Bill Truesdell posted the facts invalidating the example given of
thalidomide before I had a chance to even read the post that brought
up thalidomide, which would imply to some people that Bill read my 
mind before I was even paying attention!  :)

Sorry to do it, but just to keep the record straight, I'm going to
add insult to injury, and address the "virgin birth" issue.

> if you were also willing to add "virgin birth"...

There's really no need to doubt this, as virgin births occur
on a regular basis, and are well documented by respected
members of the scientific community:

Sep 2002
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/09/0925_020925_virginshark.
html
May 2007
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070524-shark-virgin.html
Jan 2008
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=83917&in_page_id=
34


It is also so common in religions and mythologies that I'm certain to 
miss a few if I try and list them - Romulus, Remus, Mithras (who by an
amazing coincidence, was also claimed to have been born on Dec 25),
Zoraster, Dionysus, Sathya Sai Baba, Maumoon, Huitzilopochtli, LaoTzu, 
and Montezuma, and that's just the ones that I am fairly sure pre-dated
Jesus.
(The burden of a classical education is that you can never forget such
stuff.)

But the basic statement made was perfectly true:

> science benefits from people that do not believe in it's
conclusions...
> and oftentimes in such a case, scientific conclusions are proven
"wrong". 

But things are proven only by someone who deals in "proof", 
which implies that the person uses what some refer to as 
"the scientific method" to make his or her case.  This is 
absolutely fine, as science could be described as the art 
of being a skeptic about everything while somehow avoiding 
having to begin every day by waking up and starting out 
with "I think, therefore I am". 

On the other hand, people who just wander about spouting 
opinions and "beliefs" all day, or telling long pointless 
stories about what happened in their beeyard one fine day 
for which they can't quite even recall the date aren't 
going to prove or disprove anything.  They will pass 
unregarded, and will not move the ball one inch down the field.

A very heavy dude who reads Bee-L but declines to post has
 been e-mailing with me, and he apparently wants to blame 
folks like me and Aaron for each helping in our own tiny 
ways to bring this internet thingy to the unwashed masses 
and causing all this trouble.  His exact words were:

> I sometimes think that it has always been this way but one never 
> heard from the quacks because more rational people had control 
> of the avenues of expression--my grandmother had some peculiar 
> ideas but since she did not have access to the internet only 
> her family heard about these ideas. 

Yeah, he's right - the net was a very different place in the 
pre-1994 days. 

I'm not sure what we can do about it at this point, but if I'm 
not part of the solution, I must be part of the precipitate!

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