"Are you a quack?" - A nice essay about science.

[Smith_3]

Have you ever talked to one of those people who insist that, despite them never having studied any science, their opinion on scientific concepts matter?

Maybe you want to send them this link:

http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/quack.html

This was written by a string theorist who apparently gets alot of hassle from people wanting to discuss non-sensical ideas with him.

Excerpt:


"That's what they told Galileo."
I know Galileo, and you're no Galileo. On the contrary, you're one of "they", people who, without any evidence in their favor, contradict real scientists. (Actually, "they" to whom you refer have been dead for over 300 years. The world has changed a bit since then.)

"The establishment always rejects new ideas."
2+2=5 isn't new, but it is wrong. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you're right. Actually, there is no "establishment" in science: Scientists often disagree, until nature (through experiment) determines who's right, just like people making a bet. But quacks always welsh on their bets, never admitting they're wrong.


Also interesting: "Common misconceptions about science" http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/warning.html

[SidDithers]

1. K&R. Thanks for posting...nt

Sid

[cosmik debris]

2. Excellent! K&R

[Buzz Clik]

3. Don't post this in the dungeon.

There is an entire website (more likely, there are dozens of such websites, but I've seen only the one) dedicated to listing the names and phone numbers of scientists who did not buy into a particular crackpot conspiracy theory. These scientists worked out an unbiased, rigorous, science-based explanation for a well known tragedy, and it contradicted the rantings of bunch of "quacks". Thus, the website was born.

[omega minimo]

15. so both sides are paranoid

:hide:

[theoldman]

4. That is how religious arguments go.

[stray cat]

5. Non-religious as well. Many treat their own opinions as facts regardless of facts

[Orsino]

30. ...making them religious arguments. n/t

[progressoid]

6. Ha! I love this one:

"I'm going to talk to a real scientist instead."
Good luck.


Note: Long ago a professor of mine told me that he got letters from 2 quacks, so he forwarded each's letter to the other. He got back an angry letter from one saying, "Why did you introduce me to this quack?"

:rofl:

[Towlie]

7. I think the word he was looking for is "crank", not "quack".

[Posteritatis]

11. A prof at the place I went to grad school studies the history of crankdom

That's one of those "nonstop entertainment" sort of subjects. ;)

[omega minimo]

18. what was he afraid of?

[Posteritatis]

21. Man, all the self-professed mind-readers in this thread are hilarious (nt)

[omega minimo]

22. Cheerleaders? Pens with feathers? Clowns? Publishing? Health food?

:think:

[Hannah Bell]

52. yes, it is. which speaks volumes about the literacy level of the author.

he doesn't even handle the language well, wonder how he does with research evaluation?

just another paid hack.

[immoderate]

8. I sent this link out to a church vs. atheists group I participate in.

Strangely, this group is hosted by a church where the pastor is more open minded than some of his congregants. I expect that it will be ignored or denied keeping in line with the article.

--imm

[struggle4progress]

63. Not even wrong By Peter Woit

At what point does theory depart the realm of testable hypothesis and come to resemble something like aesthetic speculation, or even theology? The legendary physicist Wolfgang Pauli had a phrase for such ideas: He would describe them as "not even wrong," meaning that they were so incomplete that they could not even be used to make predictions to compare with observations to see whether they were wrong or not. In Peter Woit's view, superstring theory is just such an idea. In Not Even Wrong, he shows that what many physicists call superstring "theory" is not a theory at all. It makes no predictions, even wrong ones, and this very lack of falsifiability is what has allowed the subject to survive and flourish. Not Even Wrong explains why the mathematical conditions for progress in physics are entirely absent from superstring theory today and shows that judgments about scientific statements, which should be based on the logical consistency of argument and experimental evidence, are instead based on the eminence of those claiming to know the truth ... http://books.google.com/books?id=pcJA3i0xKAUC&dq=consistency+string+theory&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

Physics & Math / String Theory
Discover Dialogue: Mathematician Peter Woit
"No one has a plausible idea about how string theory can explain anything."
by Susan Kruglinski
From the February 2006 issue, published online February 20, 2006
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/feb/24-dialogue-woit

Further links:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
http://unjobs.org/authors/peter-woit

[Odin2005]

66. Actually, some formulations of string theory (or more correctly "M-Theory") are falsifiable.

Read Warped Passages by theoretical physicist Lisa Randall, who talks about ways to test some of the forms of string theory she works on. Woit doesn't know what he's talking about.

[struggle4progress]

73. After several decades of research, it would be nice to have a concrete example of

an actual and new experimental fact predicted by string theory and then really observed, or of a calculation for which string theory provides a more accurate result than other simpler models. As far as I can tell, there are currently no such examples. A brief websearch will show that Woit is not the only mathematical physicist who is raising such concerns about string theory

[Smith_3]

120. A string theorist does not claim that string theory makes predictions when it doesn't.

That is what makes them different from quacks. They investigate string theory in a mathematically well defined way. Whether or not string theory describes reality is an open question. String theorists do not necessarily claim that string theory has predictive power.

[malaise]

9. Thanks for this

I'm going to put this on a few notice boards.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Retrograde]

12. "They laughed at Galileo and Einstein"

They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[omega minimo]

16. Clowns are scary

:scared:

[Hannah Bell]

113. In fact, it's fairly frequent for research which falls outside the prevailing

paradigm to be "laughed at".

How's this for laughs:

"errant nonsense, a hoax being perpetuated on the public". "told me to shut up" "didn't want harvard & mass general to be associated with my theories."

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/10/magazine/the-fall-and-rise-of-kilmer-mccully.html?sec=health


In 1981, when Kilmer Mccully started commuting from his home in a boston suburb to a new job in Providence, R.I., he would drive past the domed Rhode Island Capitol. High atop the dome stands a statue called ''The Independent Man'' -- a representation of Roger Williams, the Puritan founder of Providence. ''Because of Williams's religious beliefs, he was thrown out of Boston,'' McCully says now. ''It sounded familiar.''

McCully, too, felt like an outcast when he went to Providence from Boston, though he was a scientific rather than a religious infidel. He had left appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital under a cloud, told that his research had dead-ended. He had been denounced by some fellow scientists and ignored by others. His research grants had withered away. He took refuge in a pathology job far from the fast track at the Providence Veterans Administration Medical Center.

These are distinctly better days for McCully, who is now 63. His lifetime's study of a little-understood trigger for heart disease is suddenly at the forefront of cardiac research. His theory -- the same one that came close to scuttling his career -- holds that homocysteine, an amino acid in the blood, damages artery walls and causes heart attacks, and that in most cases homocysteine can easily be lowered to safe levels by taking certain common vitamins.

[Hannah Bell]

116. and leave us not forget the epitome of crankdom, lamarck:

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — For years, genes have been considered the one and only way biological traits could be passed down through generations of organisms.

Not anymore.

Increasingly, biologists are finding that non-genetic variation acquired during the life of an organism can sometimes be passed on to offspring—a phenomenon known as epigenetic inheritance. An article forthcoming in the July issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology lists over 100 well-documented cases of epigenetic inheritance between generations of organisms, and suggests that non-DNA inheritance happens much more often than scientists previously thought.

"Incorporating epigenetic inheritance into evolutionary theory extends the scope of evolutionary thinking and leads to notions of heredity and evolution that incorporate development," they write.

This is a vindication of sorts for 18th century naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck, whose writings on evolution predated Charles Darwin's, believed that evolution was driven in part by the inheritance of acquired traits. His classic example was the giraffe...

With the advent of Mendelian genetics and the later discovery of DNA, Lamarck's ideas fell out of favor entirely. Research on epigenetics, while yet to uncover anything as dramatic as Lamarck's giraffes, does suggest that acquired traits can be heritable, and that Lamarck was not so wrong after all.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090518111723.htm

[Festivito]

14. I find the problem as mostly two-fold.

1. Some have a hidden agenda when talking science, such as a right-wing agenda that just means to disrupt.

OR,

2. Science does not prove who is right and wrong. It can prove to a degree, but, when that pesky reality seems to decide to hit again, some long-held scientific beliefs can falter and be set aside -- no matter HOW RIGHT THEY ONCE WERE. And, sometimes people of science will not allow for this in their language. Sometimes because they too have a hidden agenda that will not allow for others to believe anything that differs from what they believe.

[omega minimo]

17. because

they somehow find it personally threatening.......... to ego and comfort zone .......... having lost scientific curiosity.......... and life -- and reality -- goes on ............

[Festivito]

33. Well, hidden agendas can be just money driven at times.

But, you weren't really very clear. Perhaps I wasn't either.

Try again. I'm just to step out to forage in a local fast-food shop.

[BlooInBloo]

19. "My theory doesn't need any complicated math." - BWAHAAHAHAAA!!!

[Odin2005]

20. Having an open mind doesn't mean having it so exposed that your brain falls out.

[omega minimo]

23. Having an open mind doesn't mean being disconnected from the world around you.

:toast:

[Odin2005]

25. Having an open mind doesn't mean I think the rantings of Schizophrenics are true.

Hell, I tell people to take what I say with a grain of salt if it seems like I'm nutso manic... :rofl:

[omega minimo]

27. well

I didn't mean YOU :blush:

how does one DU editorial "you" ?

[Odin2005]

29. Ack, I wasn't taking anything you said personally!

I knew you were using the "Impersonal You". :)

[omega minimo]

35. smack

:spank: :*

[Hannah Bell]

24. Science has a long history of being wrong, & doing atrocious things in the name

of its wrongness.

Laypeople with solid facts & reason have every right & reason to speak. It's not safe to let "experts" go unquestioned.

The moment the author says "there's no science establishment" you know it's bullshit.

[Odin2005]

26. No, people have a history of abusing science for evil ends.

Genetics isn't evil just because of Eugenics. Chemistry isn't bad just because Big Ag dumps too many pesticides on their fields.

[Hannah Bell]

34. and science has a long history of being *wrong* & enforcing its wrongness.

if you don't know that, you don't know the history of science.

[Hanse]

37. I know the history of science.

And I'm willing to bet that any example you think you can come up with involves a break down of the scientific method.

[Odin2005]

39. Exactly. Social Darwinism and Eugenics are NOT scientific. They are BS.

Oh, and I consider Marxism, which claims to be "scientific socialism", to be in the same category along with Astrology and Freudian Psychology, pseudoscience.

[omega minimo]

43. What is your definition of pseudoscience?

It includes Freud?

[Hanse]

46. Indigo children.

Or other claims about the natural world, which often although not necessarily disguise themselves as scientific, but do not use the scientific method, or often even rationality, to support those claims.

Freud? While I think in some limited cases the scientific method can be applied to the field of psychology, this does not include the sort of subjective psychology work Freud studied. Thus, it was neither scientific nor pseudoscientific.

[omega minimo]

60. Ah so the reductionist Kill It and Cut It Up To See How The Parts Work method

:think: How last Millennium.................. :eyes:

[Odin2005]

65. A Systemic (I prefer not to use the term "Holistic") understanding requires a "reductionist" base.

I hate it when "reductionism" is used as a slur. The notion that systemic and reductionistic thinking are at odds with each other is simply wrong, they are complementary. Reductionism is the necessary foundation that makes understanding emergent systems possible.

[omega minimo]

67. Apparently

"Reductionism is the necessary foundation that makes understanding emergent systems possible."

Apparently, reductionism is a stumbling block and some stay stuck without the systemic view.

[Hanse]

82. As opposed to just making things up and having faith they're true?

How neolithic.

[Odin2005]

49. It is pseudoscience if it's not falisifiable.

It is also Pseudoscience if it was falsified and then modified to make it unfalsifiable. Freud is unfalsifiable for the same reason Astrology is, by trying to explain everything they end up explaining nothing. To quote Karl Popper:

"I may illustrate this by two very different examples of human behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child. Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and in Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man suffered from repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus complex), while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child). I could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory. It was precisely this fact — that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed — which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness."

An example of unfalsifiable hypotheses I run into a lot here on DU is the conspiracy theorist who dismisses any criticism as being based on ignorance or being mislead by propaganda. If a theory says that it cannot be criticized, or treats criticism as evidence for it the theory is unfalsifiable.

[Hannah Bell]

104. then why do you have such problems with criticisms of experts & science?

[Odin2005]

122. I don't. I have problems with suspicion towards experts just because they are experts.

[Hannah Bell]

76. they're not? works for plants & animals.

[Hanse]

83. Social darwinism and eugenics works for plants and animals?

Say what?

[Hannah Bell]

84. breeding for "superior" qualities or to weed out "undesirable" ones works for plants & animals.

you may not like the implications, i don't either, but it's certainly "scientific."

[Hanse]

85. That's called selective breeding.

Eugenics is an entirely different.

Weren't you just claiming knowledge in the history of science?

And you're confusing selective breeding with eugenics?

That shows no understanding of the history of science, or just history in general.

[Hannah Bell]

86. elucidate the distinction for me, oh wise one.

preventing people from breeding = selective breeding. Encouraging those with favored qualities to breed = selective breeding.

"Eugenics is "the study of, or belief in, the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics.

[Hanse]

87. Why don't you finish reading that primer on wiki and then get back to me.

Ironically, this is just what the OP's source was talking about.

People pontificating on shit they haven't even studied up on.

[Hannah Bell]

89. not an answer. i suspect because you don't have one.

i've read quite a bit more than the wiki entry.

all you got is snark.

[Hanse]

90. If you'd read more, you'd have known better.

[Hannah Bell]

94. right. & you won't enlighten me because the esoteric knowledge you possess

is not for mere mortals.

or else - you got nuthin.

[Hanse]

95. #16

[Hannah Bell]

98. you got nuthin. pfft.

[Hanse]

101. #4

[Hannah Bell]

105. nuthin.

& you don't know the history of eugenics, or the history of the term, either.

nuthin.

[Quantess]

88. I am so thankful for the ignore feature.

Take it from me. When you encounter someone who seems to be willfully ignorant of high school science, yet who boasts spurious claims of being a professor, put that DUer on ignore.

[Hanse]

91. Yeah, I was talking to a "scientist" the other day.

He was disputing global warming because the earth has been warming for 150 years, but greenhouse gases have "only been around for 75 years."

[Hannah Bell]

92. "willfully ignorant of hs science"? "spurious" claims, is it? now how could you possibly

make that determination?

ps: i said i taught at the college & university level, not that i was a "professor". perhaps you don't know the difference.

all you got is bullshit.

people who know something aren't afraid to put it on the table. they don't have to resort to the personal.

[Hanse]

93. Well first you just claimed that eugenics "worked."

And secondly you failed to realize that humans ARE animals.

You're up to #26 on the list.

[Hannah Bell]

96. eugenics does work. & your belief that i fail to realize humans are

animals isn't supported by any evidence but your own nit-pickery.

you're up to #1.

[Hanse]

97. "Eugenics doesn't work? But it works for plants and animals!"

[Hannah Bell]

100. nuthin but straw.

[Quantess]

107. Did you teach at college & university level?

I'm sorry, I don't believe that to be true, either.

[Hannah Bell]

110. i don't give a damn what you believe.

ps: i don't believe you have me on ignore, either.

[Hannah Bell]

106. btw, if you're using the ignore feature, how do you know of whom you are speaking?

furthemore, since it's important for you to ignore that person, why would you bother reading & commenting?

seems to me your advertisement of your use of "ignore" is all in the service of your own ego needs.

[Hannah Bell]

55. "breakdown of scientific method"- is that your straw substitute for science being wrong &

enforcing its wrongness?

i'll give you one from my own field: when total parenteral nutrition was first used, patients were massively overfed & died from the "treatment". We were shown photos in grad school of corpses with veins & arteries clogged with fat from the "nutrition support" - all based on the best scientific standards of the time.


don't know whether scientific method broke down in this case; of course they eventually stopped TPN-ing to the point of death. but there have been similar problems all along the history of TPN.

[sendero]

71. There is nothing..

.. "scientific" for most of what passes for "medical science".

I gave up on that years ago.

One year it's "do this" , the next it is "do that". What they don't know is so much greater than what they know their advice is useless.

Medical "science" is fraught with erroneous conclusions based on partial data.

[Hanse]

81. Well now we know how to perform parenteral nutrition properly, don't we?

That's not a case of the scientific method enforcing its wrongness, that's a case of it learning from mistakes.

[Hannah Bell]

102. it enforced its wrongness to the degree of feeding patients until they died.

and no, we don't have it right yet. i can give you a long list of mistaken but enforced policies based on the then-current best evidence, for tpn alone.

most recently, the use of albumin & pre-albumin as measures of protein status.

science *is* learning from your mistakes - but until someone (in "authority") figures out they're mistakes, they'll be defended to the death from the "cranks" who think they're wrong.

btw, i was saying there were problems with albumin & pre-albumin as protein markers in tpn recs ten years ago. the discipline is just catching up with my "crankdom".

[Hanse]

108. But the establishment never supported feeding patients until they died.

It was an experiment that failed.

"and no, we don't have it right yet."

Well, not you. But real doctors and scientists have. It's used all the time and the major complications are just physical insertions of the catheter, and infections. Sounds like it's worked out to me.

"science *is* learning from your mistakes - but until someone (in "authority") figures out they're mistakes, they'll be defended to the death from the "cranks" who think they're wrong."

Unless they're demonstrated to be wrong, why wouldn't they assume they're right?

"btw, i was saying there were problems with albumin & pre-albumin as protein markers in tpn recs ten years ago. the discipline is just catching up with my "crankdom"."

Yeah, that's #9 on the list.

[Hannah Bell]

109. they didn't advocate feeding people til they died. they just advocated

what turned out to be overfeeding - & people died. it wasn't an experiment. it was standard medical practice.

"Unless they're demonstrated to be wrong" - there's often serious counter-evidence to prevailing practice. The reasons one analysis or set of facts becomes SOP is not so straightforward as you seem to think.

"that's #9 on the list."

I don't give a damn for your silly list. I've given you two examples in my field of official policy being "wrong" & enforced to the detriment of patients.

I could give you many more, & I fully expect in 10 years time to find a substantial fraction of current dogma, so vigourously defended by folks like yourself, to be passe.

[Hannah Bell]

121. It's used all the time and the major complications are just physical insertions of the catheter, and

infections"

no, they're not.

and if, e.g., the treatment doesn't increase survival rates (as in e.g. an increasing # of cancers since i started practice), why put people at risk of those complications? when i began practice, aggressive nutrition support for most cancers was standard, & TPN often preferred. now - not so much; it's likely the previous practice, in fact, was positively harmful.

in my time in practice alone, the conditions for which tpn is recommended have changed, the time frames for initiating nutrition support have changed, the nutrient/calorie recs have changed, & the indications for enteral v. parenteral have changed.

i'm an MS,RD, btw. So you see, I'm a "real" practitioner. and i've saved more than one patient from hypophosphatemic cardiac arrest from an MD-ordered TPN.

[Smith_3]

124. I'm not sure what you mean by "science has a long history of being wrong"

Enforcing a falsehood as truth is not science. Rather the opposite. That doesn't mean that science is wrong. Rather that the scientific method was not applied. Or do you mean wrong in the sense of "morally wrong"? Science is not moral.

The author of the article is not writing about cases where contemporary wisdom is challenged by newcomers and proven as wrong. That happens all the time in science. He is writing about people who have now knowledge of the subject at all, but claim to have, without finding it necessary to present any evidence of that. Naturally, physicists who have some experience in the field are cautious towards people with wild ideas about the origin of the universe who aren't able to correctly calculate the velocity of a falling apple.

People who refuse to acknowledge that a certain type of treatment is killing people rather then curing them although all the evidence suggests it are quacks in the strictest sense of the word.

[omega minimo]

38. the point seems to be not forcing non academics out of the equation

"Have you ever talked to one of those people who insist that, despite them never having studied any science, their opinion on scientific concepts matter?"

The OP starts off with that. The link is to a physics institute at Stonybrook University. The guy is mocking people who come to his office and want to talk to him about physics. Is he an instructor? What's up with that? Are these students discussing theoretical physics and he's turning them into clowns for his web persona?

"This page is dedicated to the many people who have occasionally drifted into my office, or sent me e-mail, or even mailed me their books, eager to tell me about their new theory, which they know will turn all known physics on its head, even though they have only studied an infinitesimal fraction of the latter. Some of them are just ignorant or naive, but are willing to learn; this page is not about them. It is easy to distinguish the quacks; although they may seem reasonable at first, they degenerate into absurdity progressively with any conversation.

"Quacks want only to talk and not to listen. They are paranoids with delusions of grandeur: Their theory could never be wrong; therefore everyone else's must be. Eventually the true quacks make the same remarks, some version of almost all those listed below. Generally, their comments are of 3 types:"


Well, it's true. Some physics students go nuts. Having a mocking macho dick for an instructor probably doesn't help much. Even at the CN Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, where thinking outside the box probably goes with the territory.
http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/itp/




Wonder how much of the chauvinism toward certain topics is academic one upsmanship and/or woven into the fabric of science over centuries, hmmm?

A history of science would show that science has plowed under many other modes and cultures, incorporating and obliterating, much like the church has.

These prepared lists and attitudes are why so many potential discussions here crash and burn or never happen.

[Hanse]

41. The point is about forcing ignorati out of the equation.

He's not mocking people who want to come to his office to discuss physics, but to discuss pseudoscience. They're not students. Students don't pretend to have all the answers, particularly all the wrong answers.

"Wonder how much of the chauvinism toward certain topics is academic one upsmanship and/or woven into the fabric of science over centuries, hmmm?"

Since science relies on experimental evidence rather than academic credentials, not much.

[omega minimo]

45. How do you know who he's talking to or what they say? You have a lock on what all students do?

that's not a rational statement.


your reply to the question shows that you either don't know or don't care about the history of science and the grand tradition of academic oneupsmanship. Or is it impolite to acknowledge it? "We academics do it to each other and others but We are We and They are They." :spray:

[Hanse]

47. Because I read his comments?

And it's pretty clear from the context?

Your reply shows that you either don't know or don't care about the history of science, and the grand tradition of experimental evidence usurping conventional wisdom.

[omega minimo]

51. You make an assumption and claim it is definitive. Sounds like scienciness, not science.

"This page is dedicated to the many people who have occasionally drifted into my office, or sent me e-mail, or even mailed me their books, eager to tell me about their new theory, which they know will turn all known physics on its head, even though they have only studied an infinitesimal fraction of the latter. Some of them are just ignorant or naive, but are willing to learn; this page is not about them. It is easy to distinguish the quacks; although they may seem reasonable at first, they degenerate into absurdity progressively with any conversation."

It's "clear from the context" that this is "many people who have occasionally drifted into my office" which would include students and those he chooses not to skewer are "just ignorant or naive, but are willing to learn" aka students.





"Your reply shows that you either don't know or don't care about the history of science, and the grand tradition of experimental evidence usurping conventional wisdom."

You have just made my point. The grand tradition of usurping, incorporating and obliterating, much like the church has, in the same way and for many of the same reasons.

Hence the resistance to even acknowledging the fact, the evidence and the history of the discipline. Really rather strange, but not, if the indoctrination is that intense.

[Hanse]

53. I never alledged my comment was scientific .

But maybe that explains why the editors at Free Radicals in Medicine and Biology just rejected my comment when I submitted it for review.

Damn. Thank you for telling me my comment wasn't a hypothesis confirmed by experiment. I never would have figured it out.

"The grand tradition of usurping, incorporating and obliterating, much like the church has, in the same way and for many of the same reasons."

Actually, that just comfirms my point.

It's totally going over your head though.

"Hence the resistance to even acknowledging the fact, the evidence and the history of the discipline. "

If you want to talk about history, then by all means cite an example and I'll be happy to explain your error.

[omega minimo]

57. No, you just claimed it was correct, based on your assumption, which was flawed.

[Hanse]

58. My comment was more correct than your assumption

... that they were open-minded students just looking for answers.

[omega minimo]

61. Your assumption of my assumption is incorrect

Nowhere did I claim they were "open-minded students just looking for answers," a rather docile and wide eyed image. Perhaps that's your idea of what is acceptable and anything else -- even if they were students -- would be fair game for private and public mockery by a macho ass whose ego takes up much more time than his instruction; who goes online to post guidelines for more macho topdog hilarity against all comers, which broadcasts the sciency chauvinism from Stonybrook and even lesser enclaves of academic pedigree.


You stated:

"Students don't pretend to have all the answers, particularly all the wrong answers."

My view of the possibilities of those office discussions is not as sanitized as yours apparently is.

[Odin2005]

42. There has to be a balance in such things.

Too much expert-worship is a bad thing, but so is too much "if the experts don't like it there must be something right about it" thinking I often see when it comes to woo-ish topics. I am all too aware of the stupidly of experts, In my case, as someone on the autism spectrum, I an constantly told by the "experts" that I have an "empathy deficit", which is complete nonsense based on what seems to me a overly behaviorist conception of Empathy.

The problem is that snake-oil salesmen all too often take advantage of people suspicious of experts. (look at all the woo-woos out there claiming I can be "cured" of my autism by using their snake oil!)

[omega minimo]

62. Balance is good

It's the rush to assumptions that trips us up here, where I still believe there is a gold mine of ideas and interesting discussions that cross boundaries and expectations, that could involve multi-disciplines and coverging areas of study, where the really cool stuff usually is. IMHO. Thanks for being open to disucssion Odin2005. I'll tell you, when I used a color as an adjective in a personal and descriptive essay, I had no idea all hell would break loose. I was shocked by the reaction, the certitude of the (false) accusations and most of all the absolute viciousness.

We can learn from each other or we can use intelligence as a blunt force instrument. Which world do you want to live in?





Wonder how much of the chauvinism toward certain topics is academic one upsmanship and/or woven into the fabric of science over centuries, hmmm?

A history of science would show that science has plowed under many other modes and cultures, incorporating and obliterating, much like the church has.

These prepared lists and attitudes are why so many potential discussions here crash and burn or never happen.

[eridani]

111. "Empathy deficit" is bullshit just on the face of it.

Empathy is feeling someone else's distress. If you have trouble reading the social signals that signify distress, how does that translate into lack of empathy? Makes no sense at all. As one mother of an Aspie put it "My son wouldn't hurt a fly, provided that he understands that the fly is being hurt."

[Odin2005]

123. "My son wouldn't hurt a fly, provided that he understands that the fly is being hurt." Exactly!

:toast:

[depakid]

28. Just couldn't help yourself, could you?

[Odin2005]

31. Hannah Bell is as predictable as a cookoo clock.

[Hannah Bell]

36. "cuckoo." yes, i'm not a worshipful follower, nor do i call folks names for

questioning dogma.

did you see the latest on kids & flu vaccine?

pediatric rec = vaccinate 6 months to 18 years.

perhaps it will turn out the "woos" had it right.

[Odin2005]

44. I have no respect for the anti-vax nuts for very obvious reasons given that I'm...

...on the Autism spectrum.

[Hannah Bell]

50. your position on the autism spectrum makes you an all-knowing seer?

3 times more hospitalizations in children vaccination with the flu stick.

legitimate researcher, no woo.

[Hanse]

54. No, the evidence makes anti-vaccers dumbasses.

[Odin2005]

56. one study is not a hard-and-fast conclusion make.

a lot of bad recommendations are made based on studies that turned out not to be accurate, like the controversy over the healthiness of margarine and eggs. There also that study on aspartame that the woo woos went nuts over even though the lab rats with increased risk of cancer were pumped full of aspartame in a way that is in no way a realistic comparison to a person drinking, say 3 cans of diet pop per day.

[Hannah Bell]

59. nope, it doesn't. neither does a 100 studies. that's the nature of science.

though folks like you pretend otherwise.

[Spider Jerusalem]

115. Except, 100 studies show no link between vaccines and autism...

hundreds of studies show positive benefits for vaccination in reduced numbers of deaths from vaccine-preventable disease. ZERO credible studies show any causal relationship between autism and vaccines; zero credible studies show that not vaccinating has a net positive benefit for public health. The preponderance of evidence is not on the side of the anti-vaccine cranks.

[Hannah Bell]

117. no one on this thread said anything about vaccines & autism, so i'm not sure who you're talking to.

the study referred to had nothing to do with autism.

[Spider Jerusalem]

114. And a measles epidemic here in Wales, for the first time in a generation.

Thanks to fuckwitted antivaccine propagandists. Hope you're happy.

[Hannah Bell]

118. no one mentioned measles vaccines, either.

why is it the supposed proponents of "science" are so prone to unwarranted assumptions?

[Mamacrat]

69. Neurological conditions and vax

I took my son to get the flu shot this year and was asked on a form if he had any neurological conditions, which he does. They would not give him a flu shot without permission from his pediatrician, and at that point I decided not to do it at all, given that we still do not know what caused his condition, although one possibility is a toxins.

[BlooInBloo]

78. Thank you for pointing out a glaring omission from the guy's quack-list.

[Hanse]

32. Looks like this thread's pissed off the resident cranks.

Good job.

[Posteritatis]

48. Sad that you can predict who makes half or so of the responses in these threads (nt)

[mr blur]

64. Yeah, and half of them come up as "Ignored"

In fact, I just added another one.

[Hannah Bell]

77. good, someday there'll be nothing left to read that doesn't offend your

delicate sensibilities.

then your life will be solipsism perfected.

[mr blur]

99. My sensibilities are far from delicate - I just have a low tolerance level

for arrogance and stupidity. Welcome to Ignore, I'm sure you're no stranger there.

[Hannah Bell]

103. glad to be on the ignore list of folks who prefer snark to facts, & announce they're

putting you on ignore like some jr high kid.

debating "experts" isn't arrogance.

[Taverner]

40. Excellent!

Too bad this isn't all over the net LIKE IT SHOULD BE!!!!

[eridani]

68. Another: "Are you saying that I'm wrong?"

"No. I'm saying that you're nowhere near good enough to be even wrong.

[girl gone mad]

70. That's from a Wolfgang Pauli quote.

However, this was not his most severe criticism, which he reserved for theories or theses so unclearly presented as to be untestable or unevaluatable, and thus not properly belonging within the realm of science, even though posing as such. They were worse than wrong because they could not be proven wrong. Famously, he once said of such an unclear paper: Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch! "Not only it's not right, it's not even wrong."

These days, this label is often applied to string theory. As in, it's so far outside of being a realistic and testable scientific theory that it's not even wrong.

[JackRiddler]

72. String theory has so far failed to formulate a feasible experimental confirmation.

More importantly, the idea that science happens to be the one heavily capitalized activity in our society that has no "establishment" is laughable. I'll give preference to what Lynn Margulis has to say on the subject.

Scientists in general need funds. An aspect of science that is less true of the humanities or arts, is that they must chase money because the rate of cash flow must increase to increase research activity. Scientists almost always need equipment, materials, man-power, in short, money. All except some theoretical scientists need money and, for research results to be accurate and meaningful even the "theoretikers" must work with experimentalists who always need money.

So the economic system to me is such that university people, like most everyone else, maximize the rate of cash flow per square foot of institutional space. That is the main pressure. Scientists, like anyone else, follow the money flow. Many are entirely honest about it. Some of them will make bombs. Most won't go that far. The humanities and philosophy scholars receive far less public and corporate money because, in general, what they do is not perceived as practical. All they do is make books and teach esoterica to students.

Well worth reading the entire interview, in which one of the era's most celebrated evolutionary scientists puts the neo-Darwinian synthesis as propagated by Dawkins to question:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0903/S00194.htm

[Odin2005]

74. And yet Margulis is content to hold onto the "5 kingdoms" system of classifaction for no good reason

Or at least she still does last I heard. A crank that happens to right in a few things (the endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts) is still a crank. Her nutty notion that Eukaryotic flagella are derived from spirochete bacteria still has no good evidence for it yet she holds to it dogmatically. I have not seen any indication that she accepts modern molecular phylogenies (evolutionary trees) of microbes and the resulting "3 Domain" system of Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya. And her influence is part of the reason why James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis got a bad rap and got wrongly thought of as New Age kookiness.

And her notions about natural selection are a load of bull.

[JackRiddler]

75. "Cranks" "that happen to be right in a few things"

... describes most of the people responsible for radical advances in human thought and knowledge.

It's been years since I read her five kingdoms book (believe it or not) and I may not be qualified to debate you on the derivation of eukaryotic flagella. But I quoted her on a straightforward aspect of social science. I wonder if you have a response to that?

Anyway, thanks to modern science among other reasons, I'm content with the bet I'll live a few more decades and see how many of the current reigning paradigms in all fields are still standing at mid-century. I'm happy to admit my ignorance in a great many subjects; it's a good start for learning things.

[omega minimo]

79. research/$$ adds another layer to the topdog chauvinism of the "science establishment"

competitive, dismissive and oh so paranoid.

[eridani]

112. Science is a collective enterprise--the only self-checking story that our species has come up with

The urrent knowledge base accepts the endosymbiont hypotheis and rejects 5 kingdoms. That's how it works. The existence of cranks doesn't matter much. If they are right about something, someone else will repeat the experiment.

[omega minimo]

80. they might also be honest about public funds exploited for private profit based on their research

[Cobalt-60]

119. some of my friends are like this

They'll press relentlessly.
And they only recognize volume as proof of who was right.
I had to back off in 04 once in a Sadaam's Nukes argument
because my only other option was to beat down an old friend.
Every time I confronted him with a fact he got louder and closer.
I think pukes issue instructions to the converts on how to use ignorant behavior
to mask their ignorance.