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Irrelevant Scientific Research Honored
More than 1,000 people attended this year's Ig Nobel awards, a light-hearted alternative to the Nobel Prizes. Scientists who unlocked the inner secrets of dog fleas, crisps and tangled string swept the show. Handing out awards was William Lipscomb, the 1976 Nobel laureate for chemistry, also doubling Thursday, at the age of 89, as the hero in the "Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest." The prize itself is a plaque that reads, "This Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in the year 2008 to an Ig Nobel Prize Winner, in recognition of the Ig Nobel Prize Winners' Ig Nobel Prize winning achievement." At last I can submit my paper, "Everything is Really Wet, Even Dry Stuff." for peer review.
If they find something that will eliminate the need for chemical pesticides or at least find one that isn't potentially carcinogenic, and one not made from petro chemicals, I think the research is quite meaningful. There are a few diseases that are brought by fleas.
Take any university-level Biology course. You're thinking with your heart not your head.
Evolution has mountains of scientific evidence supporting it, your "feeling" has none. Who's trolling now?
Trolling is a art,
The official ig website with video, background and list of winners
The "I'm not buying it" argument against evolution typically comes because humans do not innately have the understanding of the time scales involved, or of the nature of probability.
Humans don't typically pay attention long enough to visibly see evolution taking place. The evidence is there, but it may take effort to put it together, and they're unwilling to do that. (I keep thinking that a month-long process of breeding antibiotic-resistant e. coli and feeding it to them would go a long way toward helping them understand it, but that's just me.) And lots of people don't understand probability -- look at gamblers and their "systems", or even try to explain the Monty Hall problem to someone.
And of course lots of people don't understand simply because they can't or won't make the effort. I have less respect for those people.
John
(I keep thinking that a month-long process of breeding antibiotic-resistant e. coli and feeding it to them would go a long way toward helping them understand it, but that's just me.)
No, that won't work. They'll say that's just "microevolution", and that it proves nothing about "macroevolution". This is the standard creationist argument any time antibiotic-resistant bacteria are brought up.
That won't work becasue they would use the moving goal post fallacy, among others.
We can see perfectly clear evidence of evolution in humans. They just don't want to believe, so they don't. They want others to believe so the make stuff up. The fact that none of what they say about evolution is true.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Knot theory is a significant and active branch of topology. It is certainly not "under-researched" in any sense in which the expression can be applied to mathematics. In other words, it is not like there are obvious results left undiscovered because people don't care about the field. While knot theorists would certainly think that we should work on it more, in that they are no different than other mathematicians: most people think the problems in their field are the most interesting ones -- otherwise they wouldn't be working on them!
We can see perfectly clear evidence of evolution in humans.
Go on ..
Nobody ever said evolution would produce a "better" animal, just one "more suited" to breed in the environment in which it lives.
Yeah. Think about that.
John