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by pdonis 1420 days ago
> They did do a controlled experiment here.

No, they didn't. You can't do a controlled experiment on humans. Nobody has a "human source" that can stamp out a series of humans that are identical in all respects, to be used in an experiment, the way physicists have "particle sources" that can stamp out a series of identical particles. That's what "controlled experiment" means. The fact that they call one group a "control group" does not mean it's a controlled experiment. Humans can't be controlled to the degree required.

1 comments

At that point you might as well write off the entire field of biology since no two animals could be identical. Even clones could be subject to random point mutations.
> At that point you might as well write off the entire field of biology

No, you don't need to write off the entire field, you just need to be aware of its limitations. As you should be with any field of knowledge.

> no two animals could be identical. Even clones could be subject to random point mutations.

Yes, and any honest assessment of what we know in biology, and how confident we are in our knowledge, has to take these things into account.