[Experimentalist]

I agree with most of what you said.

However, you don't need to be knowledgeable of a particular field to find faults in a scientific study.

Logic, reasoning and mathematics can be used to identify methodological errors regardless of the subject matter or your knowledge of it.

Also, many seem to forget, science is a process not a conclusion.

We can certainly say a scientific theory is a strong theory supported by numerous scientific studies, evidence and rigorous testing. But all scientifically supported theories, by definition of using that methodology, are subject to modification and falsification based on new research.

I only point this out because of the predilection of some to brand as "kooks" people who dare question scientific conclusions. In fact questioning science is part of science.

[zeteo]

You need to know the basic vocabulary. When someone says that two genomes are 95% identical, that has a very precise meaning. You need to know genomes are made of chromosomes, containing long strings built with four letters, that amino-acids are made of groups of three of these letters, and that the possible mutations include deletions and insertions as well as substitutions. Once you know this, the claim is a mathematical statement, and you can test it in many ways.

[Experimentalist]

And my point, which you get to at the end of your msg, is that a mathematical or logical error can invalidate a hypothesis regardless of the subject matter of the datapoints being measured.

If you say 10 nuclear reactors + 10 nuclear reactors = 25 nuclear reactors. I can prove that wrong mathematically without knowing anything about nuclear reactors.

That's all I'm saying-- you don't have to necessarily have to know something about the subject matter to prove it wrong logically.

Likewise, I can evaluate a statement on the correlation of datapoints of a genome without knowing anything about what a genome does or is. (assuming you have defined the datapoints)

[zeteo]

Basically I think we agree but have slightly different definitions of mathematics and logics. I just think that purely mathematical errors are relatively rare (and hard to observe, since even where formal proofs are given they often skip a lot of steps, and require higher mathematics).

[Experimentalist]

"I just think that purely mathematical errors are relatively rare"

It's more common than you would think.

Math error equals loss of Mars orbiter NASA reported Sept. 30 that it had lost the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter because the force exerted by the orbiter's thrusters remained in the system of units based on pounds and feet rather than being converted to metric. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_15_156/ai_571...

A cosmic mistake Mankind's first cosmic message, beamed to the stars on Monday, contains two mathematical errors, it has been revealed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/353409.stm

Misuse of statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_statistics