Pranking Christian call show

[Fidel_Castronaut]

As someone who is in the academic community in the UK, and also being engaged to a scientist who is a member of one of the worlds highest impacting microbiology teams, I'm yet to meet one person who thinks creation 'science' is a science.

You need to meet more people apparently; either way that point is irrelevant.

Theologists, you mean? No need, my second supervisor is actually a theologist. But really, I'd take the opinion of people who work in science over those who don't.

Common sense really. Creation science doesn't exist, because its nonsense.

Creationism doesn't feature in any research department I know of, well, except theology, but that's not a real subject anyway.

The circularity is palpable.

It's not circular to say that something that isn't a science isn't a science.

RE: 'biggest breakthroughs aren't published in peer reviewed articles'

That's not true.

[Aside from the vagueness of 'most'] Whilst, true, many research breakthroughs aren't published in their entirety in journals, in almost all cases labs/researchers will publish data sets and methodologies in journals that are peer reviwed to gauge both the reception of their data by competitors and dis-interested parties, as well as ensuring that their menthodologies per se are scientifically sound.

Case in point, PhD theses. Very rarely are they published in their entirety in journals, but almost all phd students will publish sections of their theses in journals either as students or post-docs. It's the difference between a good thesis and a 'bend the shelf' thesis.

You also seem to presume that authors of research will often just publish stuff in (say) a book without any review at all.

Nonsense. All aceademic books worth their weight are reviewed by editors, publishers, and, yes, their peers in peer review. Research in contemporary science literature that's worth the paper it's written on will be be peer reviwed in some shape or form during the course of its inception to publication. This is a fact. Most academic texts for example (including text books for undergraduates) will have chapters published in research journals of varying impact factors for validation (among other things; advertising for one).

Also, did you know that a lot of scientific research today is done in collaborative partnerships with institutions around the world? Many hundreds of millions of pounds can go into research sometimes, and often it will necessitate a collaborative effort form various researchers, sometimes in different field (eg CERN as one example). Internal and external peer review is one the staples of such partnerships as many interested parties means that everyone will wish for the research to be as transparent and as accessible as possible.

Is it perfect? No, not at all, but it is the best system by a country mile for ensuring sound methodological enterprises and the uniform testing of results.