Social psych? But isn’t he a molecular …
Okay, remember Dan Graur, the guy who made a scene about the ENCODE findings (that there is much less junk in the human genome than previously thought)? He claimed that if Encode is right, “then Evolution is wrong.” As other scientists have pointed out, ENCODE is mainly a problem for the propaganda fronted by Darwin’s followers,* not for the human genome.
Recently, we pointed out the finding that the “positivity ratio” was yet another example of bad peer-reviewed social science
Well, on a globe, lots of paths eventually intersect, and what do we see but Dan Graur attacking the positivity study’s lead author, calling her a “well-known crook”and “positivity scoundrel.” My, my.
If ENCODE proves as fruitful as most of Graur’s colleagues seem to think it is, he should be glad they don’t talk about him the way he talks about her. What if, like him, she is just mistaken? Self-deluded? As Feynman said, it is easiest to fool ourselves. True, she made a lot of money, but would she and others be less mistaken if they were poor?
*Jonathan Wells details a lot of that here, getting in ahead of them claiming that it is all perfectly compatible with their theory (a point with which Graur doesn’t seem to agree).
Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose