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Re: [SANET-MG] Scientific Investigation of Organic Agriculture



Hi Dale,
Regarding your comment "If someone referred to me as a "conventional scientist" I would be insulted". Dale Wilson wrote I had understood that your work with the seed companies was as a technician. As an insulted scientist you should not object to revealing the source of your PhD degree and your authorship of scientific papers. sincerely, Joe Cummins

Hi Joel,

Maybe we can get a discussion going on SANET about this important
subject.  As "organic scientists" begin to frequent the professional
societies, private labs, and university departments that comprise the
agricultural research community, they rub shoulders with "conventional
scientists."  IMO this is a false and harmful dichotomy.

"Within this paper we explore the attitudes of conventional
scientists to organic farming research, and discuss the
difficulties associated with peer-review assessments of
applied research in organic farming."
(Watson and Atkinson, 2002).

If someone referred to me as a "conventional scientist" I would be
insulted.  It is a contradiction in terms, since good science is always
unconventional*.  Ordinary scientists and institutions can do a good
job researching organic systems given two things:
1. Status rewards for such work by the community
2. Funding for the work

As organic agriculture grows in importance it will be more efficient to
engage existing institutions than to create new ones.  I want to see
what people think about how to do this.

BTW, send the link to the third paper PDF.

Dale

* I do not buy in to the Kuhnian (authoritarian) model of the
scientific enterprise.  I do not accept the incommensurability of
different (putative) paradigms, but side with Karl Popper in arguing
for critical rationalism as the modus operandi of inquiry (rather than
ideology).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper

Steve Fuller has written an excellent book about this polarity in the
philosophy of science.
http://www.iconbooks.co.uk/reviewart.cfm?ArticleID=27
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/fyi/84ca0e0796b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

--- Joel Gruver <jgruv@HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

Hello folks,

Copied in below are the abstracts for several articles related
to the scientific investigation of organic agriculture...
links to PDFs are provided for the first 2... I can send a PDF
of the third to anyone who is
interested. (snip)


		
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