www.morphostasis.org.uk

Resistance to innovation

I continue to be mesmerised by the almost total lack of response to this series of published papers. Is it a concerted attempt to avoid handing credit to this author or is it a peculiar "emergent" property of a society of scientists that leads to a total indifference to the challenge? I don't think that I can have laid out the challenge more forcefully. It is clear that it has reached the threshold of being noticed by a number of key immunologists (all the participants of the "Sense of self debate" were aware of it). It was even mentioned (but not cited) in the preamble of this debate. It has been referred to by Langman and Cohn (only to dismiss it out of hand) and by Zlatko Dembic in two articles (in Molecular Immunology and in The Immunologist). And that seems to be about it.

Whether by chance or by design, every time that it has reached a threshold of being noticed by a journal or web site, the original correspondence has soon been withdrawn from continuous archiving and the site or journal has been taken over or even withdrawn (The Immunologist). The debate in Seminars in Immunology around paradigms in immunology managed to refrain from any mention of the morphostasis papers. The "danger" camp have refrained from making any mention of the morphostasis hypothesis - though they are fully aware of it.

Perhaps one of these days I will find out why it is so important that this set of ideas must not be brought to the attention of a widespread readership for them to make up their own minds.

Effectively, it seems to have been "rubbished" by neglect rather than by logical argument. And that is the most effective strategy that "normal science" has for dealing with worrying challenges to reigning paradigms.

Web sites on resistance

There are a number of web sites out there that concentrate on this trend to resistance in science. What is particularly clear is that power plays a very substantial part in the process.

To be completed .......

 This page was last updated on 04/10/04