@Grinseed Re: "A guy at the post office told me that."

...*slapping knee*... Well, by golly, it most certainly MUST be true then. Because postal employees are the absolute epitome of honesty and personal integrity. (A postal employee told me that, by the way.)

There’s an old joke:

... so the baby comes out of the womb into the world and immediately starts sticking his finger in his father’s face...

“You like that??? Huh??? Huh???”

It’s simply polite etiquette towards the baby to have anal sex with a woman while she’s pregnant.

Do excuse me Watchman, I hope you dont mind this interruption?

I have adopted a stance to ignore Ferguson when I can but this spurious and largely ignorant attempt to disparage reason rationality and science cant go unanswered, can it?

Like every newspaper in the world even the Guardian will publish sloppily reported articles to provide copy when there is no other news available.

Brain power: The Institute for Animal Health at Edinburgh University did in fact have a problem with mis-labelled specimens of cow brain tissue in a study of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease). This happened in the mid-1990s for a period of three, not five years. However apart from the money involved (only a fraction of the 200,000 granted for the project) was not a scientific research disaster, just a labelling error.
Once realised, the error was made public and steps taken to ensure similar errors could not be made again (not hidden from public view like the rape of children in the care of religious institutions.)
The Institute, now known as the Roslin Institute, is better known as the home of Dolly the Sheep, the first successfully cloned animal in 1996 about the same time as the mis-labelling incident.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1684479.stm

· Scientific Watergate: Immunologist Thereza Imanishi-Kari was accused, in 1991 of falsifiying data on that 1986 scientific paper with David Balitmore. She was barred from receiving grants for ten years by National Institutes of Health a US government organisation.
In 1996 after another investigation the charges of scientific misconduct were dropped and Imanishi-Kari was exonerated.
A New York Times editorial at the time described the final result of the ten-year investigation as "embarrassment for the Federal Government and belated vindication for the accused scientist"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thereza_Imanishi-Kari

· Mein bumph:As the article states Hugh Trevor-Roper is a historian, not a scientist.

· Cold Fusion: The story of the cold fusion hoax is a testament to the power of the scientific method. A claim was made by two scientists which was tested by other scientists and found to be incorrect. How the hell does this rate to be a blunder?

· Hubble Space Telescope: Yes the telescope mirror had an aberration that was sourced to mis-calibrated equipment during the mirror's manufacture.
Scientists and researchers do not claim to be perfect unlike the claims of the Catholic church about the Pope.
The mistake was not covered up and the clever manner in which it was resolved is best described in the following link:

https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-mirror-flaw

· N-rays: René Blondlot's claim for a new type of radiation being disproved by another scientist, Wood, is another victory for the scientific method, and hardly a blunder.

· Academic standards: That Cyril Burt, the 1960s guru of British psychology, was a liar doesn't impugn the veracity of science,scientist or researchers. Try again.

· Piltdown man: Piltdown Man hoax was exposed by science. Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur fossil finder lost all credibility when his mixed collection of bones were shown to be fabricated.

An interesting side note to the Piltdown Man hoax and that was that a second person was thought to be involved in the scam. In one of Stephen J, Gould's books, The Panda's Thumb, the identity of a second hoaxer was suggested by A.S.Romer and Louis Leakey as being Teilhard de Chardin who was a close collaborator with Charles Dawson. De Chardin of course was a noted anthropologist who was a Catholic priest.

· Alchemy: Sir Isaac Newton's obsession with alchemy has long been known as was his secret belief in Unitarianism. He was also obsessed with a secret language with in the bible that he hoped to decipher with mathematics but he failed. This has nothing to do with the veracity of mathematics.
This has to do with Newton's personal obsessions as a christian and spiritualist, not as a scientist.

· Flat Earth: The flat earth theory as been routinely rejected by science as popular mythology.

To err is human, to forgive is also human.
Don't believe everything you read Ferguson, it seems to be a failing of yours.