Setting the Journal Science Straight

July 21, 2006

Robert George and Patrick Lee skillfully dismantle a recent attack — launched as a letter to the editors of the journal Science — on DoNoHarm’s list of adult stem cell benefits to human patients. Excerpts:

The letter was timed to coincide with the debate and vote in the United States Senate on the Bush stem cell funding policy. Dr. Prentice was given no opportunity to publish a response. Indeed, the timing scarcely enabled him to compose, much less publish anywhere, a rebuttal before the Senate floor debate.

. . .

the claim that Neaves and his co-authors refute is not the claim that Prentice made. This is a blatant instance of the classical fallacy Ignoratio Elenchi (also called “irrelevant conclusion”: presenting an argument that may actually prove something, but something quite different from what you claim it proves). They have distorted (by exaggeration) Prentice’s claim, refuted the distorted version of the claim, and then impugned Prentice’s integrity for allegedly making it. This is blatant rhetorical abuse.

Worth reading for content as well as for method of argument.