Excellent summary, I think. I have just a few things to add.
… it seems to me that the probability of that decreases with how testable their results are …
A claim that the (very real) process that Miller discovered was actually involved in the (also very real, but unknown) process by which life originated is pretty much the ultimate in untestable claims in science.
… the amount and quality of expertise they have …
In my own reading in this area, I quickly noticed that when the Miller experiment was cited in an origin-of-life chapter in a book that is really about something else, it was mentioned as if it were important science. But when it is mentioned in a book about the origin of life, then it is mentioned as intellectual history, almost in the way that chemistry books mention alchemy and phlogiston.
In other words, you can trust people like Orgel with expertise in this area to give you a better picture of the real state-of-knowledge, than someone like Paul Davies, say, who may be an expert on the Big Bang, but also includes chapters on origin-of-life and origin-of-man because it helps to sell more books.
Excellent summary, I think. I have just a few things to add.
A claim that the (very real) process that Miller discovered was actually involved in the (also very real, but unknown) process by which life originated is pretty much the ultimate in untestable claims in science.
In my own reading in this area, I quickly noticed that when the Miller experiment was cited in an origin-of-life chapter in a book that is really about something else, it was mentioned as if it were important science. But when it is mentioned in a book about the origin of life, then it is mentioned as intellectual history, almost in the way that chemistry books mention alchemy and phlogiston.
In other words, you can trust people like Orgel with expertise in this area to give you a better picture of the real state-of-knowledge, than someone like Paul Davies, say, who may be an expert on the Big Bang, but also includes chapters on origin-of-life and origin-of-man because it helps to sell more books.