(Yet) Another Year End List

gordonb writes "New Scientist has yet another of those endless end-of-year lists, "13 things that do not make sense", including such topics discussed on Slashdot this year as the placebo effect, dark energy, and the ever-popular cold fusion. I know there are a lot more than 13 things that don't make sense, such as free markets, but, oxymorons aside, this is an interesting list, nevertheless."

Comments

Research mistakes or conundrums?

[dada21]

The placebo effect does work! A friend of the family is a hypochondriac (I used to be a BAD one), and always has the same cold or disease as someone else. I told her that the trick to fending off hypochondria is to gently tap the underside of her chin 5 times slowly and the symptoms will go away.

Guess what? It worked. I just made it up but I told her I heard about it on a medical show. The power of the mind is amazing, but it has taught me how easily duped we humans are. I guess this means don't trust anyone until you know what their end desire is.

This is an interesting article, but it seems common for them to say that these unknown "problems" might all boil down to bad research -- and I believe that could likely be the answer for many. "Bad research" covers all science conundrums: either you misread the results, or previous bad research gave you an incorrect theory.

Problems solved :)

Re:Research mistakes or conundrums?

[Mr. Slippery]

Mental illnesses are real illnesses and have hard, acute neurological expression in the brain.

Certainly some people have strong difficulties in their lives. And certainly some people have deformities or injuries to their nervous system. But the idea that "mental illnesses" such as depression have direct neurological expression is not as supported as SSRI makers would like you to believe. (Another link: here.)

Labeling psychological difficulties (other than neulogical illness or injury) is questionable. It has strong legal and social consequences that we ought to consider.

The DSM, the official defintion of mental health and illness, has its roots in a military effort to decide who was too crazy (or not crazy enough?) to be a soldier. It's critera for listed condtions are famously vauge. And who decides which condtions are "illnesses"? Just a few decades ago, homosexuality was a "mental illness" according to the DSM.

These illnesses are not merely coming from a person who is playing a casual game of make-believe who needs to get a grip.

I agree, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we should use the word "illness" to describe these states.

End of year list?

[edgr]

Take a look at the date on TFA.

13 things that do not make sense

19 March 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Michael Brooks

Doesn't seem so end of year to me.

This whole article reminds me of Sagan's book

[antifoidulus]

"Demon Haunted World"(well, techincally "Science as a Candle in the Darkness") which I am currently slogging through. He discusses a lot of there same "phenomenon" such as placebos and this, my personal favorite:
IT WAS 37 seconds long and came from outer space. On 15 August 1977 it caused astronomer Jerry Ehman, then of Ohio State University in Columbus, to scrawl "Wow!" on the printout from Big Ear, Ohio State's radio telescope in Delaware. And 28 years later no one knows what created the signal. "I am still waiting for a definitive explanation that makes sense," Ehman says

Actually, earlier than even the "WoW" signal(sometime in the 60s IIRC) a bunch of Soviet scientists convened a conference to discuss how they swore they found intelligent life because they found a long, continuous perfect sine wave somewhere out in space. Turns out it was a quasar, a hithero unkown phenomena, but the Soviets made laughing stocks out of themselves by assuming first it was aliens instead of a more mundane explanation...