Answering Aubrey de Grey

Jason Pontin of Technology Review considers Aubrey de Grey again:

But while some biologists have criticized SENS to me privately, none have been willing to do so in public. I attribute this to their desire to preserve their careers: whilst the science of aging is an interesting and expanding area of scientific research, the field of human life-extension is peopled with crazies. It is not - at least not yet - a respectable field of study. Still, I am increasingly sympathetic with de Grey about this at least: if he is so wrong, why won't any biogerontologists say why he is wrong? If he is totally nuts, it shouldn't be so hard to explain the faults in his science, surely?

I suspect another simple reason is that biologists are busy.  They have better things to do than respond to fringe enthusiasts.  It's the same reason you don't see serious AI researchers wasting their time explaining why Ian Pearson is nuts -- he's the guy who said recently we'll be downloading our brains onto supercomputers by 2050.  (Or maybe they have... I haven't been following that story.)

Link: The New Commonplace - Transcendence Reconsidered.

Comments

[Reason]

Replace "fringe enthusiast" with "responsible scientist working on a new paradigm" and you have it right. Back when I was pounding out papers in a slow-moving field of science, I had exactly the same problem - getting the old guard, people who had decades invested in their research, to even acknowledge your work / simulations / publications / points / etc was by far the hardest part of the process.

Check out the second SENS conference program, keynote and the names involved - you don't get to pull that sort of weight as a "fringe enthusiast."

http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens2/

Take a look at the names on the donor list and advisory board for the Mprize. Same point.

http://www.mprize.org/index.php?pagename=donors
http://www.mprize.org/index.php?pagename=adminlist

Not to mention the respected scientists who publish in Rejuvenation Research, the journal chaired by Aubrey de Grey:

http://www.liebertonline.com/rej

Reason

[Dave]

The blogosphere is an interesting place. You get to say what you want, and if you leave room for comments, you get to hear what people think of it.
It IS true that there are lots of nuts out there...and it would be impossible to spend time on every one of them.

Of course just about EVERY major figure in science history was called a nut (or worse). For instance Galileo? Certainly the inventor of the chronograph/finder of longitude at sea was nuts - all astronomers knew this for a fact - except that his invention worked and he practically invented the 19th century single handedly.
Before the Smithsonian institution parked a Wright flyer in the "holy of holies" in the museum, Dr. Langley - an accredited scientist and then head of the Smithsonian - was himself trying to design a flying machine, and was a huge antagonist towards the Wright brothers, engaging them in patent disputes and unseemly attacks on personal sanity and reputation...somehow these sad events didn't show up in my high school history books...and somehow that scandelous/libelous institutional attack doesn't appear in the museum's current presentation.

One of the strengths that blogging brings to the great conversation is that individuals such as yourself can actually read and evaluate source documents and present an independent evaluation of them. Why not do that?

[Kevin]

I agree that I was perhaps unfair to use the phrase "fringe enthusiast." (But this is the blogosphere; some sloppiness is normal.)

I don't doubt that he's brilliant and will probably make useful contributions (by provoking discussion, if nothing else). But you have to admit that this work is controversial. And one doesn't need to be a working biologist to question his premise that aging is a disease that needs to be cured. I think Sherwin Nuland, in the original TR article, made these points very effectively.

(And, Reason, big names and wealthy donors don't necessarily make for good science.)