Mass shooting in the middle school Vladislav Ribnikar in Belgrade

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

A terrible study proves nothing -- except perhaps that the author is a sloppy investigator or bad at designing experiments. It is just as useless as intuition, so neither should be taken as gospel. At that point we should design and execute a well-designed study.

I suspect that on this topic, the public opinions have hardened so much that no researcher will get a straight answer.

Oh really? Keep in mind that, to the vast majority of doctors at the time, the Semmelweis'es work seemed like a terrible study. It seemed to use bad methodology and to arrive at pseudoscientific-sounding conclusions. Levy commented both that the methodology is bad (he said: "Why wasn't a simpler and more convincing experiment performed, to simply stop all the anatomical work?") and that the conclusions are implausible (that "implausibly small" particles from a corpse can turn you into a corpse if they touch your blood, and that washing your hands with some substances solves that). So, was it the right conclusion that Semmelweis was incompetent? Of course not.

This is just ‘they laughed at Galileo’. Simply because Semmelweis was right doesn’t justify concluding that Kleck is.

Boru