"Marks of good science:
...
It does not fly in the face of the broad existing body of scientific knowledge"
Um... that's not very progressive science. So, the sun revolves around us, right?
Um... that's not very progressive science. So, the sun revolves around us, right?
When Galileo made his discoveries he didn't start handing out pamphlets in the city square, he worked to persuade other astronomers first.
It isn't as if scientific discourse is off limits to non-professionals. Many journals are free, and you can probably get most at a good public library. But if you find journals to be too hard to read, then you don't know enough about the field to usefully have an opinion on heterodox viewpoints in it.
And when he failed at that, he did the equivalent of handing out pamphlets in the city square - he wrote a popular book. That is what he got punished for.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chi... for the book.
Maybe you learn faster than me. So be it. But, given all that--that I don't even have enough time in my life to learn all the interesting, no, fascinating, things that are so boring as to be considered the current scientific consensus--why should I want to waste my time listening to things that are likely to be bullshit? I don't. I don't have time for bullshit, and neither should you. But the thing is this: Just because you exclude the bullshit it doesn't follow that you can't have talks that cover the cutting edge of research in science and the humanities.
TEDx seems to be more about entertaining than informing a certain audience that attends because they want to feel part of the brand. It's like how Reader's Digest and Book-of-the-Month clubs formulated middlebrow culture and profited from middle class desire.
It could be argued that TEDx is the contemporary equivalent of salon culture that flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries. [0]
Second, this is not a scientific forum. It's an educational one. It is not particularly obligated to give equal airing to any ideas. The ones in the "bacteria cause cancer" area can make for very interesting talks, especially if the presenter passes the test mentioned in the article (secure enough to acknowledge doubts), but if they choose to close the door on those so they can avoid crystal healing, that's a fine and valid choice.
Which is fine: If they do nothing more than make the current consensus more easily available to everyone, that's a worthwhile activity in itself.
I can understand why an organisation like TED would prefer to err on the side of false positives over true negatives when it comes to their bullshit detector.
That's not necessarily true. For example, a statistician may not know anything about biology or medicine, but she could prove that a paper in a biomedical research journal was worthless by showing that the authors didn't get statistically significant results or made errors in their statistical computations.
Or someone with no knowledge of the field at all could notice that a paper that was cited as a supporting reference for a claim had been later withdrawn by its authors after being busted for scientific misconduct.
An earlier comment mentioned that it's a question of what's the right forum to debate new ideas. Going to direct to the public is probably not the right one. Another hallmark of these hoaxes tends to be the notion that "main stream scientists don't want you to know" etc... It's trash.
I wish the letter had ended by admitting that it's tough to exactly define bad science but it's a lot like porn, you know it when you see it.
Further, it doesn't mean that it "must be true" but rather that it is more likely to true.
The fact that cosmologists don't perform laboratory experiments with miniature black holes doesn't reduce the scientific standing of cosmology, as long as there are equally persuasive sources of evidence to support the theories.