On 25 Jun 2001, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
Len:
> >Another reason, perhaps people are happy with their level of knowledge and
> >their skills/techniques in the area. This seems the case for bionet
> >specialist groups like molecular biology (HIV), which is a ghost town.
> >
Athel:
> Any clues why this should be? The HIV news group seemed to die more or less
> from one day to the next. I noticed because it happened at just the time
> when Peter Duesberg was making a visit here and I was following it a bit at
> that time.
I don't think it was Peter's fault. He certainly is congenial to talk with
and his underlying thoughts are quite interesting. His actual arguement
isn't that HIV is not the cause of AIDS - rather that *all* retroviri are
harmless. In this respect the issue is much bigger but very few people
seem to grasp that this is his actual arguement and so there is a gap
between the arguements of both sides of the issue. It's a fundamentally
different apriori acceptance that leads to the problems.
But the NG is spammed by untrained people who have found the words of
Mullis, Duesberg, Rasnick (a particularly stupid enzymologist) and sadly
fellow Australian's (The "Perth Group"). They then regurgitate the
pseudo-science but are not interested in the response and just post
something else or the same thing with a different thread-title
(familiar?). The real problem is Thabo Mbeki, who now consults these
people to form policy in South Africa.
But I don't think dissidents killed the NG. The problem is stupidity. I
think we know a fair bit now about HIV for people to feel "comfortable"
with their knowledge. I also think with this basis many don't want to
share what they're doing until they publish. Either way it's not a healthy
attitude.
I also notice many people with a bit of a "name" don't give out their
e-mail addresses in scientific publications. Is this because those who
they consider worth speaking to already know how to contact them? I don't
think many of these people would bother with newsgroups. They can be a
waste of time.
Sorry, I have got an enzyme question I'll get to soon, I'm just
formulating it properly.
Len...
