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Bad Science Awards
KDan writes "The Bad Science Awards are out. These should put a smile on any science geek's face. Prize gems include: shrinking water molecules, anesthetic condoms, and a plan to send homeopathic AIDS remedies to Botswana."
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I've just read a few of these out - the one that caused the most laughter was the 'shrinking water molecules' one. Looks like the Planck constant isn't, at least for hairdressers :-)
:-( Perhaps if science were more popular/emphasized more at school, the problem might alleviate, but there's no votes in improving the education system in 15 years time...
I'm sure the condom story will cause the most general hilarity though - shades of 'Riotous Assembly' by Tom Sharpe - which I heartily recommend if you want people to wonder why you suddenly burst out laughing...
The real issue of course is that the general public ("sheep") will believe anything a man in a white coat ("doctor") tells them. Scepticism is a vanishing but valuable trait
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
I think we should grow a baby from birth in a space capsule that is rotating to mimic a gravity much greater then Earths gravity. Then when he's on earth he'll be like superman.
Or grow vegatables in 0 gravity so they can grow HUGE.
Bad science I know but it'd be fun to see the results
*DrugCheese rants*
where's the monkey with 4 asses?
I need new glasses - first time reading it looked like: "Prize gems include: homeopathic water molecules, shrinking condoms, and a plan to send anesthetic AIDS remedies to Botswana." Whoa.
Everything L. Ron Hubbard wrote...
repeat after me: creationism (or "intelligent design") is not a scientific theory. it has no predicative power, it offers no real explanation, nor can it be tested.
it belongs in philosophy, religion, psychology and/or sociology classes but not in a science class.
These should put a smile on any science geek's face.
- anesthetic condoms
- a plan to send homeopathic AIDS remedies to Botswana
Well that makes one see geeks in a whole new light..
According to TFA, Dr Gillian McKeith PhD. wins this prize for "outstanding innovation in the use of the title 'Doctor'":
Man, that's just harsh . . .
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
"The fact that Al Quaeda hasn't attacked us again just proves that we are winning the war on terror, and that we are doing the right things to prevent it."
Oh, I'm sorry, that's not bad science, that's just really bad logic. . .
Can someone tell me why they put the condoms on their tongues? Or is that part of their normal testing process for bad science?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
It isn't just the people who'll gladly believe anything a man in a white coat tells them who're the problem, it's also the ones who flatly refuse to trust anything 'scientific'. The people who'll loudly proclaim homeopathy, acupuncture, reiki, therapeutic touch or whatever other bizarre quackery happens to be the fad of the moment to be the cure for everything.
w ick_a_life/ flying the flag for idiocy, but, equally, there are frankly rather creepy people like the Aetherius Society http://www.aetherius.org/ who're only too happy to peddle their own bizarre brand of crap as science.
Sure, we have wonderful scientists like Kevin Warwick: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/12/11/kevin_war
In short.. well, think for yourself and beware the demagogue.
Sending Homeopathic remedy for AIDS to a country is not bad science. It is murder pure and simple. You might jsut as well give them sweets and tell them it is a medicament. Oh , wait ...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I've tried these, and they work . . . somewhat. The lubricant contains a local anesthetic that dulls sensations . . . for obvious uses.
I found that I didn't like them, and the dullness continued longer than desired. Secondary considerations included not being able to maintain an erection as easily (hehe, little guy couldn't feel anything, so he said "Why bother?").
Other guys could probably use them with better success. It was worth a try, but I'd not recommend them whole-heartedly.
They're the same kind of bitter, arrogant people who dare claim my MD from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College isn't a real degree.
From the article:
However the winner was Space Tomato Number One, part of the Chinese government's "space breeding" project, where radiation in space is used to create comic book mutations and giant space plants, including tomatoes weighing almost a kilogram.
I fear we may have a new meme on our hands: In China, X is always positive.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I honestly don't know enough about the debate to take a side, but I agree that if there really is no science to back global warming up, it should not be used to try to reduce pollution. There are reasons to reduce pollution, but when you use a false or flimsy argument, it just gives the opposition ammo to shoot down what is a good idea.
My other computer is a Jacquard loom.
Science never suppose the existence or the inexistence of supra-human entity. It isn't a question of SCOPE, it is a question of REPRODUCIBILITY and PROOF (falsibility?). True it is entirely possible a God exists, but there is no proof either toward existence or non-existence. But using the existence of God as an hypothesis for a explanation of a phenomennon make it belong to religion/philosophy, not science. That is, unleess you can prove God exists. then it would belong to science to. Thus the argument of the original poster that creationism is not science and should not belong to biology teaching is 100% right.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Kyoto does not require anyone to increse their CO2 emmissions. At most, it allows them to.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
I half expected to find them using Randell Mill's BlackLight Process to create "Oxygen Dihydrino".
And informed scientists
Or wrong scientists.
If you don't like a Hummer, don't drive one. That simple
No, it's not that simple. That's like saying "nuclear weapons should be legal for personal use - don't like them? don't buy them". When what you do affects the health of me, my family, and everyone else on the planet, then it's not JUST your business.
If global warming were real, Chinese gas would be as nasty as American gas. But it is all politics
Chinese gas is just as nasty as American gas. Kyoto is a (bad) political response to a very real impending disaster. Stating that Kyoto is flawed does nothing to make the reality of the problem any less serious.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
It might not give us the reason for the "big bang" occurring but as far as I know nor does it claim to.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The problem is, once we get to a point where it can be 100% proven, it's too fucking late. The evidence, whilst not totally conclusive, is pretty damn strong. We could stick our heads in the sand and sing "la la la", or we could do something about it and try to save ourselves and our descendents.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
From the article...
he also states that your skull "contracts and expands a dozen times or so each minute to push the [cerebrospinal] fluid round" your brain, along with various other amusing misunderstandings of basic medicine.
This is actually a pretty controversial area of medicine-- known as cranial osteopathy, there have been numerous studies that claim to show that the skull does have movement due to cerebrospinal pressure. Actual doctors do believe this, although as I say, it's not commonly accepted.
If anyone's interested, I'll dig up some research..
Can you provide a citation to support this?
The protocol itself makes no mention of this. Developing countries are excluded from the emissions reductions targets that apply to the "Annex I" countries, but they're not required to increase their emissions--that's patently absurd. Note that China has apparently stated their intent to join Annex I soon and has been reducing their emissions anyway.
http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/achinagg.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_protocol
China is third in emissions behind the USA and European Union, they're still a developing nation, and their still managing to lower their emissions while the USA continues to increase theirs.
Did you read the article? They didn't really say it wouldn't work; in fact, they said quite the opposite:
The magic ingredient was benzocaine, a local anaesthetic, which made the judges' tongues go numb. We didn't even think about trying it on our genitals.
I'd hardly call something where the evidence is inconclusive to be a fallacy. A fallacy is something that can be shown to be untrue.
A friend of mine used to tell me the reason he never runs stop lights or passes in no passing zones, it's because he said that if he never does those things, it will be impossible for him to be in an accident while running a red light or passing in a no pass zone.
In other words, if you avoid deviations from the norm, you also avoid the potential problems that lie outside the norm.
Maybe polluting the atmosphere to fuckall and back will have no serious long term consequences, but if you're going to go about demanding iron clad evidence of something before allowing action to take place, then that is where the burden of proof should lie.
And if it was just someone randomly making dire warnings that would be something else, but there is good experimental evidence that shows in the laboratory potential mechanisms for how these forms of pollution could result in catostrophic global climate change. Are they right?
Well let's just say that I'd feel a lot more comfortable avoiding crashing my volvo into a concrete barrier at 100mph to see if "she can take it." Maybe I would survive without injury, but sometimes learning the hardway is no way to learn at all.
I have a Master's in physics. I try to be careful to apply the scientific method when dealing with unknown subjects. Frankly, homeopathy works. Before you criticize, I am as baffled by it as you are. There is no reason it should work, but it does. And yes, there are studies. But because it is 'kooky', it is rejected out-of-hand.
If you have not experimented and studied it yourself, how can you dismiss it?
Linux is to Microsoft what Alternative Medicine is to Conventional Medicine/AMA. Right now it is relatively a fringe movement, but beginning to make inroads that the establishment(s) can't stop. Sure, there are many things that are nonsense, but there is enough good stuff not to 'throw the baby out with the bathwater'. The beauty of it all, it that homeopathy is good at solving problems that conventional medicine isn't - and vice versa.
Perhaps you will say, "It is just the placebo effect". For you or for me, that could be true, but what about babies with colic? I have yet to see anything else that would work. I know many mothers who would swear by it. What about animals? People use it on pets too - though I have not.
I sound like a kook when I argue against accepted wisdom and what seems to be obvious theory, but I have seen too much success with it to laugh- and yes, I can tell when it is working and when it isn't. So, before you laugh too long, look into it. Revolutions never begin with the masses.
That said, I am far from convinced of an AIDS homeopathic, though I do know an excellent one for the flu.
This is the usual retarded logic that pollution apologists use.
FACTS:
1. The less we understand the environment the more cautious we should be. This should be obvious. If you are ice-skating, you check the thickness of the ice. If you HAVE to go on the ice without knowing how thick it is you don't say "it isn't PROVEN that the ice is thin, so I'll jump up and down and stomp around."
2. Science never proves anything. Ever. Not even once. 'Science' is the current theories that best stand up to criticism. If this seems wrong to you then you have no idea and should not pollute the world with your misinformed asshat ideas.
3. Right now the evidence says that global warming is happening and is caused by human activities. Can I make the case for this? Absolutely not. However, there are people who know alot about this sort of thing. They tell me that the evidence points to human activity and global warming. The only 'experts' which say otherwise are working for energy companies.
4. A majority of scientists can be wrong. Scientists believed in Newtonian physics until the beginning of this century, and many refused to buy into relativity even then. However, with our imperfect human knowledge we must make decisions based on the best information that we have available. Is the best information to base a decision on "it isn't PROVEN that global warming is real or cause by human actions" or "experts say that it is real and the evidence we do have agrees with this conclusion"?
What about all the Scientology books he's "written" since his death? Seriously, he puts out more books post-mortum than TuPac does CDs!
Who created the laws of physics, and how did they become all-powerful?
The problem is, once we get to a point where it can be 100% proven, it's too fucking late. The evidence, whilst not totally conclusive, is pretty damn strong. We could stick our heads in the sand and sing "la la la", or we could do something about it and try to save ourselves and our descendents.
Fallacy. Let me illustrate:
The problem with not believing in God is once you get to the point where it can be proven, its too late. Therefore, the logical conclusion is to believe in God. - Pascal's Wager
The evidence for human caused global warming isn't as strong as I'd like. There are far too many unknowns. Quite frankly, we know squat about the environment, and we know squat about global warming. To add to the confusion, $bigcorp promotes one set of data, while $envirowackos promotes another set of data. (Hence my comparision to a belief in God -- some people (myself included) sees strong evidence for the existance of God. Other people do not.)
If we act in ways to prevent possible human-caused global warming, there are known and unknown economical costs to us all. "Economical costs" may sound dry and stuffy, but the net result is that acting to prevent possible human-caused global warming will impact each and every one of our lives in a negative way. That is certain. The cost effects and results of human caused global warming is uncertain.
There is evidence that we are coming out of another ice age. Personally, I believe that this evidence is stronger than the evidence for human caused global warming. Thus, we are probably facing a climate change regardless of what we do. If that is a case, even assuming a small additional climate change do to human causes, it might be more economically *and* environmentally efficient to devote our monies to other areas. What is "better" in the long run -- setting aside one square mile as a wildlife preserve, or reducing human caused global warming by .0001 C? (Disclaimer: numbers pulled out of my ass.)
If you do feel strongly about global warming, I would suggest trying a vegan diet. Not eating meat tends to result in less pollution, less fossil fuels, and you don't get all those nasty greenhouse gasses from farting cows (don't laugh -- cow farts have been studied as a cause for climate change). While eggs and milk is more efficient, the pollution and antibiotic/hormone problems from factory farms may still be a problem.
Psh, I've tried it. Half an hour later: hungry again.
Wouldn't the shrinking cause them to break easier though?
And what happens if one really has a large wang and it shrinks too much. You could find yourself in a real *pinch*
"And it's pretty crazy that the global temperature changes in the last 100 years coincide nicely with the industrialization of the world."
That is one of the oldest fallacies in the book. The idea that if A and B occur, it means that A causes B. You really need to do some research concerning logic.
Very true, I've heard it put best as: Correlation does not imply causation.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Listen, you BASTARD. dihydrogen monoxide KILLED my mother and RAPED my father!
It's been a long time.
My uncle has AIDS. He's known for two years. The doctors wanted to put him on HIV medications as soon as they knew.
He said no. He urged me, my family, to research every possible medicine [both mainstream and alternative] for AIDS
And we came up with a mix of different therapies.
MGN3
Immunofin
Colostrum
CCA30
Chlorophyll
We added a potent multivitamin, a specialized diet, as well exercise, meditation, and accupuncture.
He also quit smoking, stopped drinking, took up religion, and went back to school [he already had two degrees, one in accounting and one in computer science, now he's studying economics and law[
The doctors that he has seen are pretty much amazed. They count his viral load, check for other opportunistic infections and diseases, and do all sorts of tests, everything comes out great.
He feels wonderful, has very few symptoms, and happens to feel his health is greater than before he found out.
One of his friends, also with AIDS, is dead. He was on drug cocktail for one year and a half, he died in a hospital with a drip of AZT going.
However, I doubt this is what they are sending to Africa. The diet is one of the most important parts of the treatment. The supplements are expensive [bottles of CCA and Immunofin, etc, can run around $50 each] and some of the supplments you really have to search around for [example, MGN3 was banned by the government, no longer in production]
Of course, I know lots of you "Science geeks" will laugh and say it's a lie, but you'll start seeing nutrition and natural remedies coming back a lot in this drug society..
But I don't think so. I think they view the evidence, think very hard about it, build their climate models carefully, review other published ideas in the field, and that over the last two decades this has brought them to the consensus that man-caused global warming is real and that there will be around 3 degrees C +/- 1 degree C of increase in global mean temperatures over the next century (unless there are reductions in human greenhouse gas emissions).
See, for some basics written for general readers, www.realclimate.org
Your whole "it's just a theory, they haven't proved it yet" argument is the same crap that creationists trot out against evolution (falsely) and that tobacco companies trotted out for years against the "smoking causes cancer" scientific consensus.
Climatologists have proved it to their satisfaction. You got evidence they're wrong, submit it to a refereed journal in the area. If it's not good enough to be published in such a journal, then it's not good enough.
And if you think your evidence is good enough but that there's a vast conspiracy of scientists plotting together to prevent the truth ever being published in any scientific journal, then say so explicitly and reveal yourself as a crank.
Sean
PS: and regards your specific claims, of course we have evidence about how much sunlight the earth has received and how much C02 there was in the past - do you think that we take core samples for the fun of it? And of course our evidence is not 100% complete in all ways - that's how science works. Nor is predicting the weather a month from now the same problem as predicting overall long-term climate trends - so why do you conflate them?
The only L. Ron Hubbard book I've ever read was 'Battlefield Earth', and it was quite good (I know the movie sucked though). It's straight SF that has nothing to do with Scientology. I don't know anything about that other Scientology crap he wrote, but at least *one* book of his is worth reading.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
I really disagree with your characterization of "most environment and animal-related science" as being represented by the web sites you linked.
And I'm giving up mod points to say that.
Do you know anything about the *real* environmental and animal research going on, or do you base your impressions on the loudest screamers of the pop-science realm?
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
This is not a personal attack; that's why I'm posting as me, and not as an AC. I, too, have read Battlefield Earth, and I cannot, for the life of me, see this book as anything but Science psychofantasy. Compare Hubbard, if you dare, to Asimov, Bradbury, or Heinlein: the differentiation of underlying literary focus is staggering. The three good men whom I mention as counterpoint to Hubbard all used SF as a device to further their plots; Hubbard used it as a way to describe Scientology without giving away information he wanted people to PAY for. Automagical dissemination of information to mentally-challanged humans was the closest thing Hubbard had (well, that and the telepotation ... ) to science, and supposedly this information feeder caused Johnny Two-Guns to become John Rambo, John Wayne, and George Washington combined, as well as some Chuck Yeager, Issac Asimov, and L. Ron Hubbard. I am not being snobbish or elitist. I just cannot classify Battlefield Earth as anything more than a poorly written introduction to the precepts and concepts of Scientology. You are correct in stating that there is no OVERT mention of Scientology, but if you created a skeletal outline of the development of Johnny and the concepts he grows to have, you would probably have a document that would be similar to a "Begginer's Guide to Scientology". Again, I'm posting as myself to establish my points as non-troll. I hope that you take them in that fashion.
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"