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by spicymapotofu 971 days ago
A simple comparison might help: while from the outside this likely looks like the famous "leftist yells at leftist" scenario, the alternative - where a single expert has their theories elevated into law, without room for disagreement, looks a lot like Lysenkoism, and usually results in large-scale suffering with no scientific value (due to mistakes, large or small, in individual theories).

I'm not in this field and can't hazard a guess at the exact utility of this dispute, but when I see specialists and the impassioned debating vigorously on their principles, I trust it's because of relevant disagreements in the field, because that's what I observe in my preferred domain. Some amount of slapfighting is inevitable - we're all human - but this is a particularly humane way to hash out differences.

1 comments

Lysenko was elevated in an totalitarian environment. It was also related to science, or something like it.

This text does not appear much related to a lot of science, more like "someone said something about me and Id like to refute it" but its 40 000 words or something instead of just a small text.