Slashdot Mirror
The Most Obvious Scientific Discoveries of 2009
ectotherm writes "See the most obvious scientific discoveries of 2009, actually backed up by scientific studies. These include such no-brainers as 'Men are much more interested in casual sex than women.'"
Hey wow look at you bashing Idle. You are so Slashdot-Cool now.
You are also so Slashdot-Inept you cannot ignore Idle entries.
"See the most obvious scientific discoveries of 2009, actually backed up by scientific studies. These include such no-brainers as 'Men are much more interested in casual sex than women.'"
Like the notion that whatever goes up, must come down. Or that the Earth is the center of the universe. Doesn't it just suck when scientists question common knowledge? Why are they wasting their time? Sounds like we need to light our torches and get our persecutin' hats on!
Even if the experiments only prove (or lend evidence toward) what we already believe, so what! But what if the experiments prove otherwise? As a society we have nothing to lose and a lot to gain from these types of experiments. Mercury's orbit is much better explained after factoring in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, but it's still not entirely accurate to what it should be. For everything we know, there's a whole lot we don't know. And some of what we don't know is probably what we think we already know.
Let the scientists be scientists. And when they discover something new, or change the way we thought about what was previously common knowledge, you can write another article about how in hindsight it was obvious.
Read the comments on this article. Only one article is from a prestigious, and the article is not about the obvious thing but about the physiological underpinnings of the obvious thing. It's not the obvious thing that's interesting but the mechanism behind it that was not obvious.
You know what drives me nuts about science? The scientists. And the non-scientists. In other words, people. If it weren't for the people, better science would get done. People are motivated by selfish reasons like funding, tenure, respect of peers, fame, etc. As a grad student, basically what I do is come up with ideas so I can get published. However, in order to get published, I do have to come up with something innovative and useful (which is why I got into academics in the first place). Peer review is a good filter for a lot of junk science and just plain idiots that don't know how to do science but try to publish their junk anyhow. But then you have to deal with some reviewers who have biases too.
Beats hitting the nail on the thumb.
[drum-roll, kaaa-ching!]
I'm sorry ; I'm sure it's not novel. But it just called out to me, and I was too weak to resist.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"