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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...
psychology and/or sociology classes but not in a science class
You are mistaken. Psychology and sociology are both sciences.
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
1) define "God" or at least show me a physical example of it.
2) if you cannot do #1, then give me a suitable definition of "evolve" that applies to non-physical objects but has scientific meaning. (the fact idea of "God" changes over time is not science. that's a anthropology/sociology/religion question.)
3) finally, show me how to test God's physical evolution. tell me under what principles it evolves so that the theory offers some predicative power.
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.
what about all the people insisting on teaching creationism in school as an alternative theory to evolution in biology classes?
These are British awards. I've never heard of anybody here in the UK insisting on anything of the sort.
Then you better explain that "science" is only a pragmatic, physical explanation of observed results -- it can make no claim to being "truth". Science is useful, since it's the best way of analyzing things. But it's entirely possible that a deity created the universe as it is such that science reports these results, and science is too small in scope to be able to refute that possibility.
Honestly. Some people treat science like it's a religion or something (pun intended). It's only an explanation. If anything, science is an alternative theory to common organized religion just as much as creationism is an alternative theory to evolution.
Since creationism is not scientific, it should not be called an alternative theory. They should not be put side-by-side, since they are not on the same footing.
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.
Well, as creationists will point out, evolution can't be tested on a multi-million year time-scale either, and multi-million-year predictions are hard to check.. As for offering no real explanation, creationists will also disagree about that; and moreover, real scientific theories sometimes don't have real explanations; like Newton's theory of gravity.
The thing with creationism is that it cannot be disproved, and that's what makes it a non-contender. It's called falsifiability. You can never prove there is NO God. Perhaps he likes it that way, and being almighty, there's no way you're gonna catch him out! Can't be sure, can you? In fact, he might be faking all them scientific resultamajigs so as to test y'all's faith in him! Nope siree, can't disprove God.
On the other hand, if the skies crack open and a thundering voice bellows "This is God. Evolution is a crock. Check out genes #43.125-43.234 in starfish and humans" and it turns out those genes contain a binary encoded (C/G=1, T/A=0) message saying "(c) YHWH, 4000BC, nobody mess with my copyrites, I rulez0rs, go forth and multiply suckas!", well, then that could quite possibly be a good way to disprove evolution..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
i never said creationism is "wrong." it has its place in the learning/education and this world. just not in a science class.
You failed science class, didn't you? You don't assume things and then try to disprove them. You take the knowledge you have, produce a hypothesis that logically follows from that knowledge, and test it, thereby acquiring new knowledge. Just because it's impossible to disprove the existence of green hairy aliens on Alpha Centauri doesn't imply that you can claim they are there.
If you still want to argue, how about some classic mind-twisters: if some intelligent being created life, who created the intelligent being? How the hell did he become all-powerful? Does this not violate the basic laws of physics as well as produce logical contradictions? What evidence do you have for the existence of such a being?
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
Ok, so why don't we teach in public schools that the earth was created by Xenu and that we're all infected with Body Thetans, or some other such nonsense? It's possible, as it's also possible that we're all living in a big computer simulation.
The difference between science and superstition (also known as "religion") is that it doesn't claim to be 100% correct, and is constantly checked and verified and revised to get as close to the truth as possible. If you want to believe in some crazy story that some other person made up, feel free; but schools are for educating people with things that are useful, not making them believe lies.
It's hard to believe that even here, on Slashdot, "news for nerds", so many people are completely ignorant of what science is.
physicists are looking for the grand unification theory. ok, here it is, i have the answer: f(x) = G. i can't tell what the function f is or the variables x and G are, but that's the formula and it's the grand unification theory, when f, x and G are suitable defined.
do you believe that i just came up with a GUT? don't you agree that all i did was mask the question and didn't really provide any explanation at all?
I half expected to find them using Randell Mill's BlackLight Process to create "Oxygen Dihydrino".
The problem is that lots of people have the mistaken assumption that science (and in general, what they learn in school) is "true". Science is simply a self-consistent closed system that models the real world. I agree that science and religion are separate, and neither belong in the other's place. But when we have the state forcing science education combined with a common assumption that the real world is the scientific model, we have a problem.
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"
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..
No, the problem with creationism is that it attempts to dissuade people from using science, and to believe fairy tales in its place. In the process, it tries to destroy all scientific knowledge gained in the areas of geology, physics, history, etc.
Talk to a Creationist sometime: you'll find that person also believes that the earth is 6000 years old, dinosaurs either never existed, or were on Noah's ark, etc. Creationism isn't just a simple belief that God created the world; anyone could believe that and still have no problem with any part of science. Creationism is an entire belief system that attempts to explain the current state of the world using numerous assumptions that have been proven false by evidence. For instance, a geologist would have to be nuts to believe the earth is 6000 years old after examing fossil evidence, geological evidence, and looking at everything we now know about how the earth's geology works. But ask a Creationist, and he'll claim the Grand Canyon was made very quickly by the "great flood"! Astrophysicists could point out that there's lots of things we can see with telescopes that are so far away, the light has taken over 6000 years to get here. But ask a Creationist, and he'll come up with some crazy explanation for it, such as that God put that light in motion 6000 years ago to look like that.
The idea that a deity had some hand in creating the universe isn't a bad one. Science doesn't have the answers for that, and may never have them. Yes, there's a Big Bang theory, but what came before that (if it even happened that way)? This simply isn't a question for science, at least not before we evolve into some much more advanced race in the next million years. These are the kinds of things religion is supposed to investigate. But here in the US, religion isn't about investigating or contemplating the metaphysical; it's about making claims that fly in the face of physical evidence because it's unfathomable that an extremely literal and narrow interpretation of an old text could possibly be wrong, and in the process attempting to brainwash everyone into believing the same falsehood for no good reason.
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.
Of course you can't see a logical reason to accept religion. That's not the point. I don't see a religious reason to accept logic. Your instinctive trust of logic is pretty much equivalently rooted to my instinctive trust of God.
The scientific method is powerful and is logical. I agree with it. I have never said that I don't believe that science works, or that it is incorrect. I have never said I believe, and in fact I don't believe, that God created the world at once so that evolutionism arose from a mass of confused scientists and evil conspirators. I am a scientist at heart, as much as I am a Christian.
Yet science is only valid within the realm of science. Your saying that logic precludes a deity is no more valid than my saying that the Bible precludes evolution.
I also believe in Jesus Christ because of what you may call the scientific method: many repeated experiences of the power of God. Note that I do not take Scientology on faith. In it I've seen many repeated examples of corporate abuse of people.
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?
> Psychology and sociology are both science
I personally prefer to think of those as the 'soft' sciences. Sort of testable, with a heavy dose of subjectivity. As opposed to 'hard' sciences such as chemistry/physics, which are pretty solid really.
biology can sit somewhere in the middle, because it does have room for subjectivity.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopat hy.shtml/
As for "yes, I can tell when it is working and when it isn't.". This is prime example of why we have strict testing. No you can't. Damn. Sorry. This crap makes me angry. One step to faith healers in my opinion.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
you know, I wouldn't say your cited example is any more crazy than a belief in the existence of some all-controlling entity which you call 'god'.
belief in god is as valid as belief in unicorns. You do believe in unicorns, right?
to risk pressing a point a little too far, have you ever considered the idea that your 'religious experiences' are little more than a firing of neurotransmitters in a particular way, caused by perhaps a particular mental and physical state?
Some people report feelings of 'religious euphoria' which are strikingly similar to what some clubbers report feeling when high on ecstasy. It seems to be basically a strange response to a particular chemical state in the brain, possibly related to being in a particular social situation too (evangelist tent rallies, meet open-air rave parties). It's a deep feeling of joy, perhaps with a strong sense of belonging mixed in, with generous helpings of contentment. Cosmic, man.
In the party example, you can explain it ("I felt great because I took drugs and danced") whereas the same feeling at church or during prayer is attributed to some higher power. Which is where it all breaks down, really, because there's no foundation for that conclusion. It's just meditation.
I wonder how difficult this hypothesis would be to test?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
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.
Were these peer reviewed studies? Can you cite these studies? All I have found are sites like this one: Homeopathy Fails in the UK Again
"I'd much rather be mistaken as a lesbian by a bigot than be mistaken as a bigot by a lesbian."
> > Also compare with Psalms 90:4, and particularly the notation "A prayer of Moses" at the beginning of Psalms 90
> What exactly are you referring to here? I read the passage, and I don't see where it would contradict the view that a day in the Bible is 24 hours.
"A day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day." That's the same 'day' as in Genesis. And the author is explicitly given: Moses. The same author traditionally given for Genesis. (Although there is a good case to be made that Moses compiled, not authored Genesis.) Now try to justify the statement that "the Hebrew word for 'day' always refers to a 24 hour period."
Also compare the frequent phrase "the day of the LORD" - which clearly does not refer to a 24 hr day.
P.S. To get really nit picky, you'll also find a 48 hour day in Joshua (the sun stood still for 24 hours) and a 24 hr 20 min day in II Kings (the shadow on the sundial went backward 10 degrees - assuming 1 deg = 1 min).
Intelligent design gets to the heart of the real disagreement between origin of life theories. Was it purposeless and uncaused, or designed? We ask the same questions about murders, artifacts, turing tests, and radio signals from space. The same techniques can be used.
The Bible asserts that G-d created every living thing "after its kind". However, it was Aristotle, not the Bible, who declared that species (and the stars) were immutable and unchanging. The Church somehow became supporters of the scientific orthodoxy of the day (Aristotleanism) instead of sticking to the Bible and Apostolic Tradition - and has been tarred with that brush ever since.
The scientific orthodoxy began to unravel with the appearance of two visible supernovas in the 15 and 16 hundreds (spectacular evidence that no, the stars are not immutable). But many were burned at the stake for stating the obvious conclusion from what they saw. Galileo got off easy because of the support of the Pope (who saw the moons of Jupiter through Galileos telescope with his own eyes - an Aristotelean impossibility). Galileo was foolishly undiplomatic, and his house arrest was needed to appease the insulted Aristoteleans.
Detractors of Intelligent design often proceed by showing mathematically that there can be no algorithm capable of classifying signal sources as "intelligent" or "not-intelligent" (for some definition of intelligent). This begs the question. The premise of the Christian supernatural is that this universe is embedded in a larger reality. This does not mean parallel universes or higher dimensions. The traditional metaphor was book and author. Good books like "Lord of the Rings" or "Harry Potter" are worlds created by their author. The author resides in a larger reality. A better metaphor in the computer age is a simulation or virtual world. Just as the existence of the virtual worlds we create depends on the continued functioning of the computer systems that house them, so our universe depends for its existence on whatever it is in the "more real" world that sustains it as computers sustain our virtual worlds. In turn, that world may be embedded in an even higher reality. Like a story within a story - to use the traditional metaphor. Where does it all end (or start)? The source of all realities and all worlds is God - like in Douglas Hofstadter's "Push and Pop" dialog in "Godel, Escher, Bach".
The "intelligence" of Intelligent Design is presumed to have its source outside of our universe - in the higher reality. A better model of the kind of experiment ID proposes can be illustrated by an online game. Suppose you are playing your favorite online game - which contains many AI players as well as human players. The game provides no explict indication of which avatars are human and which are machine driven. You have no contact with any of the human players except through the game. Would you be able to tell which avatars were controlled by human players, and which were artificial, using only the features of the virtual world and without resorting to any outside communication?
You could if you found a Babel fish.
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
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'
And we came up with a mix of different therapies.
So which one was it?
To what degree was each responsible?
Might one of them have still been a negative, and be better off without it?
Might the entire improvement be entirely attributable to one factor? Perhaps not one even listed?
Might the improvement even been due to none of these things at all, but would have come regardless?
Let me answer those questions for you: "You don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you don't know", and yes, "you don't know".
I don't laugh, I don't deny the results, I'm glad he's doing so well. But you are in absolutely no position to be making any claims about the cause of his improvement. Even if his actions are responsible, which you don't know, you changed so many variables at once that even the statement "If you do these 24 things, your AIDS might improve. After all, this one person I know's did." is still nearly bereft of information. I mean, just being "a fighter" has been shown to be helpful almost across the board!
(Remember, one of the ways of measuring information is "the extent to which a fact is a surprise"; no surprise, no information. "Eating a pound of popcorn a day cures AIDS" is a surprise. "If you do a lot of stuff, and also improve your lifestyle in several ways at the same time, you'll be healthier" isn't much of a surprise for anyone who has been paying attention to health science, or, well, much of anyone else either.)
This in no way belittles your Uncle's accomplishments. Moreover, he may even be right and maybe he's sitting on the perfect treatment; it has happened before. But you aren't in any position to know. The plural of anecdote is not "data"... and you haven't even reached the "plural" part.
That is what science is about. Not denying that certain things have benefit, but testing and verifying and quantifying so we know, and in knowing become stronger and more capable. The reason herbal remedies are so often despised is that so many of them, when actually put to the test, fail miserably, not that they are herbal. Proof? Why, when the tests succeed, they are swiftly coopted... one can hardly list all the medicines that started out as herbal remedies. Obviously science hasn't got an intrinsic problem with such things, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.
Science is far from perfect, but it beats the hell out of "I know this guy who sort of flailed around and tried a lot of things and one or more of them may or may not have had a significant impact on his disease", which is where you stand now. Again, it's great that he's doing well, but wouldn't you like to find out what actually contributed, and whether there might be something that works even better, so that others can actually benefit without potentially wasting time and money on things that are neutral or even harmful?
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.
when it's proven wrong the proponents quickly change the theory to fit the facts
Correct. That's why science is superior to religion.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.