At 11:36 AM 03-11-02 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi Greg,
> Yours are less vitrolic and polemical-'bear' may be
>a nurse and post-doctoral in stats-she needs to learn
>how to be inclusive in dialogue before anyone, or
>anyone should, take s/he seriously. Degrees are
>irrelevant if all you do is rant and make personal
>attacks...further, I have no good reason to believe
>s/he is qualified in anything-the writing belies
>otherwise and only s/he is responsible for that.
>
>On Sun, 03 Nov 2002 11:11:20 -0800 (PST), grant hallman
>wrote:
>
>"At 04:02 PM 30-10-02 -0800, you wrote:
>Part of the problem you may be experienceing is that
>Rosa et al has been addressed in other forums. The
>
>Well, i don't think that's the problem. We've had Larry
>Sarner on this list, simply refusing to answer our
>criticisms, because:
>- we're not smart enough?
>- we think there might be something to TT?
>- he's published in JAMA and we're just peons?
>- he's too busy?
>...take ur pick. But know that Sarner spent more pages
>saying he was too busy to answer, than it would have
>takemn to answer,and i have a B.Sc. in math, physics
>/and/ chemistry and a Ph.D. in quantum mechanics, and
>bear is extremely well qualified in statistics as well
>as nursing, and together bear & i found holes in Rosa's
>methods, mathematics and conclusions u could drive an
>ambulance thru, sideways. Go figger."
>
>-Fine. This maybe the case. I don't know I haven't read
>Sarners replies to this listserv and I'm not arguing
>FOR Sarner. If you read it closely I said it is "part"
>of a problem-not all or even an all encompassing
>poont.However, it IS a relevant one whether you have
>got reponses (be they good, bad, or indifferent) from
>Sarner or not. The best argument I've seen from
>opponenets of the Rosa case are not from TT proponents
>but Carla Selby of the Rocky Mountain Skeptics. To
>answer you assertion about JAMA recanting-firing the
>editor is enough for almost any reasonable person. The

This would make more sense if JAMA had said clearly that they were firing
the editor coz of his decision to publish Rosa. AFAIK, that has not been
said. He could have been fired for stealing pencils.

>fact that they published Selby's critique of Rosa is
>more than enough. If you expect prostration before
>proponents don't hold your breath-it isn't reasonable;
>what was done IS reasonable.

The point isn't prostration, or getting someone fired. The point is the
intellectual record of the journal. If they don't like the quality of an
article, and fail to catch it pre-pub, then the right thing to do is
repudiate it, i.e. withdraw JAMA's support. Firings are a personnel issue.
This is a matter of intellectual integrity and credibility, and as i
understand it, Rosas can still claim JAMA support for their stuff. /That's/
what should be addressed, and by the bye, _reported_ as widely as the
original publication.

>-Listing your "degrees" doesn't impress me-nor should
>listing mine to you.

It wasn't intended to impress, just to illustrate the flimsiness of Larry
Sarner's excuses.

> I base my decisions upon the
>weight of reason and evidence from within your
>arguments. Admittedly I haven't done this well in the
>past on this forum for two reasons. One, I didn't ask
>to be on it-and no I don't know how I got on it. SO
>when I received a diatribe posting from 'bear' I
>thought it was (1)unsolicited and TO me and, (2) in
>reference to e-mails I had been exchanging with Pat
>Winstead-Fry(Who I've been exchanging e-mails with
>very, very amicably). Then I get this diatribe(it was
>nothing else) and just wrote the response worthy of it:
>very flippant and disregarding. It may not be the best
>way to have done it but I sleep well at night.

Sound sleep is important :)

>Secondly, I don't think this is a good venue for me.
>There are better means of dealing with these kinds of
>issues (journals, magazines, direct correspondence to
>those who actually influence change, etc-you get the
>point). This venue is all too prone to emotive and
>poorly thought out reposnses(given the confession
>above-I include myself in that category, by the way).

Email /is/ difft, isn't it? The inventor of email claimed that to use it
well, a person needs a thick skin and a civil tongue. It seems to magnify
personality quirks, and with the added difficulty of no body language or
tone of voice to moderate, with the result that views quickly polarize.

E.g. on another list, i'm arguing as a skeptic against crackpot-physics
proponents (ether, negative gravity, FTL signals etc.) There's so much of
it, i sometimes despair for the future of science.

My objections to Rosa boil down to these few:
- they did their stats wrong
- their design was biased
- they unethically misled their subjects
- they haven't bothered to understand what they claim to be studying

And my objection to (almost all) Skeptics i meet is:
- they don't understand stats, but talk as tho they do
- they are (often) biased as thoroughly as fundamentalists
- they (often) call pepl names rather than arguing facts and logic
- they often don't even try to understand the actual claims they attempt to
debunk

That all said, i would be thoroughly unsurprised if it turned out that in a
properly designed, controlled experiment, TTP's could not find bodies in
the dark using HEF. The TTP is not an HEF-meter, and failure to operate as
one has so little to do with the practice of healing that it's
approximately meaningless. Meaningful TT research would be about its
efficacy, not trying to dissect it and attach electrodes to its severed parts.

Nice meeting u - grant

PS:
At 11:39 AM 03-11-02 -0800, you wrote:
>The post was to Grant not Greg. My sincerest apologies
>for that Grant!

De nada... i've been called far worse, on purpose :)