Nine Crazy Ideas in Science

doom writes "The general concept of Robert Ehrlich's book is absolutely superb: Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True. Here, someone with a technical background (Ehrlich is a physics prof at George Mason) and an open mind investigates in detail a number of 'crazy' ideas, to see if there's anything to them. The execution of the idea is not quite as superb, but Robert Ehrlich has done better at this difficult job than anyone else I know of. This book is highly recommend as a good review of the evidence on some scientific controversies." Read on for doom's review, in which he goes through Erlich's nine-part list, but mind the spoilers. Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True author Robert Ehrlich pages 244 publisher Princeton University Press rating Great idea, very good execution reviewer doom ISBN 0691070016 summary A scientist evaluates some "crazy ideas"

Here's the deck of nine ideas under consideration:

• More Guns Mean Less Crime
• AIDS is Not Caused by HIV
• Sun Exposure is Beneficial
• Low Doses of Nuclear Radiation Are Beneficial
• The Solar System Has Two Suns
• Oil, Coal, and Gas Have Abiogenic Origins
• Time Travel is Possible
• Faster-than-Light Particles Exist
• There Was No Big Bang

The game here is that Ehrlich is not telling you in advance what his conclusions were. He says he's tried to keep an open mind, and claims that during his investigations he actually changed his mind about some things (though he never says about what exactly).

So in this review I'm going to give you generalities first, and bury "the butler did it" type information after a SPOILER warning.

One of the problems with the execution of this work is that you can pretty often tell when Ehrlich is enthusiastic about an idea just from his general tone as he writes about it... and conversely, in retrospect I think I should've been able to spot when he disagreed with, because the writing in those chapters was a little confusing.

Part of his schtick is that at the end of each chapter he rates the idea on a scale of 0 to 4 "cuckoos". Oddly enough I often find that I strongly disagree with his cuckoo ratings even just based on the evidence that he presents. But the absolute magnitude of my disagreements are typically no more than a single "cuckoo".

I was worried about some of his evaluation criteria (see the introduction available on-line as a sample chapter), because he includes several points that strike me as fairly dicey: "Who proposed the idea?"; "How attached is the proposer to the idea?" and "Does the proposer have an agenda?" These all relate to judging the person rather than the idea itself. (Consider that "consider the source" and "ad hominem argument" are pretty much the same as far as logic goes.) But he does clearly understand that these are just rules of thumb, and I note with some amusement that he doesn't resort to these particular rules anywhere in the later chapters. He's more interested in the logic of the arguments, which is as it should be.

I could bring up lots of quibbles (and I probably will after the spoiler warning), but overall I found this to be a great breezy read. I learned quite a bit from it. While nothing here made me do a reversal of my beliefs, I was often surprised that the evidence for something was stronger or weaker than I'd supposed.

Here we have an educated, astute, person doing a relatively independent review of some controversial, interesting technical subjects. Why aren't there more books like this?

Ah, but at least there's one more! I see that a sequel has just come out: Eight Preposterous Propositions: From the Genetics of Homosexuality to the Benefits of Global Warming . I bet I'll be submitting a review on that one shortly ...

Anyway, now into the nitty gritty. Here's your SPOILER WARNING. Skip the following if you want to play the "guess where he's going" game with this book. Let's take it chapter by chapter:

More Guns Mean Less Crime

I'm a "right to bear arms" kind of guy myself, and I was surprised that the data doesn't seem to support private ownership of guns as a crime deterrent. Ehrlich argues persuasively that the statistical evidence for this is very weak. I appreciate the fact that Ehrlich concludes that both the pro and anti gun sides are nuts: he rates them 3 and 2 "cuckoos" respectively, where a 3 is "almost certainly not true" and 2 is "very likely not true."

But here, we come to my first strong disagreement with him. If the effects aren't strong enough to measure, why the asymmetry in the "cuckoo" rating for the pro and anti side? I might rate them both at a 2 myself.

AIDS is Not Caused by HIV

I've had the impression that the the Duesberg hypothesis was pretty screwy, but I was willing to tentatively consider it might have something of value. For example, what about the possibility that multiple diseases are now being diagnosed incorrectly as one single syndrome "HIV"?

But Ehrlich's analysis satisfies me that there's not much of scientific value in Duesberg's ideas at all. I don't argue with his 3 cuckoo rating (but I wouldn't blame you if you thought it deserved the full 4).

Sun Exposure is Beneficial

Ehrlich concludes that this looks fairly plausible, and gives it a 0 cuckoo rating, pretty much as I would have expected. Many people might find this surprising though, certainly the popular impression these days seems to be that sunlight is deadly.

Low Doses of Nuclear Radiation Are Beneficial

Here, Ehrlich lays out the case for "radiation hormesis", and I really don't think this is that fantastic a notion (the difference between a poison and a medicine is often a matter of dosage, why wouldn't this be true of radiation?). But radiation is so demonized in the popular imagination that "radiation is good for you" comes off an insane joke. Ehrlich takes it seriously, and essentially concludes that while there are reasons for suspecting that this effect exists, it hasn't been entirely established. And here we have one of my quibbles: he awards it 1 cuckoo, which translates to "probably not true, but who knows". But there is no reason for saying it's probably not true. If something is not crazy, just not established, I would be inclined to award it "0 cuckoos," aka "Why not?"

The Solar System Has Two Suns

This is the "Nemesis" hypothesis, which it will probably come as no surprise is rated at 2 cuckoos. The short version of the story: originally they looked at part of the extinction record, and it looked like there was a definite cycle. But if you look at the whole record it doesn't seem to be there.

Oil, Coal, and Gas Have Abiogenic Origins

This is subject that's been of some interest to me, ever since I heard Thomas Gold give a talk on this idea about a decade ago. It turns out that this is now looking much less like "an intriguing possibility" and much more like a truth awaiting a few funerals before it will be declared established. The odds are good that "fossil fuels" don't actually come from fossils, rather they're from hydrocarbons that pre-existed the formation of the earth, which means we're probably not going to run out of them. (So that means we can ignore those environmental wackos, right? Nope: imagine what happens to the atmosphere if we keep ramping up the rate at which we burn this stuff.)

Ehrlich rates this at 0 cuckoos, but maybe he should have invented a "-1 cuckoo" for this one.

Time Travel is Possible

2 cuckoos: no surprises.

Faster-than-Light Particles Exist

Ehrlich mentions in his introduction in the interests of "full disclosure" that he's actually strongly attached to one of the ideas discussed here (the existence of tachyons), but by the time I'd gotten to that chapter I'd entirely forgotten about this, and I was disappointed to realize that he was being an advocate, not an independent reviewer (it includes a picture of him wearing a "no tardy-centrism" T-shirt).

Ehrlich rates this at 0 cuckoos, but come on. Even just based on the write-up he presents, it's a clear 1 cuckoo.

There Was No Big Bang

Clocks in at 3 cuckoos, as you might expect.

You can purchase Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Your source is an editorial from some wacko. Try again.

He forgot...

[AKAImBatman]

...atomic power should be a consumer product. Many people would rate this as a 4 cuckoo because of the "danger" of terrorists developing a nuclear weapon. The truth is that atomic power is exceedingly easy, safe, and clean to produce and should be a zero cuckoo idea. Don't think that they'd completely rid us of batteries tho. In order to power your car with a RadioIsotope Generator (non-fission), you'd need hundreds of pounds of plutonium. However, if combined with batteries, you could reduce the amount of plutonium significantly, and have an auto-recharging electric car. Sure, it means a few more pit stops on long trips, but you NEVER have to refuel!

A great site on atomic energy is:

http://www.atomicinsights.com/AEI_Topics.html

Re:Science is a constantly evolving field

[JPrice]

"Intelligent Design" is neither a particularly new theory, nor a particularly compelling one.

The chances of all of those variables being "perfectly tuned" to allow human life to evolve are certainly small, but are only statistically interesting if you presume that human life was some sort of universal "goal" from the outset. At that point, arguing for Inetlligent Design is just question begging.

Re:Of course

[djh101010]

Yes, and so were (and are) a bunch of ideas which truly are crazy. Just because one can point to examples of theories that at first sounded impossible which later were accepted as fact, doesn't mean that all (or indeed, many) of them are.

In other words - for every crazy idea that turns out to be right, there are 999 that are just plain crazy. The fact that one turned out to be correct doesn't in any way validate those which are just plain wrong.

Re:Science is a constantly evolving field

[Anonymous Coward]

Intelligent Design is just the latest attempts of the creationists to pretend they are scientists. It suffers from the same flaw as other such "theories" -- it presumes that which it seeks to prove. In a nutshell, their argument is that life is too complicated to have arisen from a random process, so must have been created by some intelligence. In other words, we can't explain it, so it must be god.

Astmmetric guns

[Chocky2]

Re guns: If the effects aren't strong enough to measure, why the asymmetry in the "cuckoo" rating for the pro and anti side?
Because (like the vast majority of such things) the pro- and anti- positions are themselves asymmetric -- the anto-gun position is not a simple negation of the pro-gun one, similarly the pro-life position is not a simple negation of the pro-choice one.

It's something quite a few studies like this one suffer from, too many fall foul of the same few logical fallacies.

Re:Astmmetric guns

[hchaos]

Surely then, the anti position should be considered the least plausible, since the status quo is to recgonize the basic human right to keep and bear arms.

Not really. From what I read, the hypothesis "gun abolition reduces violent crime" was compared to the hypothesis "gun abundance reduces violent crime". Obviously there is a lot of evidence that isn't presented in this brief book summary, but I could easily imagine that while there is no evidence to support the first argument, there could be a lot of evidence to counter the second argument, meaning that anti-gun is less crazy that pro-gun.

If you are pro-gun, but don't try to argue the deterrent effect, you wouldn't be considered 3 cuckoos.

Re:Of course

[register_ax]

You're absolutely right you know. The only difference is that this theory was proposed by a man who had just received his doctorate (PhD) from publishing "On a new determination of molecular dimensions." He was working in a patent office because he couldn't find a teaching position. Bad market, didn't have the skills, it doesn't matter much more then the guy wasn't at all crazy, just thought things out different because a lot of where things were going were becoming stale.

The real difference between his 'crazy idea' and these 'crazy ideas' is a matter of defined mathematical equations that proved to be true. As I see it, these theories are only conjectures as ways things might be with no truly defined methodology for it's reasoning other than, "hey, why couldn't it be this way instead?" (If that's true, pull up a chair and I will tantalize you into the next century with 'crazy ideas' :) ) I understand it's possible all of mathematics could be a joke, but from what I have studied and know it would be highly unlikely for that to be true. Therefore, once we were able to prove his theories in lab settings, it became no more then an abstract theory and a revolutionary way. His numbers proved correct down to an arbitrarily defined decimal.

While both ideas are crazy, don't argue if you don't have some overwhelmingly surmountable proof other then a work that explains a brilliant theory in an extremely abstract way. That doesn't make the theory out to be crazy in and of itself.

Cuckoos and Galileo...

[gillbates]

When Galileo originally proposed a heliocentric model of the Universe, he was criticized for his ideas, because "As any fool can see, the sun goes around the Earth..."

The Cuckoo rating is entirely irrelevant. Consider the Big Bang Theory. It hasn't yet been formally accepted (as a Physical Law*) by the scientific community, yet the author considers the notion of the Big Bang never happening to be nonsense?

The fact of the matter is, the scientific community has been wrong more often than right. With further investigation, ideas are refined, and those that don't fit the observations are rejected. But the process takes a long time. For nearly 2,000 years the best Western thinkers believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. That's a long time to be wrong about something so big.

So even though I believe that the scientific method has its merits, I recognize the limitations. If I had a time machine and could travel to the future, I would not be the least bit surprised if 500 years from now the Big Bang theory and Evolution were considered myths from the past. Even now, there's substantial logical and statistical problems with the "proofs" of Evolution.

* - Yes, I know it wouldn't be called a law per se.

Re:Cuckoos and Galileo...

[gwernol]

The Cuckoo rating is entirely irrelevant. Consider the Big Bang Theory. It hasn't yet been formally accepted (as a Physical Law*) by the scientific community, yet the author considers the notion of the Big Bang never happening to be nonsense?

There is no such thing as "formal acceptance" there isn't even really such a thing as the "scientific community". The big bang is generally accepted as the current best theory by the majority of astrophysicists. Does this mean it is true? No, it just means its the theory that fits most consistently that observational and experimental data currently available to us.

The fact of the matter is, the scientific community has been wrong more often than right. With further investigation, ideas are refined, and those that don't fit the observations are rejected.

That's correct and exactly the way it should be. Science is a process, not a collection of laws or facts. You gain knowledge of the way things work by applying the scientific method. That means that the set of best theories is constantly being re-evaluated and changed. That's a key differentiator of science from (for example) dogmatic religions.

But the process takes a long time. For nearly 2,000 years the best Western thinkers believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. That's a long time to be wrong about something so big.So even though I believe that the scientific method has its merits, I recognize the limitations.

As opposed to which system? The limitations of the scientific method are usually limitations of our ability to gather data. We can't attach more certainty to theories like Big Bang or Evolution because we have incomplete data to work from, for obvious reasons. That's not a limitation of the scientific method at all. If your notion of gathering knowledge is not based on the evidence available, then you are in a considerably worse situation that science can give you, incomplete though that may be.

If I had a time machine and could travel to the future, I would not be the least bit surprised if 500 years from now the Big Bang theory and Evolution were considered myths from the past.

While that's certainly a possibility, its much more likely that they will be considered incomplete. Much as Newtonian physics wasn't replaced by relativity, it was just seen as a particular case of relativistic physics at "low" speeds compared with c.

Even now, there's substantial logical and statistical problems with the "proofs" of Evolution.

Not really. Would you care to cite these supposed problems, or are you just trying to argue from authority?

Re:Cuckoos and Galileo...

[Dirtside]

Since evolution is a family of theories, I'll choose one - abiogenesis.

You should have chosen one that's actually *from* the evolution family. Abiogenesis is not generally considered an aspect of evolution, not by evolutionary biologists, geneticists, or anyone else in the field. But as long as we're talking about abiogenesis...

Given that there are 4 bases, the odds of a single DNA molecule forming the smallest useful chain are about 1 in 4^4000. Since it's been a long time since I've heard this argument, my numbers may be wrong.

It's not that your numbers are wrong; it's your premise that's wrong. This isn't how scientists propose that abiogenesis occurred, so attacking it as if it somehow disproves that abiogenesis *could have occurred* is pointless.

Michael Behe has covered similar problems in his writings.

Behe's big stick is irreducible complexity. He basically looks at a system, and says, "I can't think of any way this system could be less complex and still be of any use. Therefore, the system could not have evolved." The problem with this is that simply because *he* is incapable of figuring it out, doesn't mean that it's impossible to figure out (many of his examples have been refuted by others -- search about on talkorigins.org for a bit).

Science doesn't prove anything!. It explains.

Yes, and scientists know this. They *try* to explain it to laypersons, but inevitably people take science as gospel. (Of course, even scientists are only human: changing the ideas that you've spent a lifetime refining is difficult, no matter who you are.) Is it a problem with the scientific method itself, that most people simply aren't smart enough to understand it?

Witness the manner in which evolution has been used by atheists to justify their lack of belief in God.

I don't think this is prevalent among atheists. Most atheists (like myself) look at God the same way we look at any other claim: You want me to believe something? Fine. Show me some evidence. It's no different than wanting evidence for the effect a new freeway will have on urban traffic patterns, or wanting evidence for how physical processes in a star can cause it to collapse into a white dwarf.

Few atheists, if any, will claim that proof of evolution is somehow proof *against* the existence of God. (Most atheists are aware of the fact that you can't prove or disprove the existence of supernatural entities like God, for whom there cannot, by definition, be any evidence.)

And of course, the real problem is that because science has become so credible, it is often sought as an authority for legislative or social changes. Thus, the otherwise objective nature of science becomes soured when funding becomes contingent on the political ramifications of the results.

This is a problem with people, not with the scientific method. If you can suggest a better method for accurately determining the nature of the universe, I'm sure everyone would be glad to hear it -- but right now, science is the best method we have.

Re:Science is a constantly evolving field

[Uma Thurman]

Intelligent design should be 3 or 4 cuckoos, because for every argument that exists in favor of ID, there's a better argument that shows why that argument is a fallacy.

For example, the argument you gave about the extremely unlikely odds that we would be here is trivial to refute. ANY event that happens is dependent on an extremely unlikely chain of events. Any little shift in that chain, and poof, the entire thing is completely different. For example, a big lotto win for Bob XXX in Des Moines is an extremely unlikely event. The odds against it are unimaginable, and any little change would have made Bob XXX lose the lottery. Even a little molecular sized disturbance in the airflow propelling those little balls would have done it. Nevertheless, people win the lottery almost every week. They beat the unimaginable odds.

After Bob XXX won the lottery, would Bob be justified in thinking that he won the lottery due to intelligent design? No, because if he didn't win the lottery, either someone else would have won, or nobody would have won. When he looks back at his lottery win, it's hard for him to see that *all* the possibilities were equally unlikely to happen, but one of those possibilities *must* happen.

When you add up the probabilities of every extremely unlikely event, you always come out to exactly 1.

Please, present more arguments, and I will present the superior counter-argument. Intelligent design is very interesting to think about, and studying it can be an instructive act in itself.

Re:Oxidation of Fuels

[Chocky2]

It can still be a significant issue -- afterall even if surplus COx, SOx & NOx are absorbed/washed away they're still present in the eco-system. Even if the source-fuels are available in limitless supply there are still potential problems with waste by-products (including waste energy (esp heat)), of course this is still a problem with "green" energy sources aswell.

Science 1, Religion 0

[SpaceRook]

There is no greater proof that science has won the Evolution VS. Creationism argument than the "Intelligent Design" theory. The religious right knows that they cannot win with a "faith based" argument in this day and age, so they've resorted to rhetorical jujitsu and created "Intelligent Design" theory. (Intelligence Design summary : the world is so gosh darn complex that SOME higher power must have created it, right?).

personalities do play a role.

[fermion]

In science, unfortunately, sometimes you have to judge the person. The reason is that science is supposed to flow from observation to honest repeatable demonstrations to conclusions that fairly incorporate what was learned from the demonstrations.

Most scientist will assume the ideal situation and assume that colleagues are playing fairly. Therefore, the system is fairly easy to game, for at least a little while. All it takes is a small group of 'scientist' with an agenda. This usually involves some idea that they really want to be 'true'. These characters only need to selectively choose demonstrations and filter data in such a way that their 'truth' is shown to result from the data. Of course real science has great difficulty defending against such attacks because, as in all things, playing by the rules to discover truth is vastly more difficult than just asserting something is true and then picking the few examples that support the position. Even when no malice is involved, such fictions have taken years to disprove.

In the case of softer sciences, or even the harder sciences where duplicating of demonstrations are really difficult, the credibility of the person is critical. The ease by which such sciences are gamed is the reason why we have so much confusion over a variety of social issues, even though the basic consensus is amazingly clear. OTOH, consensus can be wrong, which is why science uses resources to look at all sides of the issue

As an aside, the physicists, and really scientists in general, I know are extremely open minded. They just get jaded after a while due to the number of malcontents that abuse science to promote personal doctrine. To a trained and logical mind, the rhetoric some of these idiots spout is really equivalent to just throwing throwing feces everywhere.

Why Agendas Matter

[Tackhead]

> With this in mind, there's another crazy idea I've been reading up on lately. Intelligent Design, a recent theory that has gained enough respect from the scientific community

Five cuckoos.

From the original Slashdot article:

I was worried about some of his evaluation criteria (see the introduction available on-line as a sample chapter), because he includes several points that strike me as fairly dicey: "Who proposed the idea?"; "How attached is the proposer to the idea?" and "Does the proposer have an agenda?" These all relate to judging the person rather than the idea itself.

Science is a human endeavor. It's conducted by humans. Science is a process, however, and that process is defined in such a way that it doesn't matter which humans conduct it.

Perhaps with homeopathy and other forms of medical quackery coming as a close second, "creation" "science" is the canonical example of why "Does the proposer have an agenda" and "How attached is the proposer to the idea" are important questions you have to ask yourself when evaluating a theory.

The scientific method is independent of humanity. Any sentient being is capable of doing science. But to the best of our knowledge, the only sentient beings that are performing science are humans. We know from observation that humans are fallible. Humans let their emotions get in the way of the facts. When a human is very attached to a theory, and even more so when a human has an agenda that can be advanced by promulgation of that theory, it's not guaranteed, but it's highly more probable, that the human will depart from the scientific method in an effort to cling to a theory that's been repudiated.

One of many links: A Bullshit Detection Guide

Creation "science" fails on: 1A: Manipulative buzzwords - "Intelligent"? "Design"?
1C: Audience the BS appeals to: Self-explanatory here :)
1E: Underdog appeal: "Just the little ol' Christians fighting the hordes of Godless Atheistic Communistic Scientists that Run the Schools"
1F: Requires A Negative View of Authority: As above. Evolution is part of the Grand Conspiracy to Keep The Christians Down.
2B-1: A small group of "experts" pretending to own the field
2B-2: Experts beyond their field of expertise.
2B-3: False claims of objectivity. It used to be called Creation Science, then it got renamed to Intelligent Design. Wonder what it'll be called next week when the scam is exposed?
2E: Blizzard of Numbers - the Creation "scientist" to whom I'm responding is the case in point: "26 variables? 66 variables? Does he really know enough about physics, cosmology, and biology to be sure it's not 27, or 65? Does anyone?!?!

Intelligent Design: Pegs the BS Detector. Five cuckoos.

ID is a nice belief system if you're already a creationist who accepts on faith that the Universe was created by the God of Genesis (optional: 6,000 years ago in a week), but it's not science.

For the record, I'm not bashing Christians here. Frankly, I see zero inconsistency between Genesis and our presently-understood notions of cosmology. Take a guy from 4000 BC and show him a PBS documentary on current theories of cosmology, and ask him to write what he saw. You're likely to get something like "Umm, I saw this vision with moving pictures about how the universe came to be. So, like, first there was nothin'. No time, no space, zilch. Then Something Happened, a couple of branes smacked into each other and nobody knows quite what that means yet. But that was the start of our universe. Then they said something about electromagnetic force breaking symmetry with the weak force, which I couldn't understand, and there was light, which I could understand. Then it cooled enough that the mean free path of a photon got pretty long, and I didn't know what that meant, but that was when it b

Re:Why Agendas Matter

[cowtamer]

I'm a fundamentalist Christian (i.e., I accept the Genesis account and everything else) with a Molecular Biology degree from a big 10 school. Seriously.

There's one significant fallacy that the anti-creationists are falling into here: Just because an idea (i.e., God created the Universe, the Earth, etc.) is defended by people who do not necessarily know what they are talking about doesn't invalidate the idea. It only invalidates the ideas of those particular defenders. A good example is the people (on my side of the fence)who try to invalidate the entire theory of evolution by "proving" that carbon dating is based on unsound principles. The fact that _they_ may be out of their element does not invalidate creation. (For that matter, the fact that we can observe certain evolutionary processes does not invalidate creation either--think about it!).

I shall not join in the ongoing troll about ID/big bang, etc. But notice this: whenever a modern-day scientist (or /.'er) encounters the idea that evolution is not how _we_ came to be, he will AUTOMATICALLY think the idea deserves 5 cuckoos, without looking at the evidence. This is about unscientific as not considering the math behind carbon dating because you once saw a counter-example.

What I'm saying is this: do not let the "cuckoos" on either side poison any hypothesis. Rather, evaluate the hypothesis on its own merits, using the scientific method.

An unhealthy attachment to the status quo will hinder scientific progress as much as following any crackpot idea that comes along...

Re:Why Agendas Matter

[Tackhead]

> But notice this: whenever a modern-day scientist (or /.'er) encounters the idea that evolution is not how _we_ came to be, he will AUTOMATICALLY think the idea deserves 5 cuckoos, without looking at the evidence.

Au contraire. My 5 cuckoo rating was because I've looked at the evidence for both theories, and come to two conclusions:

1) The proponents of intelligent design do not practice the scientific method, therefore the theory of intelligent design is not a scientific theory in the first place, and on that basis alone, it can be rejected. 2) The fact that ID is not a scientific theory doesn't say anything for or against evolution. It just so happens that the theory of evolution is pretty damn consistent with the data uncovered. (And the "theory" of intelligent design is not as consistent with the data as the theory of evolution.)

> An unhealthy attachment to the status quo will hinder scientific progress as much as following any crackpot idea that comes along...

Absolutely! Einstein was flat-out wrong about quantum mechanics, and Linus Pauling was flat-out wrong about Vitamin C megadosing. Boneheadedness is a human condition, and it's not restricted to creationists.

My point is that even if I did accept ID as a scientific theory, I'd still be forced on the overwhelming strength of the data to reject it in favor of the theory that best fits the data, and that theory is - until someone comes up with a hell of a lot of data saying otherwise - evolution.

And while I haven't personally done radioisotopic dating of rock samples, I know how a mass spectrometer works, and I've even used one. If I really did feel strongly about the issue, I know that I could drop a few hundreds of thosands of dollars over a few years, dig up my own damn rocks, and work it out from first principles. But I'd likely screw it up several times along the way, and that's why I'm willing to stand on the shoulders of others by the mechanism of peer review when it comes to calibrating my tools and understanding the underlying processes.

Re:Why Agendas Matter

[Strange Ranger]

Intelligent Design: Pegs the BS Detector. Five cuckoos.

Not so. Intelligent Design as a scientific theory: Pegs the BS Detector. Five cuckoos. Yes.

But that doesn't mean the idea itself is BS. Put the phrase "I love my wife" or better yet, "Love is good" through the BS detector. It fails miserably. You can't prove that love is good. Intelligent design is a nice idea, I hope it's true, but we'll NEVER know. It's untestable in every way. That's why it's nuts to argue it as science. It'll never be science. It'll never be measurable, logical, or testable.

Therefore it's just as nuts to claim the idea worth 5 cuckoos as it is to claim it as scientific truth. There is just NO WAY TO EVER KNOW, in any scientifically meaningful way, even if a voice from the sky proclaims it for all to hear.

So again, as science it's 5 cuckoos, but as an idea it's not so bad. Again, I hope it's true. 1 cuckoo.

say what?

[elmegil]

The odds are good that "fossil fuels" don't actually come from fossils, rather they're from hydrocarbons that pre-existed the formation of the earth, which means we're probably not going to run out of them.

Um....if they prexisted the formation of the earth, but they're in the earth now, where would they be coming from that "we're probably not going to run out of them"?? Unless there's some wormhole down there in the bowels of the planet, their origin doesn't affect their finite nature, only the possibility that our estimates of their quantities are wrong.

Re:Oxidation of Fuels

[adrianbaugh]

Why should the origin of hydrocarbons affect whether we are likely to run out of them? Just because they originated in outer space doesn't mean they are necessarily abundant.

Re:Stephen W. Hawking, anyone?

[arth1]

Stephen Hawking has never been "a leading scientist." His ideas are not accepted by mainstream physicists. He's a pop culture icon only because he wrote a book that everyone proudly displayed on their coffee table. The guy's a quack who illicits sympathy for his plight and nothing more.

I guess sympathy is why he's got Hawking Radiation named after him, holds Isaac Newton's chair at Cambridge, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and have won the following awards:
- Eddington Medal
- Einstein Medal
- Maxwell Medal
- Heinemann Prize

He may be controversial, and have been wrong in the past, which he is the first to admit, but his track record shows quite a few leaps of thought that turned out to either be correct or possible but currently unprovable.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:more reviews of this book

[cwhicks]

Without giving an opinion either pro or anti, I just want to point out that logically speaking the argument you posted is extremely weak.
Do you see no other difference between Vermont and NY/D.C./Chicago other than their gun laws that might account for crime rates variations?

You can't prove me right!

[Shazow]

The fact of the matter is, the scientific community has been wrong more often than right.

That's because it's quite easy to prove something wrong, while it's nearly impossible to prove something right. In order for something to be utterly correct, then all of the foundation on which it is built also needs to be proven correct. That's a whole lot of proving, compared to one tiny disproof.

Heh I don't think anything as ever really been proven right. Other than the ol' "I exist" clause. But even that's questionable in some circles. ;)

- shazow

Abiogenic Oil and Coal? Twaddle.

[rumblin'rabbit]

Someone find me an oil or coil reservoir outside of a sedimentary basin, and I'll swallow this B.S. That some methane may have abiogenic origin is conceivable, but the natural gas we collect now is clearly primarly biological in origin. Petroleum geologists are not so dumb that they could so seriously wrong about the origins of petroleum.

Your bias is showing

[DunbarTheInept]

scientific community has been wrong more often than right

(followed by)

For nearly 2,000 years the best Western thinkers believed that the Earth was the center of the universe.

The "scientific community" as we know it didn't even exist 2000 years ago. Blaming science for the mistakes of it's predicessors makes as much sense as blaming Christians for feeding Socrates Hemlock for daring to question the established order of things. It happened before they were even around yet.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

We all agree that your theory is mad. The problem which divides us is this: is it sufficiently crazy to be right?
-- Dr. Neils Bohr

disagree with the reviewer's cukoo ratings

[DunbarTheInept]

This isn't so much a comment about the book as about the person who reviewed it here on slashdot and posted the article. The reviewer makes the same mistake repeatedly, of assuming that if an idea hasn't been proven wrong, than it's proponents don't deserve a cukoo rating at all - it should be zero.

No. That's not how it works. When positing the existence of things, or putting forth an explanative theory to describe why things that are there got that way, the burden of proof is always on the positor. Therefore someone who is willing to believe a theory purely because it hasn't been proven wrong DOES deserve at least a little cukoo rating for that.

Re:more reviews of this book

[praedor]

That kind of argument is crap. If a neighboring state allows nearly unregulated access to guns then the neighbor state that doesn't, that tightly regulates guns, is screwed. Those who want guns in regulated state simply drive to unregulated state, buy their guns, then drive back to regulated state, commit their crimes, etc. Thus, the state with tighter gun control gets screwed (and thus any reasonable statistical analysis gets screwed) by the low gun control state.

This sort of thing isn't a problem in Europe, for instance. Each state is rather similar in their control of guns. You can't simply drive (or boat) from England to France, buy a gun, then go back to England and commit a gun-crime. The regulations controlling gun access in both countries is quite similar.

To get a reasonable statistical analysis on gun accessibility vs crime, you should stick to areas where there is pretty good control of the flow of guns back and forth. You can then analyze a region/country that worships guns as if they are sexual objects (ie, the USA) vs those that view them more reasonably (anywhere else) and see how crime stacks up. Of course, the sick sexual attraction of guns for many Americans itself may be more important as to why the US has a higher murder rate than anywhere else not a direct war zone than the actual easy access to guns. A confounding variable in any analysis.

Re:Where else, but Slashdot...

[wthynot]

Scarier yet: most didn't give it a second thought until just now.

Re:Of course

[Steve Franklin]

I believe you're missing the entire point. Mathematics is a map, a la Korzybski, that DESCRIBES reality. This is not the same as and is in fact far from being the same as the common and incorrect assumption that it EXPLAINS anything. All that can be said is that reality BEHAVES AS IF it were obeying the equations that are used to describe it. A good example to think about would be a computer pinball game in which you can change the gravitational parameters of the machine. Nothing in mathematics prevents this kind of programmed response from being invoked to explain its congruency with physical reality.

Re:more reviews of this book

[Chilliwilli]

When is a joke ever off-topic???

Is the Micheal Moore film Bowling For Columbine shown in the states? I know it proved hugely popular elsewhere in the world. (It reassures us to know that at least one US citizen thinks things through.) I think that if any body can sit through it and not find the present gun laws and attitudes simply obsurd then there is something seriously skewed in that person's mind. Sure you might feel safe behind your gun but will your butt feel safe behind bars? Ever wondered how many people are killed by their own firearms? These statistics are never admitted by the pro-gun lobby but if you take time to look at them it's really scary. Oh and all those illegally owned firearms.. they were legal once. I await modding down for not sharing your opinions once again. Thankyou for your time.

Re:more reviews of this book

[chameleon_skin]

Umm, you do realize that your argument is based on comparing a large, rural area to dense, compacted ones that have ten times the population?

Please. That's like saying Greenland has lower crime than New York because they eat more fish. All you've shown is that urban areas have higher crime rates than rural ones, which isn't going to come as much of a surprise to people on either side of the gun-control fence, and demonstrates zero in terms of how availability of guns reduces crime.

Re:Asymmetric guns

[Valdrax]

Surely then, the anti position should be considered the least plausible, since the status quo is to recgonize the basic human right to keep and bear arms.

Why is the ownership of a gun somehow special as a basic human right?

Is owning a dog a basic human right?
Is owning a house a basic human right?
Is owning a car a basic human right?
Is owning a tank a basic human right?
Is owning a cruise missle a basic human right?
Is owning a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon a basic human right?

Are any of these basic human rights distinct from the basic human right to own property? How?

Is maintaining the status quo always the least insane policy?

Re:HIV=AIDS?

[furiousgeorge]

>>She has HIV, does not take any of the AZT drugs
>>and is and has been healthy as a horse for a
>>looong time.

Well.......... DUH!

Guess what --- approximately 10% of HIV infections are people who are considered "long term non-progressors". They luckily have the right chance combination of genes that lets their immune system keep the virus under control. Indefinately, or at least much longer than the general population.

Around 1% (value subject to debate) have immunity to it.

One person has a spectacular result and doesn't need drugs.... Whooop-de-do. Don't they teach anybody basic statistics anymore? Even Ebola doesn't kill 100% of those infected.

One result is not proof or a result. It's a fluke.

Re:HIV=AIDS?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, gee, what a ya know: people are different. With x million infectees, and any normal distribution (powerlaw, zipf, what have you) some will go 20 years with out symptoms
after all, there are people who have lived to 120 years of age.
YOu lack logic, and an understanding of biology: biology is variable (or have you not noticed that some people have dealty allergies to peanuts, and others dont..

Re:Of course

[ZaphodCrowley]

All I was pointing out is that mathematics hasn't been proven consistent, and more importantly, can't be because of Godel's proof. I'm not sure exactly this has to do with your description/explanation idea... But I agree with you, mathematics doesn't explain anything, we can use it to model phenomena, but it's up to theorists to interpret the models, hence the distinction between quantum mechanics and quantum theory. I just don't get what it has to do with whether or not mathematics is consistent.

Re:more reviews of this book

[Scrameustache]

The fact that there's a law against having a fire arm will not stop crazy irresponsible people from getting one.

And this is where rationality flies off the window.

Because, you might have noticed, I used the example of 18 wheelers. Yeah...there are laws against 18 wheelers...no one is allowed to own or drive 18 wheelers...
sigh

Remember the terrorists during the 9/11 attacks didn't use guns.

Irrelevant.
On 9/11 they used jet planes.

If laws worked there'd be no crime.

Who modded this insightfull? I seriously want to have a chat with the person who modded THAT insightfull. He is advocating a society without laws, and you mod him insightfull?

Just because some crazy irresponsible individual may get his/her hands on a gun doesn't mean that I should give up my second ammendment right to bear arms. In fact, it exemplifies the need for the second ammendment.

Circular logic...my head is spinning.

So, I'll try this again, because you did NOT read it correctly the first time, you just jumped up and trolled with the usual prefabricated and slightly insane rant...

Guns should not be freely available to everyone.
Guns should be available only to those who can prove that they are capable of handling them responsibly.

Read that again, no, again. Yeah...that's right, I do say that guns should be available...ain't that something!

Just not to any idiot who will go off to shoot at cars on the highway because he's bored!

Re:more reviews of this book

[benedict]

This is the fallacy of the excluded middle.
It's like saying, "if computer security worked,
we would have no security breaches." Computer
security does work, it prevents some security
breaches; gun control does work, it prevents some
gun crimes.

Re:more reviews of this book

[JInterest]

There are a lot of irresponsible idiots out there.

If guns are freely available, there will be a lot of irresponsible idiots out there with guns.

If speech is free, irresponsible idiots will exercise it. The Chinese firmly believe that this threat to social harmony is unwarranted, so they restrict speech. Certainly there are a lot of people who believe that Rush Limbaugh engages in "hate speech" that leads to violence, suffering, and death. There are many people about whom the same thing may be said.

The real problem, of course, is your assumptions, which have nothing to do with rational arguments. By "rational" you apparently mean "If I compare apples to oranges you should accept that I'm right."

For your information, we have lots of "idiots" driving 18-wheelers. The purpose of licensing drivers is to assure that they know how to make the vehicle work, not to regulate their ownership, possession, or use of the vehicle

Licensing doesn't make people responsible. At best, it assures that they know how something functions well enough to use it.

People who advocate licensing guns aren't supporters of publicly funded gun-training programs like publicly funded driver training programs in our schools. They aren't interested in whether people know how to use guns properly. The sole basis of every gun registration regime that has ever been suggested in this country and in every other I'm aware of is to make it easier to restrict ownership and to seize the weapons when a full prohibition is passed.

To suggest that the gun-registration schemes proposed by the anti-2nd Amendment crowd are equivalent to licensing motor vehicle operators is specious and dishonest, because the goals are entirely different. The purpose of licensing a motor vehicle operator is to assure a minimum level of competence in motor vehicle operation. The purpose of licensing guns is as a first step to confiscation.

Oh, and if you don't want name-calling, don't engage in it. Ending your post with a line that suggests that people who disagree with you don't have rational arguments is pompous and assinine

Re:more reviews of this book

[JonKatzIsAnIdiot]

I therefore think that guns should be regulated in much the same way that we don't allow any idiot to drive around with an 18 wheeler.

I believe that you are entirely correct. The driver licensing system would be a great model to use for licensing gun users. Now remembering that you only need to obtain a driver's license and register your car when you expect that you are going to operate it on a public roadway, the closest would be a concealed carry permit. For guns that are going to be left at home, or transported in an inactive state (unloaded and in a case), no permit should be needed (just like a car). Also no restrictions should be made to restrict features or capacity (just like a car). And just like a car, any potential operator should be tested to ensure a basic level of technical proficiency with the implement.

For the record - I don't hate and fear authority, I detest and despise power-mad bureaucrats whose lifelong mission it is to extend their scope and reach, to keep meddling with ever-more intimite details of my life and keep increasing the claim they supposedly have on the fruits of my labour. Unfortunately, that seems to synonomous with government the last few years.

Re:more reviews of this book

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You're absolutely right. No one can deny that an armed criminal in europe is less likely to blast the homeowner at first site, because of how unlikely it is that he will need to.

That said, assuming that criminals will always have guns, I don't want to be unarmed and have to rely on the mercy of the criminal. I would much rather have the shotgun, because while he's much more likely to shoot (and maybe even hit me), it's very unlikely that in my dark home he will instantly kill me. And I can still vaoprize his chest cavity with my close-range shotgun, even one-armed.

Now, let's take all this to their natural conclusions, rather than just stating the part of the equation that makes your argument look good. My single instance is much more violent, if it ocurrs, but taken as a whole, does this increase violence for everyone? Likely not. There is one less violent criminal. Other criminals may see that crime might not be so safe or fun. The pivotal point is, is this a situation where an arms race will ocurr? That's far from certain. Depends on how practical the criminals are, and like any group, there is a mixture here, from very impractical vandals, all the way up to movie-esque cat burglars, who want no part of violence.

My own opinion, is that an arms race situation is pretty absurd. The next criminal doesn't break into my uncle's home next with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, just because I killed a colleague with my shotgun.

On the other hand, you can play it safe, hoping to earn the mercy of the felon, as he rapes your wife at gunpoint, making you watch... because, hell, if you *had* a gun, he might have had to kill you first!

Re:more reviews of this book

[Scrameustache]

the criminals are the ones commiting most crimes

Er...you need help with your logic, but lets keep this going...

[blablabla more guns means more chance of getting shot blabla]

Since most people (even idiots) don't like getting shot - as the odds of getting shot in any particular activity goes up the willingness to engage in that activity goes down.

So? What is the big problem with a gun liscense thing?

Restrict gun ownership to those who can prove that they are mature enough to handle a gun. If you are, you get to have a gun, exatly the same way that if you pass the tests, you get to drive a car.

The only people I can see having a problem with this are those that no one in their right mind would allow to have a gun and the paranoid people who would like the government to either not know they exist or go away.

oil & coal

[ecloud]

How does it follow from "hydrocarbons pre-existed the formation of the earth" that "we're probably not going to run out of them"? I'd think you could draw the opposite conclusion - if we use up the accessible stuff and it's not a renewable resource... how far are we going to have to dig or go out in space to get more? It becomes rather impractical doesn't it? Or is there some mechanism by which they are supposed to get replenished right here on earth?