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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?
psychology and/or sociology classes but not in a science class
You are mistaken. Psychology and sociology are both sciences.
"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
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.
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
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!
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
> > 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?
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?