

Why are scientists so dull? Because interesting people are selected against. - theoden
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-are-scientists-so-dull.html

======
tokenadult
This story has been submitted to Hacker News before with other URLs. It is
important to note that the author himself was so dull (stupid) at doing peer
review that he was sacked from his former position as editor of a highly
speculative "scientific" journal.

[http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/is-there-a-
rol...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/is-there-a-role-for-
speculative-journals-like-medical-hypotheses-in-the-scientific-literature/)

[http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100318/full/news.2010.132.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100318/full/news.2010.132.html)

[http://journalology.blogspot.com/2010/05/medical-
hypotheses-...](http://journalology.blogspot.com/2010/05/medical-hypotheses-
editor-is-sacked.html)

[http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/05/medical-
hy...](http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/05/medical-hypotheses-
editor-out-ed.html)

Most of Charlton's critics are actually a lot more interesting and more
willing to carefully investigate interesting ideas than he is. They just work
harder at checking facts.

~~~
cstross
Also worth noting is Charlton's political agenda: self-proclaimed reactionary
Christian, with a self-published book about the evils of political
correctness. (Note his drive-by on anthropogenic climate change in the first
couple of paragraphs, as he's warming to his topic ...)

In view of this background, I tend to discount his public pronouncements as
increasingly eccentric axe-grinding.

