For one thing, the authors are talking about the SENS plan for curing aging, not de Grey’s past research; for another, they had $20,000 riding on whether they could successfully argue that the plan was “not even worthy of discussion” or something to that effect, so I think the harsh words are understandable.
I cannot think of many other people with comparable indicators of expertise whose research could be justifiably dismissed in such harsh terms.
For one thing, the authors are talking about the SENS plan for curing aging, not de Grey’s past research;
The two are related, though I agree this limits the relevance of that particular indicator of expertise. (The successful conferences organized by de Grey, by contrast, are explicitly about SENS.)
they had $20,000 riding on whether they could successfully argue that the plan was “not even worthy of discussion” or something to that effect, so I think the harsh words are understandable.
The phrase I quoted was made by Estep in a paper that was unrelated to the Technology Review challenge, so I don’t think this point is relevant. Furthermore, if the financial incentives are operating in the manner you suggest, that would give us reason to distrust, to some degree, the claims made by Estep et al. in their submission to the challenge.
Our disagreement can probably be traced to some deeper epistemological difference between us: I suspect that many of the researchers you have in mind are scientists that I’d also think shouldn’t be dismissed in the manner Estep dismissed de Grey. But I would prefer not to spend my scarce weirdness points discussing publicly my views about these controversial figures.
For one thing, the authors are talking about the SENS plan for curing aging, not de Grey’s past research; for another, they had $20,000 riding on whether they could successfully argue that the plan was “not even worthy of discussion” or something to that effect, so I think the harsh words are understandable.
Parapsychologists? Scientific racists? Climate change deniers? Tobacco deniers? Each of these fields has boosters as prominent as de Grey, if not far more (e.g. Daryl Bem, James Watson) and has been called out as “pseudoscience” by fairly objective-seeming critics.
The two are related, though I agree this limits the relevance of that particular indicator of expertise. (The successful conferences organized by de Grey, by contrast, are explicitly about SENS.)
The phrase I quoted was made by Estep in a paper that was unrelated to the Technology Review challenge, so I don’t think this point is relevant. Furthermore, if the financial incentives are operating in the manner you suggest, that would give us reason to distrust, to some degree, the claims made by Estep et al. in their submission to the challenge.
Our disagreement can probably be traced to some deeper epistemological difference between us: I suspect that many of the researchers you have in mind are scientists that I’d also think shouldn’t be dismissed in the manner Estep dismissed de Grey. But I would prefer not to spend my scarce weirdness points discussing publicly my views about these controversial figures.