole brain emulation in computer systems. A technology that is earmarked as having high potential for humans to beat the problems of being bound into a DNA based system.
I would not claim there are no problems to be dealt with here, but this group spotted none of the issues that peer reviewers did and instead citied a list of misrepresentation, clearly displaying they have not even read past the papers introduction section. If these people want to review competently they are welcome. I have invited hostile review (of the fair, rational, honest and competent variety) since the first release of this work.
http://rationalskepticism-forum.blogspot.com/
Following the review by Juan Carlos Pinto (log into facebook) , founder of the Strong Ai group, another artificial intelligence researcher Paul Almond ( www.paul-almond.com ) has completely misrepresented this theory on RationalSkepticism forums and posted it in the pseudoscience section. Interesting move considering his works were posted as pseudoscience in the very same section over a year ago.
His stated reason is that the central concept for my research is based on nothing more than brain imaging. There are strong grounds to suspect that this is a pretext to further a preexisting political dispute I had with this group, (while anonymous) questioning the political ethos of atheist activism which underlies their activities, such that i was suspended as a forum member long before their so called review. This thread against me was posted just 6 hours after i revealed my identity to Paul Almond, and was clearly a 30 minute botch job, designed to irritate their strongest critic.
First of all to tackle these hastily manufactured revenge points of contention around my work, the Brain imaging was one of many cross discipline results and played no part in generation of the project concept. Any images used are a means to pick out morphogenetic features, (as do other neurodevelopment theories) or put together for conference posters. However If i had taken that approach mentioned it would still have been a valid means to proceed anyway. Basing theories of neuro function on visual structure has lead to one of the biggest computational neuroscience breakthroughs of recent time.
All of this has been clearly stated in my papers starting sections. Clearly Mr Almond had not even started to read the work he is critiquing. This jumping to conclusions is a trait that is exceedingly common in (but not limited to) atheist groups and confirms my initial criticism of their activities. Further misrepresentations I have to correct Paul Almond and friends on are:
1. The VZ Cortex dipole is not a quantum mind theory. It is a neurodevelopment theory with physical mechanisms based on growing support for glial magnetic models i.e. (Ingber & Nunez, 2010 , Bokkon & Banaclocha, 2010 , Pereira & Furlan, 2010, Størmera & Laanec, 2009)
2. The concept has not been based primarily on how the brain looks, but on how the brain develops its structure and functionally processes information.
The VZ calcium wave to dipole concept IS fully science interactive. It has undergone peer review, multiple independent review by dozens of experts, scrutiny at high level neuroscience conferences and is an on going project with further plans for publication, PHD summarization, falsification and experimental design.
If this model is successful there could well be a considerable advancement over previous neurodevelopment theory. This has a possible potential to lead to a deeper understanding of how the brain developed its structure by integrating fundamental principles of physics over evolutionary time scales. There will also be a demand in about 2020 for completion of a top down neuro structural model in the increasingly active area of whole brain emulation in computer systems. A technology that is earmarked as having high potential for humans to beat the problems of being bound into a DNA based system.
I would not claim there are no problems to be dealt with here, but this group spotted none of the issues that peer reviewers did and instead citied a list of misrepresentation, clearly displaying they have not even read past the papers introduction section. If these people want to review competently they are welcome. I have invited hostile review (of the fair, rational, honest and competent variety) since the first release of this work.
OK so whats the big problem then, if i am not bothered about their review ?
My disupte with Ratskep was always about general principles in other areas which i have started to try and put forward in this blog. Because these activists mis-conflate atheism with science they feel entitled to take on a political mentality and pool resources in to behavior that plays down the creative and individual element that is present in science. That is a typical consequence of groupthink and one reason why peer reviewers are kept anonymous from each others decisions.
However they also appear to become take on an almost tyrannical mob mentality. A primary reason that Richard Dawkins under pressure, closed down his forum RDF, and RationalSkepticism then had to be formed as an umbrella organization for these more active members.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7322177/Richard-Dawkins-in-bitter-web-censorship-row-with-fellow-atheists.html
Mob Science, well I guess if anything history reminds us that mob mentality can ruin anything we achieve. As we can see already the politics of athiesm tries to draw science into an anti-creative climate where hierarchies are enforced. A pedantic and rigid framework called "rationalism" is invoked at every turn. Read their product and what you find is that this "rationalism" is nothing more than an excuse for political activism, intellectual laziness and misrepresentation for those that cannot or do not want to produce groundbreaking ideas. What does it do ?
Not a lot. These forums serve no useful function that is outwith political activity suited to keeping creationism out of classrooms. They dont produce ideas, they dont critique ideas (competently). They don’t solve a scientific problem, yet they aggressively market themselves into that domain and oust scientists peer reviewed works out of google with a misleading and respectable looking front page.
As there are no actual journal editors (or ex editors) and very few published scientists on ratskep, they have a very low awareness in regards to what editorial standards and requirements really are. If published works appear which back up a theory they decided not to like, the journal or institution is then criticized, mostly just to ensure group cohesion between forum members. Very rarely are these papers they criticize read (I tested that by presenting peer reviewed works and watching if the view counter increased). Over one year 60 members ridiculed a theorist yet only two actually accessed the primary work to read it. This is the worst kind of climate for people to be introduced to ideas.
There are no hallmarks of the refined functions of science or journal procedure when they review and classify works. i.e. Standards, protocol or procedure in review. Contacting of the author for rebuttal, in depth (often none !) reading of the reviewed material, no criteria for “pseudoscience”. no appeal or libel, no regulation, assessment of reviewer expertise etc.
The policy which has been stated by their moderators, is that any works which are not encoded in the mainstream are pseudoscience. This policy is at odds with the expert classifications by Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and A. Musgrave. Ratskep wilfully classifies together Protoscience and fringe science with Pseudoscience. A complete misrepresentation. Pseudoscience is clearly demarcated as not being treated with the scientific method and a form of dishonesty by the proponent of the idea, either to themselves (mostly) or to others.
What they are actually saying is forget the fine grained distinctions (see the diagram above), lets misrepresent anybody who pushes the boundaries of science (and uses scientific methods) but who cannot at that time complete their works for various reasons, as intellectually dishonest pseudoscientists. That is then proposing a misrepresentation that there was never any application of scientific methods by the theory proponents. Its very much the "blame" culture group psychology we see when one group tries to vilify outsiders because they are not affiliated to large resources.
OK...but still its their world in there so leave them to it ?
Unfortunately this cannot be let go. If this tendency for online mobs to invade scientific territory is on the increase, which it appears is happening, then opposing action requires to take place now. These forums are able to supplant peer reviewed works and academic pages from google so that a scientist without Web SEO skills can end up represented on google by pages of ratskep threads misrepresenting their works as "Pseudoscience" or similar labelling. This web flooding did not affect me, due to my background in web design, but it has done to many unfortunate scientists, a list which i will post on the complaints site.
How did ratskep managed to climb google and supplant peer review works ? It was the result of clear and organized intent to attain a high google rank by their knowledgeable web developer/owner Bernhard Breisser (forum name LIFE) . Here is an insight from Breisser instructions to his members. This statement was made not long after richard dawkins ejected them from his site for being irrelevant to science and reason.
HOWTO: Building links for RatSkep to gain higher search engine rankings
To be fair Bernhard Breisser does not appear to take part in this activity (or at least leaves them to it) and was surprised when i showed him a list of scientists that had been affected by his sites agressive marketing.
"It it unfortunate that Google results are what they are, we can only do so much to prevent "misleading" rankings if that would be the case. Say we do rename the section to something "less inflammatory", people can still put "Pseudoscience" in the title and the text and thus result in the same thing. I hope you are not suggesting staff should review each and every thread just to ensure everything is where it should be? Whenever you feel like there is some thread in a wrong category use the report button, there's even a special report reason for these cases. If you suggest to rename the category altogether and can provide convincing reasons for it then of course, you are always free to do so as well.
If members (incl staff) decide that we chance it then I will gladly implement whatever there is to be implemented"
A useless piece of advice. Reports are ignored. It took 6 months for a thread trying to raise the matter to be dealt with. Dealing with it was to close it down. I had already informed Breisser of this before he made that statement. He was really saying (in a polite manner), “not interested, leave it up to the forum to do as they like”. On that basis its extremely doubtful that change will occur .
UPDATE: As of 11/11/2011 The Ratskep forum staff voted and agreed to continue with scientific mispresentation, which was no surprise of course. What was surprising for me was that the forum members themselves were about even split on the matter when i made the case to them. Following these proceedings the page i linked to above illustrating their SEO action was then removed. I have replaced the link now to a google Cache copy. I copied this after Bernhard Breisser denied the existence of such a page of instructions publicly. So I posted contents of this page online to jog his memory, he than stated publicly, he had forgotten about this campaign. Two weeks later he deleted the above page. This sequence of events certainly gives the impression that he is fully aware this page constitutes evidence of something. Either the techniques proposed were dubious or he is trying to hide responsibility that the site had such a campaign which has tarnished the google results of many scientists they have misrepresented.
As there is no international libel law to deal with this problem a plan has been constructed to have a complaints blog optimized to appear under a search for "Rational Skepticism". This may be put into progress in middle of 2012. Its content will be dictated on how the scientists that have been affected view this issue.
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