真是猪一样的对手

亦明给被方舟子误导的“导师”Burton的回信 (39 查看)
发布: CMH
日期: August 08, 2011 10:17AM

Subject: 回复： Support for Dr. Shi-min Fang

A few comments on Dr. Zachary Burton’s “Support for Dr. Shi-min Fang”

In my previous message, I tried my best to wash off the label “Fang’s enemy.” However, Dr. Burton went one step further, labeling me (I was one of the two direct recipients of his message) as “Dr. Fang’s political opponents.” As far as I know, Dr. Fang did a pretty good job in hiding his political positions in China, and he has said many times that one feature of his New Threads is “Not talking about politics.” (Original words:“‘不谈政治’是《新语丝》创办时就定下的办刊方针。”see: [www.xys.org]). And as far as I know, I myself don’t have much interest in politics, and I rarely talked about political matters in public. The fact is, “Fang’s opponents,” if we use that term in the sense of “Fang’s critics,” have such broad and different political opinions and positions, from communism to liberalism to capitalism, whenever they discuss political matters, they fight against each other like they are unable to live under the same sun. So, my question to Dr. Burton is: what do you exactly mean by saying “Dr. Fang’s political opponents”?

Whatever Dr. Burton meant, I think the logic for his using that label is this: the plagiarism allegations were made by Dr. Fang’s enemies, so they are not credible, or should not be dealt seriously. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) If such logic is valid, then a conclusion like the following is inescapable: the American political system is invalid, since Republicans and Democrats are by definition “political opponents,” so their criticisms against each other are all pointless, worthless, and American people should “have no interest in the efforts.” Do you think that’s right, Dr. Burton?

On the other hand, if Dr. Burton’s argument prevails, then Dr. Fang could never be wrong, because he could simply label any his critics as his “political opponents,” without providing any evidence. However, according to the popular philosopher Karl Popper, any such a theory or argument is by definition pseudoscience. Isn’t Dr. Fang one of the most celebrated anti-pseudoscience fighters in the world?

My final argument is, if Dr. Burton’s argument is valid, then thousands of Chinese people would automatically lost their human rights of criticizing Dr. Fang, since the “Fraud Fighter Fang” claimed he has busted more than a thousand academic fraud cases. Whether his claim is believable or not is a different matter (In January 22 of this year, I challenged Dr. Fang to publish a list of one hundred of the more than one thousand cases. So far, he has yet to accept this challenge.) Let’s assume the one thousand cases are fraud indeed. Does this “fact” makes the at least one thousand people (as a matter of fact, the number could easily surpass a million mark, because Dr. Fang has repeatedly called ALL Traditional Chinese Medicine doctors “cheaters,”) not eligible to criticize Dr. Fang? How so?

I’d like to comment the rest part of Dr. Burton’s message, but I’m afraid that will make this post too long. I stop here to wait for Dr. Burton’s response.

Thanks.

Xin Ge