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Author Topic:   Jean-claude Perez finally joined the ID movement!
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 5 of 18 (725693)
04-30-2014 4:32 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Phrou79
04-30-2014 12:36 PM


This is an other big enrichment for intelligent design.
In other big news, he's been joined by the famous Japanese crackpot Iduno Huhi.
What we have here, Phrou, is what is known as a crank. I understand why he prefers "interdisciplinary scientist", but what he actually is is a crank. You will find that from time to time cranks do join the ID movement.
I suspect that your headline is somewhat disingenuous in its use of the word "finally". Be honest now, were you on the edge of your seat waiting for this to happen? Did you know who this guy is, were you a convinced fan of his work thinking "This guy's a genius, now if only he'll become an IDist, that'll just make my day"?
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Phrou79, posted 04-30-2014 12:36 PM Phrou79 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by Taq, posted 04-30-2014 5:12 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(2)
Message 7 of 18 (725699)
04-30-2014 5:34 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Taq
04-30-2014 5:12 PM


Ah, well, I've been looking at his work.
Here's his magnum opus The 3 Genomic Numbers Discovery: How Our Genome Single-Stranded DNA Sequence Is Self-Designed as a Numerical Whole. As you can see, he's a numerologist without the faintest idea how to write a scientific paper.
But wasn't it peer-reviewed? The CreationWiki makes much of this.
Turns out he was published in a pay-to-play "journal", based in China, that asks authors to nominate their own reviewers.
But does that necessarily mean it's a bad journal? Well, the publishers appear on this list of "predatory publishers".
The gold (author pays) open-access model has given rise to a great many new online publishers. Many of these publishers are corrupt and exist only to make money off the author processing charges that are billed to authors upon acceptance of their scientific manuscripts. [...] we recommend that researchers, scientists, and academics avoid doing business with these publishers and journals. Scholars should avoid sending article submissions to them, serving on their editorial boards, reviewing papers for them, or advertising in them. Also, tenure and promotion committees should give extra scrutiny to articles published in these journals, for many of them include instances of research misconduct.
In fact, when I typed the company name (Scientific Research Publishers) into google, it suggested the word predatory as an autofill!
This article in Nature tells you more than you need to know about "Scientific Research Publishers" and their problems with basic ethics.
So, yeah, what we've got here is the (witting or unwitting) vanity publications of a loon. Or, as Phrou puts it "an other big enrichment for intelligent design".
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Taq, posted 04-30-2014 5:12 PM Taq has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 16 by Tanypteryx, posted 05-02-2014 1:20 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(5)
Message 9 of 18 (725702)
04-30-2014 6:05 PM



  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(5)
Message 11 of 18 (725712)
04-30-2014 10:06 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Phrou79
04-30-2014 12:36 PM


Introduction To Numerology And Why It Sucks
As I have said, Perez is a numerologist. Indeed, he is a very typical numerologist who could be held up as an example of what it is that numerologists do and why it's stupid. Let's look in detail at what Perez is doing, as seen in his paper "The 3 Genomic Numbers Discovery: How Our Genome Single-Stranded DNA Sequence Is Self-Designed as a Numerical Whole".
How To Do Numerology
Like most numerologists, Perez has two basic materials. First, he has special mathematical constants, such as φ, π, e, the Fibonacci numbers, and indeed any integer whatsoever.
Second, he has a large data set of numbers drawn from the real world: in this case codon frequencies in various genomes. Of course, numerologists differ one from another by using different data sets, it could be the measurements of Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid or the solar system, the only necessity is that the data set should be reasonably large.
He is then free to form expressions by adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing and exponentiating the special numbers; and to do the same with the numbers from the data set.
When he finds that one of the expressions formed out of the raw material of the data set is approximately equal to one of the expressions formed out of the special numbers, he can declare this to be a deep insight into biology (or, for other numerologists, whatever field they took their data set from).
Why This Sucks
He's playing a game he can hardly lose.
In the first place, he has wide latitude to make expressions out of his special numbers. Here are some of the expressions he gets excited about in this one paper: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 144, 1/2, 3/2, 8/5, 5/3, φ, 2φ, 1/φ, 2/φ, φ2, φ3, φ5, 2φ5-1, 1+(φ/2), 5/2φ, φ1/3, (φ+10)/9, (4/φ )-1, 5-2φ, (3-φ )/2, 2/φ2, πeφ, πeφ/10, πeφ/20, 3-φ, 6/(3-φ ), 1/π, 1/φ-1/π ...
Obviously he's not limited to these expressions in particular, (φ+11)/6 would be every bit as good as (φ+10)/9; or 7/(4-φ ) is just as valid an expression using special numbers as is 6/(3-φ ).
But of course you can approximate any number at all to any required degree of accuracy by means of expressions in the form (φ+a)/b or c/(d-φ ) for integer choices of a, b, c, and d. There might be a practical difficulty in finding the right integers if the appropriate integers are large, but in principle it can always be done.
So his ability to find expressions of this form which match expressions made out of his data set doesn't particularly tell us anything about his data set. It tells us what any man could do if he had enough time on his hands.
Similar remarks apply to his manipulations of the data set. He's free to add, subtract, multiply, divide anything he likes by anything he likes.
But what's more, if he makes some expression out of his data set, and he can't get it to equal some expression made of special numbers, he doesn't have to mention that. He can just go on and try something else. He doesn't have to tell us about his failures. He awards himself a point (so to speak) whenever he can get two expressions to match, but doesn't dock a point from his score when he fails.
And he himself can see no significance in his failures. After all, he doesn't have a theory. Nothing has to be true for him to feel satisfied with his work. He is not in a position where if he divides this datum by that datum and the answer isn't φ, he has to say; "Oh, in that case I was wrong about everything, forget it".
He is, then, playing a game he can't lose. But it isn't worth playing, because, as I said, his ability to score points in this futile game tells us nothing about the data set. You could play this game and win with any sufficiently large data set. All Perez has proved, then, is that he's got too much time on his hands.
---
I don't think this sort of thing adds luster to the Intelligent Design movement. I guess it doesn't make it any worse either, it's all about on this intellectual level.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Phrou79, posted 04-30-2014 12:36 PM Phrou79 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by NoNukes, posted 05-01-2014 2:47 PM Dr Adequate has not replied
 Message 14 by Taq, posted 05-01-2014 5:24 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 12 of 18 (725760)
05-01-2014 1:05 PM


His Glittering Career
Perez' CreationWiki bio describes him as a Denis Guichard prizewiner. Intrigued, I googled on the phrase "Denis Guichard prize" and got 7 hits. This post will make 8, they'll soon be into double figures. By way of comparison, I got 68,000 hits for the phrase "purple badger".
From what little I can find out about this Denis Guichard Foundation, they're big into "alternative" medicine and denying that HIV causes AIDS.
So he's got that going for him.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

  
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