ludovic mirabel wrote:
Steven Sullivan wrote in message et...
Nousaine wrote:

This is what always happens with 'bad news.' Instead of giving us contradictory
evidence we get endless wishful 'data-dredging' to find any possible reason to
ignore the evidence.

In any other circle when one thinks the results of a given experiment are wrong
they just duplicate it showing the error OR produce a valid one with contrary
evidence.

Not necessarily. It's quite common for questions to be raised during peer
review of a scientific paper; it is then incumbent upon the *experimenter*, not
the critic, to justify his or her choice of protocol, or his/her explanation of
the results. Often this involves doing more experiments to address the reviewer's
concerns. Sometimes it merely involved explaining the results more clearly, or
in more qualified terms. If the experimenter feels the reviewer has ignored some
important point, that comes out too in the reply to the reviews.

I say all this having not yet visited the link, so I'm totally unbiased ;

Bravo Mr. Sullivan. I hope you'll be as pleased to accept my applause
as I am to see your excellent exposure of the frequently-voiced
challenge to the ABX sceptics to "prove" their sceptical questions.

Actually, ludovic, what tends to happen far more often, is that skeptics ask
subjectivists to prove *their* claims, which is quite proper.

Also, as I implied, there mere act of *questioning* does not make the question
well-founded or mean that it requires answering. In you're case, I have
observed that they almost never are. In a peer review process, the
poor foundation and/or bad understanding behind such queries would be noted by
the experimenter, who would make his case to the editor, and the points would
not be required to be addressed.

There is no 'exposure' involved, here, except of your own agenda, as usual.

--
-S.