Science's Limits Are Only Self-Imposed

Tristfardd writes "The Independent has a fine article on ridiculous experiments, some of which really are ridiculous, while others have interesting ramifications. If only the article gave links for viewing the rotating frog or the film on self-trepanation."

Comments

Re:As for the 'soul' experiment...

[jazman_777]

21 grams' worth? Take a deep breath, really deep. Air is 1.029 Kg/m**3 (at 70F). For 21 grams, that's .0204 cubic metres, or 20,408 cubic centimetres, or about 10 1992 Honda Accord engines' displacement worth.

Frog levitation...

[wanerious]

I'll pimp myself out --- here's the link to the project:

Floating Frogs

Floating Frogs? Sure, we've got those.

[IpsissimusMarr]

Here in my department at FSU we are fortunate enough to have the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which develops the stongest magnets on the planet. Couple this with a professor with a sense of humor and you get .... That right! A Frog floating in a magnetic field! Along with golf balls, dice, and other things. When we asked him why he says, because you can. :) Check out the movies:

http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/science/levitation/

Re:Levitating Frogs

[azav]

Blessed be thine google.

http://www.hfml.sci.kun.nl/froglev.html

http://www.hfml.sci.kun.nl/levitation-movies.htm l

http://www.hfml.ru.nl/pics/Movies/frog.mpg

Re:m00

[WGR]

I actually worked on this (writing software for the measuring instruments). We put flow metres on a cow barn roof to catch the ouput of methane over some months, using ultrasonic wind speed measurements and instruments to measure methane as it passed by the fans. We also measured the CO2, water and other gasses as they were exchanged between the barn and the outside.

We really found a significant amount of methane and it depended a lot on what feed had been given to the cows. Since methane is one of the most significant green house gasses (much more potent per gram than CO2, just less of it), we could make recommendations for feed to help lessen the outgassing.

The other big source of methane is rotting vegetation in swamps. Often a swamp will have little flames rising over it as the methane burns, creating a lot of legends of ghosts and swamp monsters. Because you get a lot of rotting vegetation in the lakes created by large dams, big hydro projects create almost as much a greenhouse effect as fossil fuel plans creating the same amount of electricty, although this diminishes over time, unlike with fossil fuels.

More ridiculous science that later proved genuine.

[amasci]

Bravo! I love this kind of article, and wish there were far more of them.

We in the sciences need to fight our tendency to suppress the embarrassing history of mistaken scoffing; where new discoveries are rejected because if they were real, they'd make the scientific community look like fools. Suppress? Yes. It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. And it may not be conscious suppression, but the effects are the same. If we take a detailed look at the history of science, it's quite fascinating to see which discoveries were ridiculed at the time. And it's amazing that this ridicule is not common knowledge. Perhaps historians of science need to focus more on digging up dirt, rather than letting scientists tell their own sanitized version of history. For example, try to find any texts which mention:

String Theory
rejected by the wider community, kept alive almost entirely by Caltech's John Schwartz, the "pariah of the physics department," who only avoided being fired because of secret support by Murray Gell-Mann. The work was set back ~10 years by widespread sneering. See "Feynman's Rainbow," also "Euclid's Window"

Black Holes
Proposed in 1930 by S. Chandra, who was hounded out of his department by Arthur Eddington and supporters, since black holes would ruin one of Eddington's theories (later proved wrong.) The work was only taken up again in the 1960s, so Eddington's actions set black hole research back by thirty years.

Scanning-tunneling microscope.
Ridiculed by the microscope community. Apparently the project avoided setbacks mostly because its discoverers attracted early support by the Nobel prize committee. See Science News, Atom Tinkerer's Paradise

Non-euclidian geometry
The field was explored by K. F. Gauss, who fearing ridicule, kept all his papers secret until the end of his life. Lobachevsky did some similar work and did attract scorn. The topic was finally taken seriously after several more decades passed. Doppler effect.
Proposed in 1842, but ridiculed and ignored because it contradicted the Aether theory of light. Stellar red shift finally penetrated the wall of scorn two decades later (after Doppler himself had died.)

---------

Other more famous instances of ridiculed/vindicated discoveries:

Lynn Margulis, mitochondria, chloroplasts, etc., were once independant cells. Barbara McClintlok's "jumping genes"

Robert Goddard, finally vindicated when those idiotic spaceships of his were taken seriously by Nazi scientists.

Weltner's continental drift theory

Wright Brothers. Ridiculed by top US scientists and Scientific American magazine, they finally had to move to France before anyone would believe their claims or even come to observe their machine in action.

Arrhenius, ion chemistry. Nearly lost his degree because ions were a heresy (atoms were known to be indivisible.)

Ignaz Semmelweis, doctors should wash hands before surgery. (Semmelweis fought the medical community for ~10 years, and ended up committing suicide in an insane asylum.)

L. Galvani, electricity. "They call me the frogs' dancing master."

W. Harvey, circulation of blood. The medical community ostracized him.