[bhouston]

I’ve seen inside of privately funded research that doesn’t have publication requirements and sometimes it is driven by a combination of belief, passion and incompetence which leads to an avoidance of accepting failure. Not saying this is the case with this but please do not elevate private research above public research. There is actually less controls over the quality of private research.

[thkim]

I did not say I consider private research in some sort of higher level than public research. I only said they have no incentive to do full disclosure right now. Without knowing exactly what they know, it is insulting to authors to describe, or even hint, them as avoiding to accept failture. It is simply unwarranted ad-hominem and not contributing anything to academic discussion at this point.

[haldujai]

> It is simply unwarranted ad-hominem

When the authors/executives of a private research company are making fraudulent affiliation claims to established corporations and research universities it's actually very warranted to be dismissive of their claims in the absence of supportive evidence. Especially when there is growing evidence suggestive of failure.

This is not the behavior of ethical scientists and suggests malice.

Faking affiliation and refusing to provide supportive evidence both smell like a fundraising scam (i.e. running out of money and need to raise more to continue research seems like the simplest explanation for this behavior).

https://web.archive.org/web/20230806081911/https://koreajoon...

[thkim]

Since when is ad hominem a part of evaluating claims?

[haldujai]

Without getting into a philosophical discussion of whether ad hominem is ever appropriate.

This is, in fact, the opposite of ad hominem.

Ad hominem would suggest we are attacking the claim based solely on the author's credibility. In fact, multiple independent replication experiments failed and theoretical models suggest it doesn't work.

So instead of attacking the authors the question is should we be trusting them at their word, and the answer which is reasonably based on credibility seems to be no.

[thkim]

Whether or not authors are credible, instead of the claims, is not a scientific discussion.

[haldujai]

The science behind the claims is being scientifically discussed and the preponderance of available evidence provide no experimental or theoretical support.

We're separately discussing the author's credibility as the claims cannot be verified by anyone but the authors. One example of a time we do this is the "disclosures" section of any academic publication.

Are you arguing someone with a conflict of interest and history of making fraudulent arguments should not be placed under heightened scrutiny?

Combining both available evidence and author credibility is completely valid and leads one to the conclusion that this is incorrect until proven otherwise. It's not like we're solely dismissing the claim because the authors have poor credibility.