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'55 Science Paper Retracted to Thwart Creationists
i_like_spam writes "The New York Times has up a story about a paper published in 1955 by Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College. The paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.' Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, but today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has retracted the paper. 'Dr. Jacobson's retraction is in "the noblest tradition of science," Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobson's letter. His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, "the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction," and people who "cling to dogma."'"
If you RTFA, you would see that he reread his paper and found many errors that no one else had found yet. He retracted the paper because of the errors. Of course he might have other motives but that is anybody's guess
The nature of the citations made him re-read it, and realize he'd made factual errors. Those errors were being used to support the arguments of the people citing the paper. So he retracted it to remove those errors from circulation.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Actually, every person who believes in a creation story really is basing this belief solely on dogma. There is absolutely no evidence supporting any of the supernatural claims in any of the genesis myths of any of the worlds' religions. None.
Scientists believe knowledge comes from evidence and the logical conclusions derivable from that evidence.
Religious people believe knowledge comes from "faith" (aka "it is written"), which is the polar opposite of evidence.
The so called "moderate" religious people exist in a state of mind called "cognitive dissonance" whereby all knowledge is derived from evidence and logic EXCEPT knowledge pertaining to topics they have been indoctrinated from birth to accept due to faith. This is your textbook dogma.
Don't take a textbook definition of dogma and call it anything else. That's really disingenuous of you.
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