DrW wrote:Just noticed that someone identified as "Mr. Blanco" copied my initial post on this thread and, with a few changes to the text, posted it over in the Interpreter comments section. This was done without my knowledge and certainly without permission.
Whoever did that obviously reads this board. To that individual, I would just say that we strongly condemn plagiarism on this board for good reason. (DCP, was that you?).
To anyone who might think that I am also "Mr. Blanco", I would invite you to read my initial post on this thread and compare it to the one posted by "Mr. Blanco" over in the interpreter comments. You will see that the changes (deletions) that were made certainly took the edge off. I suppose this was done to prevent it from being taken down.
If the individual who did this feels that I am being a bit too sensitive about the plagiarism, anonymous as it may be, you are invited to PM me and we can talk about it in private.
(And yes, even you, Dr. Dan)
I just realized my post from earlier today on the likelihood ratio problem was also changed and copied into a comment over there by a Mr. Blanco. Who is doing this? I don't like it any more than DrW. What's going on????
I'm guessing it's Chino Blanco. Eta DCP likes to theorize that Dr Scratch is Chino.
It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener at war.
Some of us, on the other hand, actually prefer a religion that includes some type of correlation with reality. ~Bill Hamblin
This ratio, the mass of the neutrino to the mass of the universe, is still one hundred thousand, billion, billion times greater than the odds that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction
Dean,
What is the likelihood the Interpreter deletes this entire article and the comments down the memory hole?
This type of scholarship sets Mormon studies back years and completely destroys any shred of respectability or credibility the Interpreter might have had.
Also, do you know the identities of the statistician and Mesoamericanist who, according to Allen Wyatt, peer reviewed this steaming pile? I imagine this can’t be a positive for their careers.
The folks at the Maxwell Institute are howling with laughter right now.
"I'm on paid sabbatical from BYU in exchange for my promise to use this time to finish two books."
I can't say I have followed the maths aspects of the discussion. But the thread convinced me to check out the article. In Appendix A, starting with the very first correspondence regarding a lack of reference to the nephite nation, I thought WTF? The entire book of Mosiah and Alma is about the people of the Nephites with a central king or chief judge who rules over "the people of the Nephites.". The very next correspondence contradicts the first, and cites having a central polity as a capital city as another positive, pointing to Zarahemla as an obvious center for Nephite civilization. They then say what's described in the Book of Mormon would have no parallel to Joseph's time because? The early United States lacked urban centers supporting and being supported by nearby rural communities? The Old Testament lacks descriptions of central governing cities? Their third correlation discusses the wild guess needed to predict communities aligning and shifting allegences during conflict like the young colonials hadn't just lived through that during two wars with England.
At which point it seemed like the handwaving was more of distraction from simply questioning the basis for their assigning a statement to a correlation in the first place. Just based on that quick read it seems a person with time and inclination could use their same categories citing different evidence to prove the odds of the Book of Mormon being a fiction composed in the 19th C. would get a mirrored opposite result to their claims.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Continuing on. Point 1.4 cites the existence of art, culture, science, and other cultural refinements. Their cause for noting this as a point for is the description of institutions in the Book of Mormon. But where is the evidence of culture? Art? Refined civilization and sciences? Where is the actual hit in the Book of Mormon that shows something there which was beyond the experience and cultural level of the imagnations of Joseph Smith? Elsewhere they note the assumption that culture in the classic period could appear in proto form earlier in the period overlapping when the Nephites supposedly existed. So, where is it? Smith playing post office in his mind isn't a hit matching what Coe describes in the cited parallel. So far, it seems like 4 misses that should be against not for historicity.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Point 1.5 Many Cities. Umm, the entire mound builder mythology was wide spread and clearly the basis of Smith's beliefs regarding who the Nephites were as described in his letters during Zions Camp. The racist point of the Book of Mormon was the city dwelling members of the lost tribes modeled on descriptions from the Old Testament were wiped out by nomadic savages who were the ancestors of the remaining Native Americans. The mirrored version of their study should score this one pretty high as a reflection of 19th C. racist beliefs.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
1.6 Preservation of a city name over time. They cite one example as a hit. But it seems if this is a point worth making one ought to find similar consonant grouping preservation as fairly common to be a point in favor rather than against the Book of Mormon. The counter study should add up all the city names that failed to be preserved in Mayan naming for a proportionate counter probability. Just because.
Anyway, its late. But I'm not finding much to get excited over so far.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
honorentheos wrote:1.6 Preservation of a city name over time. They cite one example as a hit. But it seems if this is a point worth making one ought to find similar consonant grouping preservation as fairly common to be a point in favor rather than against the Book of Mormon. The counter study should add up all the city names that failed to be preserved in Mayan naming for a proportionate counter probability. Just because.
Anyway, its late. But I'm not finding much to get excited over so far.
This one is big. Every non matching Mayan city name should score against. Probability now approaches 0.
It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener at war.
Some of us, on the other hand, actually prefer a religion that includes some type of correlation with reality. ~Bill Hamblin
From his very first comment on the Interpreter comments thread, Bruce gives authorship credit to his son, Brian...
Thank you, Louis. I am very grateful to Interpreter for providing the venue for his essay…as you correctly point out there probably is no other such venue.
”his essay” not “our essay”.
About Brian Dale
Brian Dale, PhD MBA, is a biomedical engineer working for Siemens Healthineers, where he teaches programming, physics, and imaging courses for MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Brian has published more than 100 scientific papers, book chapters, and conference abstracts, and he has 10 patents. In Brian’s research activities he is frequently involved in using Bayesian methods and other standard statistical methods to analyze medical imaging data for accuracy and image quality. With his wife he raises five children and a variety of chickens and ducks on their small farm.
So any misuse of the Theorem can only have been deliberate.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
A summary of the disaster discussed on this thread: Dale & Dale are like unto Japanese authors who proudly publish a paper on August 7, 1945 claiming that the probability of achieving criticality with a few kg of enriched uranium is less than one in one hundred thousand billion billion. It could only be worse if they lived in Nagasaki.
Last edited by Guest on Wed May 08, 2019 1:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
David Hume: "---Mistakes in philosophy are merely ridiculous, those in religion are dangerous."
DrW: "Mistakes in science are learning opportunities and are eventually corrected."
