'Most Earth-Like' Exoplanet Gets Major Demotion

audiovideodisco writes "Last month, the team behind NASA's Kepler planet-finding mission announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planetary candidate ever spotted: KOI 326.01, an approximately Earth-sized planet orbiting in the habitable zone of its star. There was much excitement; one astrophysicist even calculated the value of the new planet as exactly $223,099.93. But when an innocent fact-checker's question sent one of the researchers back to look at some figures, she noticed that the star's brightness was listed incorrectly in a reference catalog, throwing the planet's properties into doubt. After jiggering the calculations, the Kepler team now says that KOI 326.01 is neither Earth-sized nor in the habitable zone, and may actually be orbiting a different star. The Kepler researcher says, 'We're seeing the scientific method playing out in real time.' While this news is a bit of a downer, Kepler is just getting going, and it's expected to find many, many more Earth-like planets."

Comments

Real time science indeed

[$RANDOMLUSER]

All great science starts with "hmmmmm, that's funny...".

Re:Real time science indeed

[Archangel Michael]

All bad science begins with "A scientist says it, therefore I believe it". How many people have heard, and repeated the previous "declaration" as "fact" but will remain unaware of this new information? And how many of the ignorant pseudo scientists will continue to believe, even if you present this evidence.

Much of what passes for science is indistinguishable from religion.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Nadaka]

Just... No. What you are describing is nothing related to science.

What you are talking about may apply to science journalism. That is basically what happens when a liberal arts major gets told that he drew the short straw and has to write a science article instead of sympathizing with starving Rawandan kids or discussing the latest celebrity gossip.

Re:Real time science indeed

[h4rr4r]

At least it attempts to explain reality with observable phenomenon instead of the old "God did it, no thinking required" that religion is so fond of.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not their fault. It's the pathetic science media for rushing out "interesting" facts and never reporting with the same gusto the updates.

The media is great for rushing to report findings before they've completely gone through the system.

Just follow the alcohol and heart disease risk time line ... you'll see that the media got it mostly wrong. And of course, the alcohol industry hasn't been much help in correcting the facts.

Re:Real time science indeed

[$RANDOMLUSER]

You're right. Look how long "a god did it" has lasted.

Science and religion have a lot in common in that they both attempt to explain the world (universe) and our place in it. The difference is that science can at least admit that it could be wrong. Falsifiability and all that.

Re:Real time science indeed

[natehoy]

Greetings, Pot! Great description of kettle.

All bad science begins with "A scientist says it, therefore I believe it".

No, that's not called "science", that's called "religion".

Intractable belief in something without evidence, or even in direct contradiction of known evidence, is known as religion. This is the philosophical opposite to science.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else find it funny that someone with the handle of "Archangel Michael" belittles science by equating it with religion?

Re:Real time science indeed

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I see parent was unfairly modded "troll" while I was typing my response above. He raises a valid (and true) point, and whoever modded him "troll" is EXACTLY the kind of closed-minded twit he was (non-inflammatorily) talking about.

Re:Real time science indeed

[lupinstel]

I agree with this guy. I have hated science ever since I was blinded by it back in 1982.

Re:Real time science indeed

[jameskojiro]

If astronomers tomorrow discovered that the moon orbits 1cm out further than originally measured does the moon cease to exist? In your mind it does....

Re:Real time science indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it rammed up like a douche, another boner in there tight?

Re:Real time science indeed

[circletimessquare]

"Much of what passes for science is indistinguishable from religion."

close

"Much of what passes for science according to the average idiot is indistinguishable from religion."

is accurate

science has nothing to do with religion. science is proof, without belief. religion is belief, without proof. to confuse those two requires that you not quite understand either. so congratulations, you're an idiot

Re:Real time science indeed

[Golddess]

The difference is that science can at least admit that it could be wrong.

Unfortunately, some of the more hardheaded religious folks consider that to be a reason why religion is superior. I can't find the link, but a while back I came across a site that among other things had a series of one-panel comics by a creationist, and one of those comics made fun of science precisely because of its ability to change its mind about things.

"Reporter: A new discovery changes everything you thought you knew about the origin of life.... wait, no, that discovery was just debunked by an even newer discovery."

Re:Real time science indeed

[elrous0]

And these days the next step after hypothesis is to issue a press release touting your amazing discovery.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pathetic. The arts major makes a difference to someone's life and the "scientist" staring at unreachable stars using data with unacceptably high margins of error just issues a press release. Riiiight.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Archangel Michael]

You're saying it doesn't happen in science? That misrepresented "facts" are never taught as "truth" in science? Or is it that you hate it when what passes for science is compared to religion ... well because it acts a lot like religion?

You want an "intractable belief" that is prevalent in science? Here's one ... that science is without bias.

This is a fine case of bias leading to a conclusion that was passed around as true, because science wants it to be true. How else do you explain how far wrong it might be that the planet they said was one thing, couldn't be further from the truth.

However, in science's defense, they correct their mistakes eventually. And no doubt they might actually discover "earth like" planet, around a "sol like" sun, in an "earth like" habitable zone. On the other hand, they might never find such a thing. One thing is for sure, scientists will believe there is one, even if they never find evidence, and someone else will fabricate data to prove it.

Remember, it took 40 years to discover that the Piltdown man was a hoax, and in those 40 years, thousands of people got their masters and doctorates based in part on their thesis using Piltdown man, and not one of those degrees were ever revoked. Science doesn't have the sterling reputation it thinks it has.

My point is, that science is flawed, because people performing it are flawed. It does tend to correct itself over time however, but it cannot nor does it attempt to fix the problems it causes when it is wrong.

This has nothing to do with religion except where science acts like a religion while trying to pretend it never does.

Re:Real time science indeed

[dfetter]

s/no thinking required/thinking actively discouraged/

Re:Real time science indeed

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Heh. Was watching an old "House" episode (4x02 - The Right Stuff) the other day, and fell in love with this quote:

"Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise there would be no religious people."

Re:Real time science indeed

[Archangel Michael]

There is a difference between a measurement error, and being completely wrong. This is not akin to the moon's orbit was miscalculate by 1 cm, but rather that the moon orbited Mars, and not Earth, was twice its size and inhabited by Flying Spaghetti Monsters.

In otherwords, it wasn't even close. But enough people wanted it to be true, so the didn't even bother checking.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Archangel Michael]

So, when science declares something as "true", and it turns out that it isn't even close to being true, that people believe what science says is not science?

I mentioned this above, but science has a long history of frauds being passed as truth because people want to assume the conclusions are true. See Piltdown Man for a fine example of something that took 40 years to prove was not only wrong, but a hoax. And yet for 40 years was passed around as "science". So, excuse me for questioning science's conclusions and being labeled religious for doing it. And people say I'm ignorant of what science really is,

I thought that was exactly what science was supposed to be; question everything.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, the very definition of Space Nuttery.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

A poignant post about the same subject here: http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/20/believing-science/

Re:Real time science indeed

[rednip]

Maybe it took 40 years to fully debunk, but that doesn't mean there weren't people right from the offset (from the wikipedia article):

From the outset, there were scientists who expressed skepticism about the Piltdown find. G.S. Miller, for example, observed in 1915 that "deliberate malice could hardly have been more successful than the hazards of deposition in so breaking the fossils as to give free scope to individual judgment in fitting the parts together."

In essence it took 40 years for the people who benefited from or were fooled by the fakery to die off. There is a small segment of the population who will never admit a mistake.

Re:Real time science indeed

[sumdumass]

So being potentially wrong because of ignorance is worse then being wrong because of ignorance because you know for a fact (that happens to be wrong)?

I don't understand what you are trying to say here. Is it that people who do not take the same journey of worship as you do are simply not worthy of an opinion?

Re:Real time science indeed

[boristhespider]

Einstein got his PhD based on theories that he later overturned, in as fundamental a manner as is possible in physics. The same goes for Dirac, Schroedinger, de Broglie, Compton, Heisenberg and Bohr. Should their PhDs all have been revoked because they were found to be based on an inaccurate theory?

I don't think anyone sane claims that scientists are without bias. They might claim "science" (in some unreal Platonic ideal sense) is unbiased, but scientists never can be because no-one ever is. The *data* is unbiased; you just need to be aware of what it actually means. So for example if you're measuring the temperature of an iron rod under increasing electric load and fail to mention that one end of it is in broad sunlight, your data may be unbiased but you're going to interpret it totally wrongly (and perhaps deliberately). And scientists... no, of course they're not. It's too political and grant availability is too based on fashions and the whims of partisan selection committees to be unbiased. Most scientists I know tend to be as unbiased as they can within those constraints, but anyone with their head turned on knows they're there. Anyone with their head turned on and a high-school level of history or sociology is also aware that *no-one* is unbiased and any time anyone interprets anything they add their own bias to it, inevitably.

Ultimately the ideal is that you collect data and understand it as best as possible, remove the effects of all known systematics, build a model and make a prediction which can then be tested. Frequently someone comes along and points out another systematic, which then changes your model, predictions and tests. This can repeat for decades (or, in the case of something like evolutionary theory which is still, err, evolving, centuries). It's simply the nature of science.

That isn't what seems to have happened in this case. It *looks* like slack groundwork, right at the start of the calculation. That's not a good image to have. To their credit, they checked, they acknowledged their fault, they repeated their calculation and they published the result knowing full well how silly it would make them look. (Also, in all fairness, knowing full well that someone else would do the same and make them look both silly *and* like they were hiding something.) One thing to take away from that is that the calculation itself appears to be totally sound -- you can bet that someone checked through the entire thing, from the data pipeline to the final calculation. So a typical case of garbage in, garbage out...

And any way of looking at it it makes the Kepler team look daft.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Nadaka]

You have just shown that you don't understand science because you don't understand the concept of truth.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Chris Burke]

You want an "intractable belief" that is prevalent in science? Here's one ... that science is without bias.

Except that's not a prevalent belief in science, unless you mean in the literal sense that "science" is without bias because it is a concept, not a sentient entity.

The prevalent belief is that bias (and other failings) are an endemic property of the humans who conduct science, and it is only through the rigorous application of scientific methods that the effect of these failings can be mitigated, a process which is itself subject to the same human failings.

This is a fine case of bias leading to a conclusion that was passed around as true, because science wants it to be true. How else do you explain how far wrong it might be that the planet they said was one thing, couldn't be further from the truth.

Because there was an error in a reference catalog whose existence predates any knowledge of possible exoplanets, and therefore any possible motivation to "want" that planet to be around that star and with certain properties.

Of course that's still a fuck-up. But it was a simple mistake, not bias, that lead to the conclusion. Maybe bias prevented them from investigating the catalog data prior to someone asking a question specifically pertaining to it, but then I would have to assume that they did do this for other discoveries in planets. Which I doubt. More likely, the real bias was being biased towards thinking their reference information was correct, and that bias applied to every observation, not just the ones they were especially excited about.

My point is, that science is flawed, because people performing it are flawed. It does tend to correct itself over time however, but it cannot nor does it attempt to fix the problems it causes when it is wrong.

Scientists already know scientists are flawed.

And what does that last part mean? Science does attempt to fix problems it causes. A chemical with an unexpected side effect, they try to eliminate it if possible. They miscalculate the trajectory of a probe, they try to correct it if possible. And they try to fix the methodologies themselves to try to prevent the problem from repeating.

For example, I imagine the catalog data they are using will be thoroughly scrubbed before you see another "earth-like exoplanet" announcement based on it.

This has nothing to do with religion except where science acts like a religion while trying to pretend it never does.

The only similarity between religion and science is that they both involve fallible, fundamentally irrational humans. The biggest difference is that science views fallibility and rationality as problems to be worked around, and accepts when those properties resulted in the wrong conclusion.

In truth, this is a perfect example of science not acting like religion.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Rizimar]

So your argument is basically saying that because the refinement of knowledge can be hindered by fraud or accident and can take decades to correct that its conclusions should always be distrusted?

I thought that was exactly what science was supposed to be; question everything.

That sounds more like a motto for teenage rebellion. Science is about drawing conclusions and being able to make predictions based on reproducible observations and measurements of and within our environment. Were it strictly about questioning as you imply, there would be no room left for answering and we'd be left with paranoia.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Sique]

It's very simple: When it acts like a religion, it's not science.
If it gets teached as irrefutible fact, then it's not science, it's boiled down for the unwashed masses to be done with it. It never gets teached as irrefutible fact to people who get trained as scientists.
And of course science has a bias. What gets explored first, and which sits on the back burner is decided by bias. If one can get to a result on different paths, then the decision for one path shows bias. If two measures give different results, it shows bias which one is trusted more.
But this bias averages out over time. Bias is not a problem with science in the long run. One can biased as much as one wants to the ptolemaic system of the world, but still calculate satellite orbits following Newton and Kepler. That's the difference between science and religion. Science is like a recipe. You don't need to like Irish Stew, but if you follow the recipe, you will get Irish Stew. You don't need to like Kepler and Newton, but if you follow their formulas, you get a valid description of the observable nightly sky. Religion doesn't work that way. Either you believe in religion and follow the rituals, then it will work. Or you don't believe, then it won't work, even if you follow the rituals. Or you believe, but don't follow the rituals. Then it won't work either.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Quirkz]

Until we can get past the "a 2000-year-old book says it, therefore I believe it" and "some email I'm too lazy to check against snopes says it, therefore I believe it", picking up a stray scientific fact that gets overturned is the least of our problems. At least inaccurate science is in the right ballpark.

Re:Real time science indeed

[sumdumass]

Are you saying that "a god did it" leaves no room to figure out how A god did it or how it could have happened naturally?

Science and religion have a lot in common in that they both attempt to explain the world (universe) and our place in it. The difference is that science can at least admit that it could be wrong. Falsifiability and all that.

It seem that you can't though. You see, God did it doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't a natural mechanism for getting it done. In fact, one could infer that because anyone can find a natural mechanism. it might be because a god put it there. We have very little empirical evidence (if any) to why most natural mechanisms exist at all, only that they do or might exist.

So what you are missing is that even if a God did it, it doesn't mean he didn't do it the way you observe and theorize about, it just means that some people are content knowing a god did it and don't care much more then that. And they don't generally object or disagree with the continued explanations until the point where someone attempts to claim their god didn't do something or whatever because of that.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Obble]

I like your idea, I propose that we get NASA to lunch a man object over to the moon to check out your theory. Because for all we know those Flying Spaghetti Monsters are terrorist with downloaded music from *AA with HDs full of child porn.

Wont someone think of the children!

You just got to learn to speak politicians language if you want to get your way. (I actually would like a man mission back to the moon in my life time).

Re:Real time science indeed

[Quirkz]

If "changing your mind" = "flip-flopping" then that reputation might have affected a not-too-distant US election. I was on a financial board with a bunch of fairly religious folks, and I can't tell you how many times I saw something like "I can't vote for a flip-flopper" as the *sole* reason why someone would cast their vote one way or another. Now I realize that there may be a difference between changing your mind and being unreliably inconsistent, and I don't really want to argue which applied in that case, but the negative reaction to the idea of someone being able to change position was astounding to me.

Re:Real time science indeed

[by (1706743)]

There is a difference between a measurement error, and being completely wrong.

But what if the two are the same thing? If you have poor spatial resolution and a lousy spectrometer (like our eyes), then you may very well look at a binary system and say, "look, there's a solitary star." Would I be justified in pointing and laughing at you for being wrong, and claiming that anything you say is as suspect as the FSM cosmology because you failed to identify a ball of fusion hundreds of thousands of times the size of Earth?

The point is, very small measurement errors can lead to remarkably different conclusions. And, in proper scientific writing, you should be able to read up on the methods used for obtaining every fact in the paper.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Kjella]

Well many religious intentionally misunderstand concepts like a model being refined. Except for the extremely theoretical lab experiments most of our models are approximations like "planetary formation", "global climate" or "evolution of life". For the most part we've continuously refined our models, sometimes hitting a blind alley or two but we're working out the details. Some just like to pretend that just because we're discussing evolutionary details of when and how X happened, it casts doubt on the whole thing. No, it doesn't. If I spot your car ten times driving up the east coast I'm not in a doubt where you came from or where you're going, but I might still work on the details of exactly what route you took.

What's even more obvious is that many religious people *do* change their opinion of how the world works, but it's all God's creation anyway. They just have some creative explanation for why the Bible says X while reality is Y, there's hardly any world you could say with certainty is not created by God. That goes for any causality between action and reaction too, why does God let rapists and serial murders run around while innocent children die in accidents? You just assume some divine reason beyond your understanding, never do they claim that "If God exists he would not allow X to happen. If it happens, there is no God." Or that there'll be some divine justice of right or wrong in the afterlife that'll set the record straight.

For a brilliant example, take the "God hates fags" movement that Phelps is leading. The causality between homosexuals and evil they see is entirely in metaphysics. It's the same level as "because we didn't sacrifice to the rain god, he brought draught". You can make up as many metaphysical ideas of "God" as you like, and none is better than the other. So essentially you say the world is created by God, but it can look like anything and behave like anything. It doesn't really narrow it down in any meaningful way except that some versions are more popular than other. Usually the ones that promote humanity as "created in God's image" or some other self-promoting BS.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Archangel Michael]

Insults aren't truth. And you don't know anything about me, and what I know. I would dare say, I'm closer to understanding Science than you, because I realize that science can, and often does, lead to wrong conclusions. Science is the search for truth. Science isn't truth. Too many people believe science is truth, and those people are religious nutjobs.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Hognoxious]

This explains it quite well. It has pictures, so with luck people like you and Asscranial Monkeyhole(180766) might understand it.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Archangel Michael]

If the two are the same, then it isn't science. It is fanciful thinking and a stab in the dark. It is faith. Which was my original point, which gets lost in the moderation system of "I don't agree" troll mods.

Tell me, why should we trust anything capable of making such a mistake, even once. And yet we do, don't we?

Re:Real time science indeed

[by (1706743)]

Statistics, confidence and methods. A scientist will say, "my data shows X, on equipment with a noise floor of Y, an associated confidence of Z, etc." A newspaper or blog might say, "Scientists prove X!"

Read the original paper. Read the citations. Read the tech specs on the telescopes / equipment. Then make up your mind -- that's the beauty of science. If you read the original paper, saw that they were using suspect data and called foul, then you could probably bring about some scientific progress.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Much of what passes for science is indistinguishable from religion.

Only if you are an idiot. Sure, i couldn't comprehend quantum entanglement (for an example), so i have to take their word for it, but i interpret that knowledge as i interpret all knowledge: Valid until proven invalid.

Only an idiot is unable to change his mind.

Re:Real time science indeed

[david_thornley]

So, when science declares something as "true"

And this is what I completely failed to comprehend as a meaningful statement.

Scientists can declare something as "true". So can science journalists and slashdotters. Science is not the sort of thing that can make declarations. Science is partly a philosophy of investigation and partly a body of observations and conjectures, none of which are individually above reinterpretation or revision. Science is not an active individual entity capable of meaningful statements.

And people say I'm ignorant of what science really is,

If you don't want people to say that, don't make meaningless statements about science.

I thought that was exactly what science was supposed to be; question everything.

Nope; you can't possibly do that and accomplish anything, so any philosophy or methodology that tells you to do that is operationally useless.

Science (as a philosophy) does include the presupposition that nothing is above question. It also generally provides guidelines on what might be profitable to question. As a body of observations and conjectures, scientists recognized that some of those are a lot more questionable than others. The incentive for scientists to question the nearly certain is the big payoff should they succeed, but most scientists are going to work on the more questionable things, where they can more certainly make a contribution.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

So being potentially wrong because of ignorance is worse then being wrong because of ignorance because you know for a fact (that happens to be wrong)?

Wait what? I have no clue what this is supposed to mean. What he means is that it is better to be wrong and correct your error then to have a 'faith' based on nothing but folktales and tradition. Science isn't static, what we know today can be changed by what we learn tomorrow.

As for religion, how people can still hold on to that in these days is beyond my comprehension, I've tried discussing it with religious people, but they all seem unable to grasp logic the moment it conflicts with their faith.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Nadaka]

Its not an insult. It is a statement based entirely on the post that you made.

Truth aka Tautology is a fundamental concept of mathematics. Science is the process of proving that untrue things are not true through testing a hypothesis. It only "finds the truth" by the process of elimination.

The great grandparent post you made is full of the inconsistencies you just mentioned yourself.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

I've encountered such types.... incomprehensible people

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Ask the following questions to a christian (or adjust for other faiths):
1) Why do you belief the bible is right?
Most likely answer: It was written under godly influence
2) If you believe the bible is right, where do you think the older religious texts, such as those from the ancient egyptians and romans come from?
It was made up by people to manipulate/control/seize power
3) Couldn't the bible have the same origins?
Head explodes, goto infinite loop

Re:Real time science indeed

[Sique]

Oh, but it was Science which discovered it and declared the Piltdown Man as a hoax. Every knowledge is preliminary, until we know better. A scientist knows that. And that's why he is always wary to declare something true - moreso, a large part of a scientific paper is a discussion what could be wrong with the measurements, the results and the conclusions.

Re:Real time science indeed

[operagost]

Both you and the parent poster are trolls and deserve to be modded down. This has nothing to do with religion whatsoever. Mistakes were made and they are being corrected. Welcome to the wonderful world of science.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

What you describe is human bias, yes, people WANT to find that Earth like planet (for fame and glory, or to shut up the folks who say they'll never find one), it's called being human. The cool thing about science is that everyone who is so inclined can falsify findings, something that is unheard of in religious circles.

As for piltdown man, yes, that turned out to be a hoax, but unlike some hoaxes that have been going on for millenia, scientist figured out it was a hoax by applying SCIENCE. Regarding those degrees you seem to claim should be revoked, you are a blathering idiot. Seriously. Doctorates are not a matter of rounding up some random data, doctorates are about applied methods, methodology, analytical skills and far less about looking up data from wikipedia.

As for claiming science is flawed, that's complete & utter bullshit. The principles behind science are solid, the only thing that is flawed is mankind. If science gets something wrong, the problems that cause are either directly visible (your probe just smacked into the moon), or subtle, the visible ones are caught pretty easily, the subtle ones are captured over time as more knowledge is gained. Remember that in science, the goal is not to prove something is right, it is the goal to prove something is wrong.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Another victim of Thomas Dolby?

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

It *WAS* a measurement error, from the summary: "she noticed that the star's brightness was listed incorrectly in a reference catalog" See the words 'reference catalog' there? Do you know what that means? Shall i draw a picture?

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Tell me, why should we trust anything capable of making such a mistake, even once. And yet we do, don't we?

Yet you trust the same creatures when it comes to writing that bible of yours....

Re:Real time science indeed

[mug funky]

it's similar to Asimov's three laws.

faith is a trump card - it has root privileges when reason only has user level privileges.

what science needs to find is the sudo command if we're ever to get through.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Nadaka]

That is an unlikely answer for q2.

You are more likely to hear: The devil did it.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Science doesn't claim to have "the truth", science is about data and creating models based on that data. Take the piltdown man you love so much, in the eyes of science, that was data, observable facts. The fact that the data (the skull) was a forgery only came to light as more examinations of the data were executed. Of course, the better your forgery, the longer it'll take to debunk it, and since the data seemed to correspond to some of the theories/hypotheses of that day, they did not scrutinize it as thoroughly as they could have (and probably do since that day on).

Piltdown man however, was not passed around as science, piltdown man was data, and passed around as such. The science was the theories/hypotheses that explained it's existence, and they have been debunked.

Bottom line, you *ARE* ignorant of what science is supposed to be, you mistake data for scientific theorems.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

It still applies

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Science is the search for truth.

And wrong again. Science is the search of understanding how things work, truth has nothing to do with it, truth is a human concept. Science is basically this:
You observe phenomenon A, you create a model (hypotheses/theory) that explains phenomenon A, you apply your hypothesis to other phenomena and see where/when your model breaks. If the model breaks, you go back to the drawing board. If you (and others!) are unable to break your model, you assume the model is correct, but you never state that it is 100% correct, there are no certainties in science.

Re:Real time science indeed

[sumdumass]

Wait what? I have no clue what this is supposed to mean.

What I'm saying is that it's all the same process. Eventually, people become content with what they are told and leave it at that. Even if it's wrong and they do not care to challenge it themselves. In the end, both seem to think something is a fact until something shows them that they were/are wrong. Or in other words, it's the same mental process dealing the different conclusions and beliefs.

What he means is that it is better to be wrong and correct your error then to have a 'faith' based on nothing but folktales and tradition. Science isn't static, what we know today can be changed by what we learn tomorrow.

Ok. but why is that? Folk lore and tradition has established things mostly through a scientific process. People observed things, took actions to correct it or lessen it's impact, and then created folk lore about it with real world results.

BTW, there are only small parts of the bible and most religions that actually comes into conflict with science and those parts are largely interpretation too. For instance, the age of the earth, and evolution, both pertain to so small and minor parts of each, it's actually trivial to a complete outsider.

As for religion, how people can still hold on to that in these days is beyond my comprehension, I've tried discussing it with religious people, but they all seem unable to grasp logic the moment it conflicts with their faith.

I'm willing to be that the logic you seem so keen on isn't quite as logical as you think it is. For instance, even here on slashdot, I see people claim that biological evolutionary theory is a proven fact. Can you believe that crap? I've seem people here on slashdot claim that Science proves a god doesn't exist. Can you believe that crap? Of course these people are completely confused. They are putting what they want to believe above the science and still calling it science. Then there are the holier then though crowed who claim there is no god, all religion sucks donkey balls, and if you say anything bad about science, it's blasphemy.

Here is the real problem. When someone says god did something, 99% of the time, they are not saying it couldn't happen naturally. In fact, if it could happen naturally, then it's probably because that god mad it possible when it did something. But what they are really saying is that they are content with knowing only that a god did it. You might not be. If you are both wrong, you are both wrong because of the same thought mechanics and processes. There is less then 1% of either that seems to be insurmountable.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

What I'm saying is that it's all the same process. Eventually, people become content with what they are told and leave it at that. Even if it's wrong and they do not care to challenge it themselves.

Congratulations, you just described the fact that people are lazy. Most people strike me as unwilling to gather knowledge, a sad observation :(

In the end, both seem to think something is a fact until something shows them that they were/are wrong. Or in other words, it's the same mental process dealing the different conclusions and beliefs.

The difference is, science is actively looking to falsify models, it is constantly challenging current models, religion does not do this.

Ok. but why is that? Folk lore and tradition has established things mostly through a scientific process. People observed things, took actions to correct it or lessen it's impact, and then created folk lore about it with real world results.

Maybe it's because English isn't my native tongue, but for me, folk lore are fairy tales.

I'm willing to be that the logic you seem so keen on isn't quite as logical as you think it is.

I'm willing to accept that bet.

For instance, even here on slashdot, I see people claim that biological evolutionary theory is a proven fact. Can you believe that crap?

A scientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation, so yes, i can accept that statement, because i can actually validate it myself.

I've seem people here on slashdot claim that Science proves a god doesn't exist.

God is irelevant to science, since science only concerns itself with the natural, a god is supernatural. There is, however, no reason to assume there is a god, there are no observations that indicate there is one, there is no way to test for one, and we can't even define what a god is.

They are putting what they want to believe above the science and still calling it science.

Or they have no clue what science is.

Then there are the holier then though crowed who claim there is no god, all religion sucks donkey balls

Well, basically that's because religion does indeed suck donkey balls. There is as much reason to assume god is real as there is reason to assume the flying spaghetti monster is real. That was the whole point of the FSM movement.

and if you say anything bad about science, it's blasphemy.

Or plain stupidity, something that's even more annoying then blasphemy.

Here is the real problem. When someone says god did something, 99% of the time, they are not saying it couldn't happen naturally. In fact, if it could happen naturally, then it's probably because that god mad it possible when it did something. But what they are really saying is that they are content with knowing only that a god did it. You might not be. If you are both wrong, you are both wrong because of the same thought mechanics and processes. There is less then 1% of either that seems to be insurmountable.

Assuming that an unprovable unobservable unneeded entity is required to explain the provable & observable reality is illogical.

Re:Real time science indeed

[LurkerXXX]

Remember, it took 40 years to discover that the Piltdown man was a hoax, and in those 40 years, thousands of people got their masters and doctorates based in part on their thesis using Piltdown man, and not one of those degrees were ever revoked.

Apparently you don't understand what a scientific degree is for or means. It means you have learned to apply the scientific method to further mans knowledge. It doesn't mean everything you ever study has to be 100% right, or based on only things that are 100% right. If so, no one would dare ever claim to get a degree because we can never know we are 100% right. We can know we are closer to the truth by disproving other theories. You are confusing science with religion because you don't understand science.

Re:Real time science indeed

[sumdumass]

Congratulations, you just described the fact that people are lazy. Most people strike me as unwilling to gather knowledge, a sad observation :(Sad indeed, but a reality in which we live.

The difference is, science is actively looking to falsify models, it is constantly challenging current models, religion does not do this.

Well, that's the claim. However, it seems completely different in real life. Take the CRU emails for instance. They vigorously defended their position to the exclusion of others based on "it's not what they wanted to see". How about I rephrase that to make a little better sense. For science to work, the concept is actively looking to falsify models, it is constantly challenging current models, whether it gets done or not.

Maybe it's because English isn't my native tongue, but for me, folk lore are fairy tales.

Most tales are the result of things observed. The boogerman was developed to stop young kids from wondering off in the night where animals would think they were food. Not eating shell fish because God would punish you was developed at a time when refrigeration wasn't around and it was actually dangerous to eat shellfish. Isolating women on their period or after childbirth and making sure things were cleansed properly that they came into contact was because you guessed, it, it could cause people to get sick and die.

A scientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation, so yes, i can accept that statement, because i can actually validate it myself.

Really, You have done this in the past? I mean grab a single cell organism and evolve it into a mammal of some existing species or new species altogether? No, parts of it is "verifiable observation" that leads us to strongly believe the rest is true too. It's not however a proven fact from point A to point B. Even the claims of Speciation (species evolving into distinctly different species) is largely a excursive in schematics coached with a little redefining of terms that seem to fail basic tests of existing taxonomies when extrapolated outside the confined example.

God is irelevant to science, since science only concerns itself with the natural, a god is supernatural. There is, however, no reason to assume there is a god, there are no observations that indicate there is one, there is no way to test for one, and we can't even define what a god is.

Good.. You found the idiocy in the statement. I was getting scared a bit there.

Or they have no clue what science is.

Possibly.. but lets not evolve this into a no true Scotsman war.

Or plain stupidity, something that's even more annoying then blasphemy.

Stupidity, given time, will show itself as obvious. The treatment is as I described,. This is mostly because Science has become political in recent years, and with politics, you have to deal with ideology which is indistinguishable from religion. In fact, they are the same for the most extent.

Assuming that an unprovable unobservable unneeded entity is required to explain the provable & observable reality is illogical.

No one said it was needed. The point was to why it exists in the first place. "Can be true" is still true when it's "not likely to be true". To say it is true is no more a lie or mental failing when you read it in some book, verses misinterpreting empirical evidence presented to you. and for the most part, people are reading everything in a book or being told by someone somewhere claiming some inherent authroity on the subject. That's a common denominator in both science and religion as most people lack any ability to verify anything for themselves or present convincing evidence that they have.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Wiener]

faith is a trump card - it has root privileges when reason only has user level privileges.

You should put that on a t-shirt...

Re:Real time science indeed

[mug funky]

Tell me, why should we trust anything capable of making such a mistake, even once. And yet we do, don't we?

so you don't trust a single person you've ever encountered in your life?

must be fun for you. i see why you enjoy (successfully - well done) trolling slashdot.

Re:Real time science indeed

[Neil Boekend]

"God hates fags"

How telling is it of my very selective media input that I parsed that as "God hates fangs"?

Then again I do not watch American internal affairs as much as most Americans (even the average). I am European, so the external affairs matter more to me.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Well, that's the claim. However, it seems completely different in real life. Take the CRU emails for instance.

You are conflating scientific method with human fallibility. Two different things.

Most tales are the result of things observed. The boogerman was developed to stop young kids from wondering off in the night where animals would think they were food. Not eating shell fish because God would punish you was developed at a time when refrigeration wasn't around and it was actually dangerous to eat shellfish. Isolating women on their period or after childbirth and making sure things were cleansed properly that they came into contact was because you guessed, it, it could cause people to get sick and die.

These parts are irrelevant, the part i refer to as folk lore & fairy tales are the parts that deal with god, the devil and the whole load of other unverifiable and unfounded bs in that book. Look, it's not because parts of a story are based (however loosely) on truth that all is based on truth. Take the Koran for instance, it also contains things based loosely on truth, and so do other religious texts, that doesn't mean it is all true (in fact, it's impossible that they are all true since they contradict each other). And since the truth is unverifiable, like all fairy tales the only reasonable & logical position is to regard such claims as such.

Really, You have done this in the past? I mean grab a single cell organism and evolve it into a mammal of some existing species or new species altogether?

This is what i refer to as 'moving the goalpost'. You were talking about 'biological evolutionary theory', which is observable. By not making specific claims i do not need to resort to specific rebuttals.

No, parts of it is "verifiable observation" that leads us to strongly believe the rest is true too. It's not however a proven fact from point A to point B.

It might not be observable in your lifespan, or mine, but the discovery of genetics have proven this as a scientific fact.

Even the claims of Speciation (species evolving into distinctly different species) is largely a excursive in schematics coached with a little redefining of terms that seem to fail basic tests of existing taxonomies when extrapolated outside the confined example.

Speciation has been observed. Scientific fact.

Stupidity, given time, will show itself as obvious.

You need to observe people a bit more, stupidity is the natural state. How many people actually have an inquisitive mind? And quite a few people seem to be unable to accept any knowledge that might conflict with their belief, no matter the volume of proof you present them. These tend to be either religious people or conspiracy nuts.

The treatment is as I described,. This is mostly because Science has become political in recent years, and with politics, you have to deal with ideology which is indistinguishable from religion. In fact, they are the same for the most extent.

Sorry, but i don't let politics interfere with science here. I'll look at the papers and judge them based on their merits, politics be damned. As for your statement that ideology is indistinguishable from religion, i disagree. You don't require ideology for religion or religion of ideology. If anything, ideology is linked to morality, which is as far away from religion as you can get.

The point was to why it exists in the first place. "Can be true" is still true when it's "not likely to be true". To say it is true is no more a lie or mental failing when you read it in some book, verses misinterpreting empirical evidence presented to you.

The tooth fairy can be true, Odin can be true, Osiris can be true, and i can tell you quite a few more. It is not because it is impossible to prove something does not exi

Re:Real time science indeed

[tehcyder]

Writing about science means you have to be a good writer, not a specialist scientist. Editors do just as much checking of scientific facts for scientific articles as they do political ones for political articles or celebrity ones for celebrity articles.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, but on slashdot "liberal arts" is almost as much of an insult about someone's education as "liberal" is about their politics, so you get modded up.

Re:Real time science indeed

[tehcyder]

faith is a trump card - it has root privileges when reason only has user level privileges.

You should put that on a t-shirt...

No, it makes it sound like faith is more important than reason.

Re:Real time science indeed

[tehcyder]

Science and religion have a lot in common in that they both attempt to explain the world (universe) and our place in it.

"What is our place in the universe?" is a philosophical, not a scientific question, unless by place you just mean location.

Re:Real time science indeed

[tehcyder]

No, someone who really believes in a religion will assert that there sacred book is on a totally different level of being than others (i.e. it is true, while others are simply false), and that there is no possibility of 3).

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

That is indeed what the insanity boils down to, for some reason they are convinced their book is written under 'godly influence' or sacred or what have you, while dismissing other texts that claim the same thing. No matter what they answer to question 2 is equally applicable to their own text, and they are unable to grasp that idea.

Re:Real time science indeed

[sumdumass]

You are conflating scientific method with human fallibility. Two different things.

No, I am saying they are combined indistinguishably within science and with those claiming to be doing science. It's like the unbiased reporter only reporting the facts that support their positions- it isn't a slant in the wording, but it's a slant none the less.

The scientific method is only going to be as good as those practicing it. When it's pointed out that something is lacking, or wrong, or doesn't make sense, and the human fallibility takes over, you cannot tell the difference from an outside perspective in the modern climate.

In short, it's really where our perception of science has gone to. We can start throwing a no true Scotsman argument about then cherry pick what information we find useful else we end up being the same Scotsman.

These parts are irrelevant, the part i refer to as folk lore & fairy tales are the parts that deal with god, the devil and the whole load of other unverifiable and unfounded bs in that book. Look, it's not because parts of a story are based (however loosely) on truth that all is based on truth. Take the Koran for instance, it also contains things based loosely on truth, and so do other religious texts, that doesn't mean it is all true (in fact, it's impossible that they are all true since they contradict each other). And since the truth is unverifiable, like all fairy tales the only reasonable & logical position is to regard such claims as such.

It's not irrelevant. The entire concept of an all powerful omnipotent being forcing it's will onto people and the planet is directly based around the concept of not being able to understand or comprehend the the underlying principles behind some happenings. People who believe in a god in today's times, are simply people who are content with the answers.

It's not about being true as much as it's about being true enough that they are content with the answers. If it was about verifiability, then a lot of scientific theory can be claimed to be false crap at the same time. For instance, I already referenced the fact that you cannot evolve molecules into a cell and then into a mammal to verify current evolutionary theory. But we can take observations and draw conclusions based on them with somewhat of an acceptable degree of confidence. It's really no different other then some people are content in a magical being willing something into our existence while others are more pressed about how that was accomplished.

The mechanisms for belief are stunningly the same here. The mechanisms for accepting one or the other or rejecting it altogether are too. That was the point, not that any one person is right or wrong, true or false. And focusing on the true or false is bringing it even closer to the same thing. Especially with science when true doesn't mean always true or even was true.

This is what i refer to as 'moving the goalpost'. You were talking about 'biological evolutionary theory', which is observable. By not making specific claims i do not need to resort to specific rebuttals.

No goal posts needed here. You see, 'biological evolutionary theory' does contain aspects that are assumptions based on observations. They are not directly observable in the least. Furthermore, when we claim they are observable, it's a matter of semantics more then reality. Take the discussions on breeds of dogs for instance. If no dog existed today and we were going to take nothing but archeological evidence, we would consider them many different species. But because we know better, we consider them breeds of the same species.

It might not be observable in your lifespan, or mine, but the discovery of genetics have proven this as a scientific fact.

Scientific fact: an observation that has been confirmed repeatedly and is accepted as true (a

Re:Real time science indeed

[Archangel Michael]

Trust is not a boolean expression of T/F. Trust is a sliding scale of gray between the black and white endpoints. Trust is a key component of faith. I trust some people more than others. I don't trust anyone 100%, including myself.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

No, I am saying they are combined indistinguishably within science and with those claiming to be doing science. It's like the unbiased reporter only reporting the facts that support their positions- it isn't a slant in the wording, but it's a slant none the less.

The scientific method is only going to be as good as those practicing it.

Science, the discipline or method is unbiased. The scientists however, are not. If someone tells me that science is biased or something, for me, that implies it's the method they are discussing. The distinction for me is as clear as night & day. No True Scotsman does not apply.

When it's pointed out that something is lacking, or wrong, or doesn't make sense, and the human fallibility takes over, you cannot tell the difference from an outside perspective in the modern climate.

In short, it's really where our perception of science has gone to.

We must have different perception then, because frankly, even the suggestion that i'd restrict myself to press releases to get my science news sounds ludicrous to me. If i encounter a press release that tickles my fancy, i will go & read the papers and investigate. If it something that hardly or doesn't interest me, i'm inclined to accept the press release as is, but i will not base my world view (or even an opinion) based on that. Now, if you mean something else completely, you might want to rephrase that ;)

It's not irrelevant. The entire concept of an all powerful omnipotent being forcing it's will onto people and the planet is directly based around the concept of not being able to understand or comprehend the the underlying principles behind some happenings. People who believe in a god in today's times, are simply people who are content with the answers.

Frankly, if someone believes or not, i couldn't care less. The problem is, they care that others believe differently or not at all.
The god you just described is the god of gaps, that's the one who's being threatened by science.

It's not about being true as much as it's about being true enough that they are content with the answers.

They are content with the answers because they are either not properly educated or have been brainwashed since childhood to reject observable reality.

If it was about verifiability, then a lot of scientific theory can be claimed to be false crap at the same time. For instance, I already referenced the fact that you cannot evolve molecules into a cell and then into a mammal to verify current evolutionary theory.

You just mixed abiogenesis with evolution and skipped over the generational divide. Evolution theory doesn't describe how life came to be, only how life evolves. We can not observe it on a macro level directly due to the massive amount of time required to do so, but we have indirect observations about said evolution, genetics being a key element in that.

But we can take observations and draw conclusions based on them with somewhat of an acceptable degree of confidence. It's really no different other then some people are content in a magical being willing something into our existence while others are more pressed about how that was accomplished.

Oh but it's very different, evolutionary science itself has evolved a great deal since Darwin, while the bible for instance, is still the same as it was 1000 years ago.

The mechanisms for belief are stunningly the same here. The mechanisms for accepting one or the other or rejecting it altogether are too. That was the point, not that any one person is right or wrong, true or false.

Your point is flawed as pointed out above. If you think it is the same, then your education was flawed. When it comes to science, we accept statements while being very well aware that science is not stat

Re:Real time science indeed

[sumdumass]

Science, the discipline or method is unbiased. The scientists however, are not. If someone tells me that science is biased or something, for me, that implies it's the method they are discussing. The distinction for me is as clear as night & day. No True Scotsman does not apply.

That's a nice separation and all, but seriously, science wouldn't exist if people were not involved to practice it. Furthermore, science doesn't report itself. People spread the word of the findings. I seriously do not think you can separate science from the people practicing it. You may be able to separate bad science from good science, but the elimination of people simply can't be done.

We must have different perception then, because frankly, even the suggestion that i'd restrict myself to press releases to get my science news sounds ludicrous to me. If i encounter a press release that tickles my fancy, i will go & read the papers and investigate. If it something that hardly or doesn't interest me, i'm inclined to accept the press release as is, but i will not base my world view (or even an opinion) based on that. Now, if you mean something else completely, you might want to rephrase that ;)

It's interesting. I was speaking about science in general and how it's presented to the public, and you are concentrating on yourself specifically. Anyways, have you ever found yourself ignoring claims because they didn't match what you thought was right? Have you ignored claimed or rejected them simply because the source is connected to Big Oil or some industry pundit or somehow has something to gain from the claim? Even if you haven't, there are tons of people who do. Just pay attention on slashdot where the easiest way to win the argument seems to be attacking the messenger and not the message. And yes, they will claim it's science too.

Frankly, if someone believes or not, i couldn't care less. The problem is, they care that others believe differently or not at all.
The god you just described is the god of gaps, that's the one who's being threatened by science.

lol.. I don't see how it's threatening science at all? Religion generally doesn't care about science. Science generally doesn't care about religion. But each is used to make claims about the other for some reason.

They are content with the answers because they are either not properly educated or have been brainwashed since childhood to reject observable reality.

When will they ever need to know the answers? You see, this is what I don't understand.. Who cares what they think or believe in. It's their life, not yours. So why are you trying to make them live the way you want? All it does is cause them to want to make you believe like they do. Ignore the idiots and get on with it.

You just mixed abiogenesis with evolution and skipped over the generational divide. Evolution theory doesn't describe how life came to be, only how life evolves. We can not observe it on a macro level directly due to the massive amount of time required to do so, but we have indirect observations about said evolution, genetics being a key element in that.

Your right.. I did mix abiogeneses in there. I did it for a reason though, because taking an existing cell and causing it to mutate into something else entirely though all natural processes is a bit unrealistic to expect. Perhaps it wasn't, but I didn't want to limit such little a statement artificially.

As for indirect observations about said evolution, genetics being a key element in that. Yes, but keep in mind that it's interpreted. What I mean is, it's how we attempt to figure out what we know and see. that is subject to much error. What we think we know could be completely wrong.. At least with science, we have that ability- to correct ourselves.

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

You may be able to separate bad science from good science, but the elimination of people simply can't be done.

All very nice and all, but in the end, this is just semantics. Like i said earlier, i differentiate between science, as a methodology, and scientists. I do not conflate both. All the things you are focusing on are failures by the scientists, not science. It might be a silly distinction for you, but for me it makes all the difference.

It's interesting. I was speaking about science in general and how it's presented to the public, and you are concentrating on yourself specifically.

I can only express my own opinions and perceptions. I tend to avoid generalizing my personal opinion.

Anyways, have you ever found yourself ignoring claims because they didn't match what you thought was right? Have you ignored claimed or rejected them simply because the source is connected to Big Oil or some industry pundit or somehow has something to gain from the claim? Even if you haven't, there are tons of people who do. Just pay attention on slashdot where the easiest way to win the argument seems to be attacking the messenger and not the message. And yes, they will claim it's science too.

No, i don't ignore claims or reject them. I however, do ignore topics that are of no interest to me. For me, the most exciting thing that can happen is that some discovery throws my understanding of a topic into disarray, i love learning new stuff. As for people claiming that what they're doing is science, well, claiming so doesn't make it true. I can claim to be a Martian, that won't turn me into one nether.

lol.. I don't see how it's threatening science at all?

It's not science that is threatened by the god of gaps, but the god of gaps that is threatened by science. And yes, scientists have been threatened by religious people in the past, in the present and probably in the future. Like i said, i don't care if you believe or not, i have my opinion about it, and i'll voice it from time to time, but i'd never try & take away your right to believe.

When will they ever need to know the answers?

If you are raised to think something is true without examining the evidence (or the absence of evidence), and you base your world view on that, then yes, you really should know the answers (or lack there-of). In the end however, it's your life, and you can spend it how you like, as long as you don't encroach on my own rights. It's just my personal opinion that it's stupid.

So why are you trying to make them live the way you want?

I'm not trying to make them live the way 'i want it', i'm expressing my personal opinion and exercising my right to freedom of speech. And yes, that includes the right to say blasphemous things (eat that Ireland!). Why are you trying to suppress my freedom of speech? (See what i did there?)

As for indirect observations about said evolution, genetics being a key element in that. Yes, but keep in mind that it's interpreted.

Everything is interpreted, and can therefor be wrong. Comes with the territory.

And here I thought you were going to remain rational about this..

I told you it was complete and utter bullshit in a rational way.

The point is, two separate approaches were use to create the same objectives. When compared with your observations of E.coli evolving, claiming that it's the same mechanism that might have happened with human evolution is a pretty good guess. But it's still more or less that- a guess. comparing genetic markets, might get you close enough to make our current understanding work, but having that work does not mean it's right. And before you say it is right, remember, if our understanding cannot ever change, it's not science anymore.

You misinterpret my state

Re:Real time science indeed

[sumdumass]

All very nice and all, but in the end, this is just semantics. Like i said earlier, i differentiate between science, as a methodology, and scientists. I do not conflate both. All the things you are focusing on are failures by the scientists, not science. It might be a silly distinction for you, but for me it makes all the difference.

I guess the point was more to most people aren't capable of doing that. They posses no skills or knowledge or access to either and have to take someone's word for it then they present it. You might be one of the special ones, but you are more the exception then the rule.

No, i don't ignore claims or reject them. I however, do ignore topics that are of no interest to me. For me, the most exciting thing that can happen is that some discovery throws my understanding of a topic into disarray, i love learning new stuff. As for people claiming that what they're doing is science, well, claiming so doesn't make it true. I can claim to be a Martian, that won't turn me into one nether.

Ok, again, you are the exception more then the rule. as I pointed out, here on slashdot, shooting the messenger instead of the message seems to be the preferred way of dealing with anything that doesn't fit their ideals or agenda.

It's not science that is threatened by the god of gaps, but the god of gaps that is threatened by science. And yes, scientists have been threatened by religious people in the past, in the present and probably in the future. Like i said, i don't care if you believe or not, i have my opinion about it, and i'll voice it from time to time, but i'd never try & take away your right to believe.

I guess what I'm am confused about is why science speaks about religion, more specifically, a being that doesn't even fall within the real of science at all. And why people attempt to make claims and connections about science and that being.

I disagree with the threatened portion though. It's only threatening when someone says X is true therefore Y is false. Science doesn't really say that about religion in the rare aspects they directly cross, it says X is true, therefore it's more probable then Y.

If you are raised to think something is true without examining the evidence (or the absence of evidence), and you base your world view on that, then yes, you really should know the answers (or lack there-of). In the end however, it's your life, and you can spend it how you like, as long as you don't encroach on my own rights. It's just my personal opinion that it's stupid.

But it's still meaningless for 99% of the people out there. Religion and science only conflict in less then .000001% of the combined fields. The chances of people becoming involved in those conflicting portion within their jobs, daily life, or anything in particular that they need to make decisions based around is surprisingly low.

Rights are a separate beast of nature altogether. Rights are either things bestowed on people by virtue of society at large or some creator that is larger then government. If the majority of society thinks that we have the right to kick a dog, then that will be our right. When government encroaches on that by creating a law making it illegal, they have taken a right away from us.

Now that brings us to an interesting situation, if you don't believe in a creator or anything like that, then your rights are bestowed by society. When society changes, so might those rights. I'm not going to say I agree with it, but your compass would have technically shifted directions.

Of course there might be an option that your rights come from somewhere else. If that's the case, I sure would be interested to know about the concept.

I'm not trying to make them live the way 'i want it', i'm expressing my personal opinion and exercising my right to

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

I guess what I'm am confused about is why science speaks about religion, more specifically, a being that doesn't even fall within the real of science at all.

Actually, science speaks very little of religion, the only exceptions are studies that revolve about that subject or human nature, but fields like physics and such ignore the subject altogether.

And why people attempt to make claims and connections about science and that being.

Human nature. You can't use science to prove or disprove a god, but a lot of people fail to grasp that. Some people see 'god' as the god of gaps, and when we make a new discovery that conflicts with a religious text, some will claim this proves that god doesn't exist. It's irrational and stems from a poor understanding of science & logic.

Now that brings us to an interesting situation, if you don't believe in a creator or anything like that, then your rights are bestowed by society.

Your rights are always bestowed by society, the reason why society gives you those rights might be rooted in religion and the belief in a creator, but in the end it is society as a whole who bestows the rights and duties of the members of said society. This discussion would involve morality and ethics, and that's a whole other game.

I'm just trying to understand why someone would claim to be all scientific and such, then resort to bringing unscientific entities and concepts into the same discussion for the express purpose of upsetting someone.

I'm not the one whom brought up religion in this thread, that was someone else, as to why i discuss these things? Because i find it oddly fascinating how some people can hold onto a belief even if presented with evidence that their belief is wrong, this applies to specific claims of course, such as evolution, or the age of the earth or heck, even the moon landing. The way some people react to that amuses and fascinates me.

Seriously, why is it that you need everyone to believe the way you do about things claiming it's scientific when they aren't even involved in a scientific discussion?

I make no such demands or claims, discussing things isn't the same as demanding things.

it was the idea and concept you are supporting.

Feel free to elaborate on this. My native tongue isn't english so maybe i did not word it properly.

My point is that you should refrain from making statements claiming this is the one and only way a star can be formed. You should refrain from saying, this other way isn't possible because we know this one way is fact based on indirect observations and mathematical models.

I make no such claims. If i claim a specific way is impossible, it will be because i can point at holes in the model/theory/hypothesis.

Absolute statements in science should be very rare if ever at all when dealing with a process outside a specific experiment.

They actually are very rare, blame the press for this one.

I will make a statement about the talk origins site. The examples there are plausibly on the way to showing speciation or methods of it happening naturally, but they have been developed and presented it in a way to push the concept of speciation to meet with a goal and agenda outside the realm of science. A lot of the examples even distort the meaning of the information presented in that endeavor.

I actually brought that link up because of the excellent part about the definition 'species', not for the examples listed there. Examples are useless without a proper framework to use them in. Since the definition of species is something of a rather hot subject i'd rather not go there.

Re:Real time science indeed

[sumdumass]

Actually, science speaks very little of religion, the only exceptions are studies that revolve about that subject or human nature, but fields like physics and such ignore the subject altogether.

I agree. Which is why I was confused to why people claim science disproved or refutes a religion or god.

Human nature. You can't use science to prove or disprove a god, but a lot of people fail to grasp that. Some people see 'god' as the god of gaps, and when we make a new discovery that conflicts with a religious text, some will claim this proves that god doesn't exist. It's irrational and stems from a poor understanding of science & logic.

I agree here too.

Your rights are always bestowed by society, the reason why society gives you those rights might be rooted in religion and the belief in a creator, but in the end it is society as a whole who bestows the rights and duties of the members of said society. This discussion would involve morality and ethics, and that's a whole other game.

Well, correct, but I guess the religion aspect is a motivational compass with society so it's more of the reason to why they bestow the rights then where the rights come from. I probably could have worded that better.

I'm not the one whom brought up religion in this thread, that was someone else, as to why i discuss these things? Because i find it oddly fascinating how some people can hold onto a belief even if presented with evidence that their belief is wrong, this applies to specific claims of course, such as evolution, or the age of the earth or heck, even the moon landing. The way some people react to that amuses and fascinates me.

You see, here is the funny thing. The age of the earth and everything about evolution, is just a way we understand things in order to use them to our benefit. Because we understand them this way doesn't mean they are right and any religion or god is wrong as it could very well be that both are right with the difference that science requires the possibility of being wrong. The moon landing, I see as a different set of situations as it can actually be tested to some degree. But as for the age of the earth, if it naturally occurred, the scientific understanding is most likely accurate. Well, as accurate as our collection of knowledge will allow. But this doesn't rule out any religious beliefs, it just creates a tool that we can exploit to our advantage.

So the existence of that knowledge and the use of it does not mean the religion is wrong (unless you are going to make a religious argument to why the religion is wrong).

I think before I muddle the message any further, I should be very specific with it. Science is a tool for understanding, using, and taking advantage of nature around us. Religion can give us depth and meaning to questions of life and purpose and is mostly philosophical- even when it makes statements about something science has determined to be different. Just because we understand something to be a certain way in science does not mean it wasn't a different way or that it could never be a different way. Our understanding thought science does not show that something else is neccesarily wrong.

I make no such demands or claims, discussing things isn't the same as demanding things.

Hmm..

"i'm expressing my personal opinion and exercising my right to freedom of speech. And yes, that includes the right to say blasphemous things (eat that Ireland!). Why are you trying to suppress my freedom of speech? (See what i did there?)"

Who are you expressing your opinion to? If it's people who don't believe as you, then you are making demands and claims. OR maybe I should ask why are you expression your opinions to people who do not believe as you if you are not attempting to ge

Re:Real time science indeed

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Well, correct, but I guess the religion aspect is a motivational compass with society so it's more of the reason to why they bestow the rights then where the rights come from. I probably could have worded that better.

Like i said, that discussion brings up topics such as ethics and morality, and i rather not go into that discussion on a forum such as slashdot.

You see, here is the funny thing. The age of the earth and everything about evolution, is just a way we understand things in order to use them to our benefit. Because we understand them this way doesn't mean they are right and any religion or god is wrong as it could very well be that both are right with the difference that science requires the possibility of being wrong.

I was talking more specifically about the people who attempt to make 'scientific' statements to prove these things to be according to their beliefs, they make specific, unfounded claims that might sound scientific, but they are either based on a complete misunderstanding of science, or a willful misrepresentation of science. And then you have the ones that are also purely moronic. You can disprove these claims with science. Claims such as 'god guided evolution through the natural world' however, can not. You can however, debate the merits of such claims on other grounds.

The moon landing, I see as a different set of situations as it can actually be tested to some degree.

It's exactly the same thing, but even more crazy.

So the existence of that knowledge and the use of it does not mean the religion is wrong (unless you are going to make a religious argument to why the religion is wrong).

If that religion uses specific claims, you can prove those claims to be wrong. Now, most religious texts don't make such claims, but their followers do.

Religion can give us depth and meaning to questions of life and purpose and is mostly philosophical- even when it makes statements about something science has determined to be different. Just because we understand something to be a certain way in science does not mean it wasn't a different way or that it could never be a different way. Our understanding thought science does not show that something else is neccesarily wrong.

There are pretty much two types of approaches to religion. The philosophical one, that uses the religious texts more as a matter of metaphors, and the 'blind faith' approach. You won't have much problems with the first group, but the second one will sue schools to try and force them to teach for instance creationism. I have no issue with the first group.

Who are you expressing your opinion to?

To anyone who is willing to listen/read.

If it's people who don't believe as you, then you are making demands and claims.

Like i said, a discussion does not imply that someone is making demands, i'm not forcing them to participate in the discussion. the point of a discussion is to exchange knowledge and opinions, not to make demands. When conveying knowledge, you might make claims about said knowledge, but i don't see anything wrong with that, as long as you can back your claims up.

OR maybe I should ask why are you expression your opinions to people who do not believe as you if you are not attempting to get them to "believe the way you do about things claiming it's scientific"

Because it puzzles and amuses me. Someone who has faith will not be persuaded by me, unless that person already had serious doubts about his faith. Someone who approaches religion philosophically will adjust his beliefs to fit with the new knowledge gained, and the blind followers will stay perpetually blind.

Holes in a model, theory, or hypothesis does not make something impossible.

Actually, they do. They make that model

Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

And we were so ready to colonize that sucker too! Hundreds of thousands of eager young families ready to suburbanize the universe! With our metal tubes and kerosene, nothing stands in our way! Not energy limits, not technological limits, biological, psychological, physical or economic limits! We have big hard drives now, so logically the universe has shrunk and our physical tech has scaled to match!

Really ..

[bsquizzato]

After jiggering the calculations, the Kepler team now says that KOI 326.01 is neither Earth-sized nor in the habitable zone, and may actually be orbiting a different star

"Sooo ... about everything we said, it's actually the complete opposite"

Epic fail.

Re:Really ..

[Nadaka]

Sounds more like an epic success for science to me.

Re:Really ..

[gstoddart]

Sounds more like an epic success for science to me.

Well, for the scientific method at least.

Being this wrong is seldom considered an 'epic success'.

Re:Really ..

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It is an epic failure. The fail is that a scientist went out and said he is "100% sure life exists on this planet". It raised a lot of eyebrows on Slashdot. It made headlines.

Now when the opposite news comes out, it just makes scientists look stupid.

The fail is rushing to conclusions before double checks have taken place.

Re:Really ..

[pinkj]

Welcome to science. I would deem this a big success!

Re:Really ..

[Nadaka]

who the hell said 100% sure life exists on this planet? I sure don't remember that. I just remember them saying it is a planet about twice the size of earth in an orbit that would produce an insolation similar to earth.

Re:Really ..

[Kintanon]

Epic SCIENCE you noob.

"Oh shit, if that number is wrong then this planet is in a whole different place! Let's check! IT IS! HUZZAH! We know more today than we did yesterday!"

That's science. And you suck.

Re:Really ..

[Anonymous Coward]

"The chances for life on this planet are 100 percent," Steven Vogt, a UC professor of astronomy and astrophysics says. "I have almost no doubt about it."

I and every other research scientist I know (a lot of them) all just shook our heads when we heard that quote.

Re:Really ..

[PPH]

Its success unless you've already put ten percent down on that $223,099.93. Then its just another Florida real estate swindle.

Re:Really ..

[natehoy]

The fail is that a scientist went out and said he is "100% sure life exists on this planet".

Really? Who said the scientists said that?

You should stop reading news from that outlet immediately, because it's bullshit that makes the Weekly World News headlines like "Space Whelk Poised to Consume Earth" and "Woman's Varicose Veins used as Treasure Map" seem like responsible journalism.

Though none of these sources are really heavily scientific, they don't dumb "planet found with Earth-like dimensions that's probably in a temperate zone between the freezing and boiling point of water" to "scientist claims 100% knowledge that life exists on a specific exoplanet". You might want to consider them as at least superior news sources to whatever you are currently using.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/02/practical-and-religious-implic.html

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/19/6087627-planet-probe-spots-hot-prospects

Re:Really ..

[causality]

Welcome to science. I would deem this a big success!

No, science would be "as a preliminary, tentative finding, the data seem to indicate that this is the case, but we need to double-check all sources of error, look for contradictory information, and even after all that, if we still cannot falsify it, we can say only that it is consistent with our current understanding, something that has changed before and will likely change again". Of course, that isn't as exciting in a press release, hence the problem.

Many people want final ultimate answers on certain questions. "Could there be other planets out there that might even be able to support life (as we know it)?" is one of them. It's related to the question of whether we are alone in the Universe. It's harder to appreciate that the search for such answers and the questions they raise is the more worthy point.

This was a big success for yellow journalism. It was a gigantic fail for science. It calls into question how many other jumps to conclusions there are that we don't yet know about because they haven't yet been identified. You can have great science or you can make great press releases and sell newspapers. Wherever those two ends are opposed, we get to find out what our real priorities are, don't we?

I agree it's definitely better than nothing that this one was corrected. That means this failure was recognized and corrected. It does not mean no failure took place.

Re:Really ..

[Anonymous Coward]

That'd be...

CNN

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/30/100-percent-chance-for-life-on-newly-found-planet/

Space.com

http://www.space.com/9225-odds-life-newfound-earth-size-planet-100-percent-astronomer.html ,and a host of others. This was in mainstream press. Not tabloids.

There are a few scientists around who occasionally say idiotic things. Unfortunately, sometimes they do it in front of reporters. This would be one of those times.

Re:Really ..

[causality]

That'd be...

CNN

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/30/100-percent-chance-for-life-on-newly-found-planet/

Space.com

http://www.space.com/9225-odds-life-newfound-earth-size-planet-100-percent-astronomer.html ,and a host of others. This was in mainstream press. Not tabloids.

There are a few scientists around who occasionally say idiotic things. Unfortunately, sometimes they do it in front of reporters. This would be one of those times.

I sure wish people would Google before asking such easily answered questions...

Re:Really ..

[bunratty]

Yeah, some scientists do say dumb things sometimes. Apparently once a climatologist told a UK reporter that there would be no snow in Great Britain in a few years due to global warming. It's a ridiculous statement because the climate isn't changing that rapidly or dramatically. But today many people refuse to believe AGW because that prediction didn't come true. Scientists need to watch what they say to journalists, because they can cause entire fields to lose credibility with the public when they make such dumb predictions. Why don't other scientists immediately come out and denounce statements like these to save face?

Re:Really ..

[Anonymous Coward]

If he said it it at all was clearly in the context of the status of the planet as it was understood at the time.

If you really were a research scientist you'd understand that.

Re:Really ..

[idontgno]

This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: "HUGE SUCCESS".

Re:Really ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially dumb, since in most climate models of global warming, after the loss of arctic ice leads to a reduction in the Atlantic current, northern Europe and England will actually get colder = more snow, while central latitudes will heat up a lot.

Re:Really ..

[natehoy]

That'd be.. about Gliese 581g. Not KOI 326.01.

Now, referring to the G581g claim, "100% chance FOR life" and "100% chance OF life" are two very different assertions. It was still pretty hyperbolic, and of course future observation will almost certainly make Vogt regret those words later, but G581g is still voted the "Most Likely To Be Like Earth" at the moment. The calculations were checked before such assertions were made (unlike KOI 326.01, which broke based on an interesting anomaly in a spreadsheet that turned out to have bad data which was discovered and corrected within a couple of weeks.

So assuming you're the same Anonymous Coward who made the assertion that the claims on KOI 326.01 went from "100% certain there is life there" to "oopsie, wrong star!" you're conflating the two for obvious comic effect. Which is OK, but don't be surprised when the non-anonymous adults call you on such claims from time to time.

Re:Really ..

[LurkerXXX]

In the context of the status planet as it was understood at the time, it was STILL a stupid thing to say. Especially to a reporter.

If you understood science at all, you'd understand that.

Re:Really ..

[gstoddart]

Its success unless you've already put ten percent down on that $223,099.93. Then its just another Florida real estate swindle.

Which, arguably, it was to begin with anyway.

You seriously expect people to be legitimately be selling a planet or part thereof?

Re:Really ..

[gstoddart]

Besides Earth, of course.

I'm sure some cunning linguist will be all over the semantics of that if I don't qualify it.

Re:Really ..

[JordanL]

I can see why you posted as an AC...

Just to extend your logic, within the context of the Westboro Baptist Church's teachings, their actions and claims also make sense.

Context rarely disproves stupidity.

Re:Really ..

[alonsoac]

The fail is that a scientist went out and said he is "100% sure life exists on this planet".

Really? Who said the scientists said that?

You should stop reading news from that outlet immediately, because it's bullshit that makes the Weekly World News headlines like "Space Whelk Poised to Consume Earth" and "Woman's Varicose Veins used as Treasure Map" seem like responsible journalism.

CNN quoted some guy named Steven who supposedly said it http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/30/100-percent-chance-for-life-on-newly-found-planet/

Re:Really ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the same AC, and I see no difference between the assertions. The "100% chance FOR life" is meaning less if it's meaning isn't "100% chance of life". What is the 100% chance of that would give the statement any meaning? (Note, this is a statement given to a reporter. No additional qualifiers were given, or emphasized enough if they were given.)

Re:Really ..

[ColdWetDog]

Being this wrong is seldom considered an 'epic success'.

Except in Economics.

Re:Really ..

[Hognoxious]

This was in mainstream press. Not tabloids.

I'd suggest that, from a scientific point of view, the mainstream press is much closer to tabloids than it is to peer-reviewed journals.

To put in another way, when you're an ogre gnomes and dwarfs are all short bastards.

Re:Really ..

[N0Man74]

I always thought that a similar (and far less verbose) disclaimer was implied by the use of the word 'candidate'.

Re:Really ..

[natehoy]

100% chance for life means that there is a 100% chance that the planet is capable of supporting life. This is compatible with (obviously tenuous) observation. Which means it's a silly thing to say without prefacing it with "if the observations are true", but at least the current evidence appears to support it.

100% chance of life means there is a 100% chance that life exists. That's a clearly ridiculous thing to say, since it's not at all supported by any observation.

Re:Really ..

[Anonymous Coward]

hah hah

you said "models"

Re:Really ..

[conspirator57]

how much for just the planet?

Re:Really ..

[natehoy]

See the other thread. G518g is still a viable candidate for exoplanetary life. A pretty tenuous claim to be saying that there's a 100% chance the planet supports life, but at least one that is still compatible with the observations months after it was uttered.

Re:Really ..

[Anonymous Coward]

100% chance the planet is capable of supporting life?

It has actual liquid water on it?
It has a spinning core of metal generating an adequate shield from it's stars solar wind?
It had enough of each of the elements needed for life as we know it in/on the planet's surface?

Or did he just mean the planet's location relative to it's star is within the habitable zone as previously defined?

Personally, I don't think that qualifies as '100% chance for life'.

Re:Really ..

[bunratty]

Nope, that's a common climate myth.

Re:Really ..

[bunratty]

Yes, scientists use models in their hypotheses. What else would they use? Go look in any physics book, and you'll find it full of equations that model various physical systems. F=ma. E=mc^2. Stuff like that. Models.

Re:Really ..

[natehoy]

Right, you'll note that I said it was a ridiculous thing to say. But it was an exaggerated claim based on verified observations on Gliese 581g.

Instead, the original AC was attempting to relate the quote made about Gliese 581g (a planet that had been observed, the observations verified, and remains the most likely current candidate for a life-supporting exoplanet) to an observational error that led to KOI 326.01 being an interesting candidate for a couple of weeks until the error was discovered.

Allow me to re-quote the original post I was responding to:

No. It is an epic failure. The fail is that a scientist went out and said he is "100% sure life exists on this planet". It raised a lot of eyebrows on Slashdot. It made headlines.

Now when the opposite news comes out, it just makes scientists look stupid.

The fail is rushing to conclusions before double checks have taken place.

The problem with that assertion is that no scientist ever made the claim about KOI 326.01, so the fail on KOI 326.01 wasn't as "epic" as the original AC post claimed.

That was what I was originally stating, then other ACs pulled out stories that show a scientist making that claim.

The problem is, the claim was made about Gliese 581g, not KOI 326.01. Gliese 581g is still a viable candidate for exoplanetary life, and the observations were well-verified about Gliese 581g before that statement was uttered. It's still an unfounded assumption (for example, someone else might observe another planet too near by, or discover some other attribute of the star that pulls it out of the candidates list), but one based on clear verified observations from more than one institution.

The brouhaha about KOI 326.01 is that someone crossreferenced the observation against an inaccurate stellar catalog and it made an interesting line in a spreadsheet. It made the news, then someone noticed the error in the catalog and corrected it, and the spreadsheet line became uninteresting again. No one ever stated that KOI 326.01 was a life-bearing planet, only that it was an interesting candidate (and when the verification process began, the error was discovered).

Re:Really ..

[LurkerXXX]

No one was considering them vs peer reviewed journals. The grandparent was quite clearly differentiating between MSN and Weekly World News are reliable vs tabloid.

CNN/Space.com are clearly in the the arena of MSN.

Re:Really ..

[KeensMustard]

It's hard to overstate My satisfaction.

Re:Really ..

[LurkerXXX]

You should reread that article you linked. Myth doesn't mean what you apparently think it means. The article says it will happen, but slowly, and not completely.

Re:Really ..

[Anonymous Coward]

What's Westboro Baptist Church got to do with anything?

Imagine you're on a jury. You're presented evidence X, Y and Z. You return a guilty verdict.

Later, there's an appeal. Z is found to be fabricated, Y is based on a contaminated sample and other evidence A, B, C and D comes to light that indicates that some one else did it. The guilty verdict is quoshed.

Was the first jury stupid? The decision seems right, based on the evidence they had at the time. Are people supposed to predict the future? Seems to me you're just a monday morning quarterback.

Re:Really ..

[Hognoxious]

No one was considering them vs peer reviewed journals.

Well perhaps they should be.

The grandparent was quite clearly differentiating between MSN and Weekly World News are reliable vs tabloid.

Your writing ability is on a par with your comprehension skills, but it would appear that you're claiming that something very shit is worse than something that's only a little bit shit.

This may be true, but it's an irrelevance when you compare either to something that isn't shit at all.

Re:Really ..

[rbmyers]

Epic NASA? That's a little too harsh. Epic reality in a nation that reduces organizations like NASA to self-parody in the desperate struggle to stay funded? That sounds about right.

Re:Really ..

[angel'o'sphere]

Did you even read the article you linked?
It is ages old and it only comes to the conclusion that there is no clear trend yet.
Your parent poster is still "right".

angel'o'sphere

Re:Really ..

[causality]

I always thought that a similar (and far less verbose) disclaimer was implied by the use of the word 'candidate'.

Apparently sarcasm is more important to you than actually familiarizing yourself with the claims that certain scientists were making about this planet. And no, "candidate" acknowledges we may be wrong about this particular planet, that our data may be faulty. It does not acknowledge that our very understanding could also change, has changed before, referring to the theoretical basis with which we interpret that data.

One thought that never occurs to the average Slashdotter: "hey I think I found a really trivial and obvious objection ... maybe that means I misunderstood what the guy was saying, hey I better look into that before I make an ass of myself". If anyone knows a discussion forum where I wouldn't spend at least 1/3 of the time explaining obvious things to literate people, let me know.

Re:Really ..

[Coren22]

Damn, should have gone into science, then I would be dating a model.

Scientific method or fact checking

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no scientist but seems like a rather easily correctable mistake given the complexity with everything surrounding the project.

Did they forget to carry the 1 when calculating its brightness?

Re:Scientific method or fact checking

[nedlohs]

The catalog was wrong, it's not a calculation it's just having the wrong data. Of course a quick look at the picture would have shown the error, but who looks at anything but the table of numbers?

Re:Scientific method or fact checking

[Whalou]

I never look at the pictures, I only read the articles.

Re:Scientific method or fact checking

[boristhespider]

Also, if you read the article (or knew about Kepler) you'd also know that they deal with hundreds of thousands of these cases -- Kepler isn't about targeting individual stars and finding Earth-like planets, it's about getting weight of numbers on your side to beat down the statistical error. I don't know why they picked this exact case to look at when they admitted themselves that it was a questionable one (maybe because it had turned out so nicely inside the habitable zone with a sane mass?) but that's not the aim of the project anyway.

My point is that no-one at Kepler is employed to sit and stare at a few hundred thousand images saying "Yes, that star's brighter than that one" or "Yes, that looks like an isolated system" or "No, that looks like CCD noise, bin it". *Should* there be someone employed to do this? Maybe so, but you'd have to admit it would be one seriously boring job -- and you'd need a good few sets of eyes given the bad human judgement in it. There just isn't enough money going around to hire someone to stare at images full-time like that, let alone to hire three or four people to do it... In similar circumstances the Sloan Deep Sky Survey set up Galaxy Zoo over the internet to get people around the world to classify hundreds of thousands of images of galaxies for them. Get thousands of people assessing the same galaxy and the hope is that they clump around a decent classification. (I may not necessarily agree with that unless you can guarantee all of them have gone through the test cases carefully enough, but I know a few people involved in setting it up and they did think of that kind of thing; there are a good number of known test cases thrown out to assess how accurate people's judgement is and use that as a weighting factor.)

NB: I'm not saying *you* didn't read the article, I've no idea. But saying "If one reads the article" makes you sound seriously stuck-up so I avoid doing that...

Re:Scientific method or fact checking

[nedlohs]

How would I have known that looking at the picture revealed the error instantly if I didn't read the article?

And no I don't expect them to look at every picture, and I didn't say they should. I was being completely serious when I said you wouldn't bother looking at the picture, given the table of numbers tells you what you want to know.

And you really think there's a difference between "if one reads the article" and "if you read the article"?

Re:Scientific method or fact checking

[boristhespider]

"How would I have known that looking at the picture revealed the error instantly if I didn't read the article?"

Good point. I was speaking generally though and not picking a fight. I raised the SDSS because looking at the pictures is exactly what they're getting people to do - they're just not doing it themselves. It would be an ideal; we're not really built to see patterns in numbers although we *can*. But we are built to see patterns in images, and to hear them in sounds and that's a very quick way of spotting mistakes or errors. (Of course in this case it involves cross-checking a catalogue with the image, but we can easily imagine quite a few ways of setting that up over the internet without forcing someone to actually wade through the catalogue.)

And yes, I think there's a difference between "if one reads the article" and "if you read the article" - both in meaning and in how it makes you sound. "One" is an extremely useful word but unfortunately - on this side of the Atlantic at least - I associate it with days long past and over-wealthy upper middle-classes who long so much to be upper class. Wrong and unfair, of course, but yes.

The eureka paradox.

[Fractal Dice]

At bleeding edge of knowledge/measurement the margin of error is often larger than the margin of excitement.

Re:The eureka paradox.

[Script Cat]

Bleeding edge means new but not too new.

One might say... Bob is going to try that cutting edge new router. But I'm going with the bleeding edge one from that other company that has been out for a few mounths and has some firmware updates.

In this case the theory is becombing bleeding edge where it was cutting edge. So you should say "At ' the cutting' edge of knowledge/measurement the margin of error is often larger than the margin of excitement"

Re:The eureka paradox.

[Anonymous Coward]

Per Wikipedia:
The term bleeding edge is formed as an allusion to "leading edge" and its synonym cutting edge, but implying a greater degree of risk: the "bleeding edge" is in front of the "cutting edge".

Re:The eureka paradox.

[Script Cat]

Wikipedia is always right. But when you get cut is takes afew seconds for the bleading to start. Unless you chop an artery or somthing. It's a terrible analogy.

Re:The eureka paradox.

[JordanL]

Wait, you were being serious? I thought for sure you were being facetious...

Re:space science

[MightyMartian]

Translation: I'm a pathetic, visionless stump of a human being who goes on Internet forums to try to convince people that my apathy is somehow equatable to cleverness.

I assume KOI 326.01 has hit the discount bin?

[Anonymous Coward]

the most valuable planet candidate in the newly released crop is KOI 326.01, to which the formula assigns a value of USD $223,099.93.

One thing I've noticed scientists are good at is playing with OPM.

How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[blair1q]

When your only criteria are size and distance, you're not doing much to prove "likeness" to the Earth. In fact, you're doing less than 2 parameters/N parameters, since size and distance may have nothing to do with how habitable the planet may be to humans or any life forms.

Stoichiometry and temperature are far more significant. The existence of stabilizing processes in the atmospheric and geological systems are also more significant.

And then there's the little matter of the precise history of Earth, which went through several specific, major eras of development before it had these stabilizing systemic features and could support the formation of the first structures of life and their evolution into the first cellular beings.

And then it went through several more specific, major eras of development to result in large, complex, multicellular plant and animal forms of life, interacting as a (somewhat) stable ecosystem, capable of surviving events that nonetheless mass-extincted whole swathes of species.

The part about guessing wrong about which star the planet is orbiting is just bad astronomy, and is way past where they should be shutting up about its being "Earthlike."

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[bahstid]

What is Stoichiometry?

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[Nadaka]

Size of a planet, distance from its star and the magnitude of that star are the 3 most easily measurable parameters that affect atmospheric chemistry and temperature.

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[EvanED]

Their estimated temperature was one of the things that made it look "Earth-like", and it's one of the measurements they are needing to revise that make it no-longer look Earth-like.

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[blair1q]

They shouldn't even mention size and distance if they have temperature.

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[Chris Burke]

Distance, combined with the star its orbiting, is how they get an initial estimate of temperature. And size will help indicate if its a terrestrial planet or a gas giant. Being in the habitable zone, but a gas giant, is not 'earth-like'.

Size and distance are important characteristics of the planet, and the ones that can be most reliably measured with the technique that Kepler uses. So yes, the should mention them both even if they have temperature estimates.

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[Chris Burke]

When your only criteria are size and distance, you're not doing much to prove "likeness" to the Earth. In fact, you're doing less than 2 parameters/N parameters, since size and distance may have nothing to do with how habitable the planet may be to humans or any life forms.

They both certainly have something to do with it, but yes, those two aspects alone are hardly sufficient to prove habitability.

Nevertheless, size (actually composition) and distance (actually temperature in the range for liquid water) are the two criterion astronomers use when talking about "earth-like" planets. That's all it means -- like earth in these two aspects.

For reference, both Venus and Mars are "earth-like". Probably not what you were expecting it to mean, but so it goes. :)

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[JordanL]

"Have you arrived at the checkpoint?"

"Yes sir, I have the distance traveled, the time it took, the sp--"

"Why did you collect all that information!? I just wanted your average speed!"

"Uh... sir to calculate my average speed I need to--"

"Why are you even talking to me about distance or time! I want speed!"

"But I--"

"Stop wasting all that time and space recording down that other shit! If I find out you are keeping track of anything else again I'll have you reassigned to janitorial duty!"

"...Alright sir..."

(And this is about what you sound like right now.)

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting point. Given criteria of size and distance from the sun where it's possible for liquid water to exist, our own solar system has 3 Earth-like planets. But it takes far more than that for two of those to be anything like the one that's actually Earth.

Maybe our odds for finding another actual "Earth" would be higher if we narrowed the scope to solar systems with multiple Earth-like planets. Yet we've still got to start somewhere.

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[blair1q]

No, what I sound like is "stop padding your report with what doesn't matter in order to sound like you're important and report what matters."

Or do you want your computer to scroll every value in its registers up the screen while you're loading a page from the web?

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[JordanL]

Distance from the star and magnitude of the star are both independently important for photosynthetic processes, which depend not on the temperature of the atmosphere, but on the radiation received. There is nothing "padding" about adding those stats, and any 8th grade biology student should be able to see that.

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[Chardansearavitriol]

We dont have magic. While it would be GREAT if we had a cheat sheet listing all the possible conditions life can manifest, we do not. We have to work on the only successful model we can be sure of: Us. We have to keep our eyes open yes, but its the only thing we know.

Re:How "Earth-like" was it in the first place?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all well and good, but how do you propose measuring those criteria on extra-solar planets? I'm sure the scientists looking would love to know, it is hard enough just detecting planets as small as the Earth as it is, let alone the conditions on them. They are working with what they can measure at the moment.

oh no. I already sent a ship.

[Anonymous Coward]

oh man is my team going to be pissed when they get there.

Review First, Then A Press Release

[Anonymous Coward]

'We're seeing the scientific method playing out in real time', eh? How about letting that scientific method play itself out before you release your findings to the popular media? Or was it getting near the end of your fiscal year?

Re:Review First, Then A Press Release

[Chardansearavitriol]

Because some of us like seeing the scientific method in action. For some reason, having a cabal of people behind closed doors never showing but always claiming is more like RELIGION than science. If you cant handle the mistakes, get off slashdot. Science requires mistakes and mistakes require corrections. If we made no mistakes we'd know everything and thus would not need to be screaming at idiots on Slashdot.

Re:space science

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Perhaps you should pull your head out of your ass and look up the history of Cepheid variable stars or supernovae. Both had several false starts before the current theory.

But you're right, "it's just space", so all we stand to learn from it is how the universe is put together and how it works.

Re:space science

[amicusNYCL]

The only tragedy is that so many geeks are attracted by it as a quasi-religious substitute for the supernatural glory of the heavens.

No, I think the glory we see in space is the reason why so many people are attracted to it. It's not a substitute, it's the reason. It's hard to look at a picture of M51 or Andromeda or the Eagle nebula without getting inspired.

Real estate crisis IN OUTER SPACE

[sourcerror]

Real estate crisis IN OUTER SPACE

Re:Real estate crisis IN OUTER SPACE

[PPH]

I say we just leave the keys for the bank and walk away.

Re:Real estate crisis IN OUTER SPACE

[tenchikaibyaku]

Real estate crisis IN OUTER SPACE

Can we here perhaps see the next step for patent trolls when they're done adding ON THE INTERNET to every old inventions?

How many other bad star data?

[gr8_phk]

So someone cataloged a bunch of data on stars and now one is rechecked because it was interesting. Turns out the data was wrong. How much more bad data is out there that nobody double checked because nobody cared until now?

Re:How many other bad star data?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the link to find the Kepler data that has been released.

You're more than welcome to go through the reams of data and find all planet candidates that shouldn't be (or incorrectly classified) due to bad data or erroneous assumptions (as in this case - due to star brightness).

Of course, we both know you're not going to do this since you are really making a snide remark for the sake of making a snide remark.

Re:How many other bad star data?

[boristhespider]

hahaha

mod +1 insightful. kepler is fucking *huge* and oddly enough they don't have the money to employ people to go through and double-check everything that appears in it against a few different catalogues and then visually against an image. if they did, people would rightly be making a scene at the enormous waste of tax-payer's money.

Finding many more earth-like planets

[bl8n8r]

Or rather, many more mistakenly, earth-like planets

You just got Pultoed

[Gohtar]

Am I right or what?

Re:You just got Pultoed

[gstoddart]

Am I right or what?

Unlikely since none of us knows what "Pultoed" means.

Re:You just got Pultoed

[Anonymous Coward]

This little piggy went to market...

Re:You just got Pultoed

[Gohtar]

Crap, Spelling, Plutoed...

Re:You just got Pultoed

[Chardansearavitriol]

Pluto lost its designation as a planet, become a..Keuiper belt object? Correct me if im wrong, the ice bodies + area of the sun's effective reach causes me some confusion. When we found several similar, larger objects. in this context, gettng "Plutoed" is a false incident where relation to previous status makes the laymen think it somehow gained lesser status, whether or not this is the case.

I hope those guys preparing to announce that's

[Anonymous Coward]

where their meteorite came from hear about this in time!

Re:space science

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: I'm under 25 and have no idea how the world works, I don't want to know and I think that faster computers = spaceships and sci fi=engineering. It's fun to dream and have visions, but most of the time visions are a sign of mental illness.

I hope those guys preparing to annnounce that's

[spads]

where their meteorite came from hear about this in time!

Re:space science

[MightyMartian]

Translation: I'm a pathetic, visionless stump of a human being who goes on Internet forums to try to convince people that my apathy is somehow equatable to cleverness.
--

Steven Wrightism

[knarfling]

"Hey! We've found this earth-like planet orbiting a particular star. Wait a minute . . . Wrong star. And it really isn't earth-like at all."

Sound a lot like a Steven Wright.

"A funny thing happened to me this morning. Wait a minute . . . That wasn't me."

Re:Steven Wrightism

[Anonymous Coward]

And it wasn't funny!

Finding "more" earth-like planets?

[mark-t]

When had this project found even one?

By earth-like, I mean a rocky planet, at a distance from its parent star where liquid water could exist, and having a gravitational pull between 0.6g and 2.0g.

I'm not saying that they aren't out there, but I'm pretty sure that none have yet been found, so talking about finding "more" of them is sort of... well... misleading about what's actually been accomplished so far.

Re:Finding "more" earth-like planets?

[boristhespider]

kepler isn't really a project to sit there and find specific examples. i don't even know why they released this one except i guess they thought it of great interest (and wanted publicity, no doubt - which might not even have been the project's idea, the same as the entire cold fusion debacle came from a press release the researchers didn't want to go out but were forced into by the university who were grubbing for publicity). it's a project to collect vast numbers of planets so that we can say that we expect such-and-so-many earth-like planets around.

it's similar in a way to something like the sloan digital sky survey (which i know more about) which basically takes photos of enormous numbers of galaxies in an attempt to find out about the universe. it's not actually looking for details of a galaxy at a redshift of 0.9 though you can certainly use sloan's catalogue to do so. sloan itself doesn't give a shit; it uses a somewhat inaccurate way of estimating the redshift (because collecting the data to do it accurately would take a lot of time and expense... and then analysing it would take much longer again; photometric is the only sane way to go when you get to the number of galaxies sloan looks at) and piles galaxy upon galaxy to beat down the statistical error. kepler does the same, except that instead of finding the mass content of the universe and the baryon acoustic oscillations, it's looking for earth-like planets.

Re:Finding "more" earth-like planets?

[mark-t]

I don't think I was trying to claim that they *should* be trying to find any specific examples... I just think that the expression of finding "more" earth like planets is wholly misleading about what has been accomplished so far, when they haven't found a single one yet.

Re:Finding "more" earth-like planets?

[Chardansearavitriol]

Yeah, I know what you mean. How incompetent are these guys? Only being able to roughly guess at events happening massive amounts of space away and in the past of incredibly tiny bodies and their general composition from a satellite lightyears away. What a bunch of losers. -Snark Ends Here-

Re:Finding "more" earth-like planets?

[boristhespider]

Fair enough. I guess I'm just feeling a bit protective of them. I mean, they've just made a pretty embarrassing cock-up on the world stage... It's perhaps worth us remembering what the project's even actually designed for, which is weight in numbers. They've made themselves look silly in something that wasn't their primary aim, a bit like a kid in a spelling bee wearing non-matching socks.

Re:Finding "more" earth-like planets?

[mark-t]

I have neither criticized the project itself nor what it has actually accomplished so far. My criticism was over the expression of "finding more earth-like planets" when it hasn't found any yet, because that language is misleading about what has actually been accomplished so far.

Cue in Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's strange a malfunctioning sensor gave such a specific misreading."

Why must NASA crush so many dreams?

[makubesu]

Here they had built up this poor young planet to be something of worth. They were promising all kinds of fame and fortune, telling her to leave behind her friends and family and devote herself to being the next Earth. The crazy parties, the celebrities endorsing her, they built up her dreams of fame, and gave up any other kind of success. Now they dump her dry because they ended up making some mistakes in their data analysis. All she's got left now is a lingering coke addiction. Don't you see they used her up and rang her dry? She had so much potential to be special in some other way, but now she'll just be remembered as another failure, probably turning tricks in the dark corners of the galaxy. We need to keep these hype monsters away from our planets.

Re:Why must NASA crush so many dreams?

[Hognoxious]

Last I heard, she was hanging out with Pluto.

Re:space science

[Anonymous Coward]

There are millions of things that need doing right here, on Earth. What are you doing? If you can't look at a cat or pond scum and marvel at the complexity of self-organizing patterns encoded in matter powered by a star, you're a pathetic, visionless stump of a human being.
Going on and on about things you will never directly see, smell touch or experience is the height of narcissism. You don't actually have to DO anything about it. You can just sit on your ass and ascribe all kinds of mythical properties to it, and no matter what anyone else says, it doesn't matter to you.
You're a child. Growing up will be either very painful for you, or you will collapse under the strain of reality and hide in your virtual world.
There will never be space colonies, space-based solar arrays, space manufacturing, etc. Ever. Looking at pixels on a screen is all you guys can do. Forgive me if that strikes me as a childish waste of time. Sci-fi was fun for me too, then I turned 13.

Real-Time Scientific Method

[Jekler]

'We're seeing the scientific method playing out in real time.'

What the hell is that supposed to mean? In what other time frame does the scientific method normally play out? Dealing with computers, we watch the scientific method play out in real time right before our eyes every day. We can watch the scientific method play out every time someone buys a remote control and goes through the process of setting it up. Hypothesis of which brand/model and entry code match up, test the hypothesis, record the results and form a new hypothesis based on the conclusion.

I dunno why, that sentence just bugged me. it makes it seem like discovering an error while presenting the results is somehow a rare event.

Look for "Ring" (Worlds)

[wisebabo]

I hope that the Kepler observing team is not automatically discarding observations that don't fit expected profiles.

For example: if a (slighty more) advanced civilization wanted to be detectable by something like Kepler, all they would have to do is put up some (very) large but (presumably) low mass "screens" in orbit around the star. By putting up several of these with the proper spacing; a coded "signal" code could be seen, just like morse code (I'd time it so the intervals would correspond to some prime numbers).

Of course if they are even a little bit more advanced and don't have to make these things ultra-lightweight, these screens could perform a useful function like solar panels or, if cabled together and spun, living area. (Hence the reference to the term "Ringworld" from Larry Niven's books).

Anyway, even if the Kepler team inadvertently ignores this data, perhaps after a period of time it'll become publically available? Here's to stellar data-mining! (If you found the first evidence of an E.T. civilization this way, would you be eligible for a Nobel Prize?)

Re:Look for "Ring" (Worlds)

[boristhespider]

knock yourself out, someone already posted the currently-public data

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2028214&cid=35422006

i doubt you're being entirely serious but i'm going to vent spleen anyway :) despite what people think every large astronomical survey that i've ever heard of makes its data fully public -- sometimes with a year's delay to allow project members to work on the data (which is reasonable; these are the universities that paid to run the damned thing in the first place so they should be able to get first crack at it) but it still all gets released. if you dislike what nasa have done with the cmb data, for example, you can feel perfectly free to go and download seven year's worth of raw time-ordered data and trawl through the entire fucking process. a couple of chinese guys did that a year or two back and found some minor differences from nasa (and a couple of major ones). since it seemed to hinge on where the satellite was pointing and whether that gets identified with the centre or edge of a pixel it's most likely that nasa, with access to the engineers who built and programmed the satellite, are right... but maybe not. and in any event it's useful for someone to do it. i'd just rather it's not me.

the same comments all go for something like kepler, too.....

Most earthlike planet hmm?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the most earthlike planet we know of got a major demotion when man took his first steps. But hey thats just my opinion man.

Mmm. Lost a planet, Master Obi-Wan has.

[countertrolling]

How embarrassing. How embarrassing.

I'd be happy to pay a million for it

[bigsexyjoe]

It's only worth a quarter of a million dollars!? It's a freaking planet! It has to be worth over a million bucks, right?

Re:I'd be happy to pay a million for it

[vuke69]

It's like e-bay, they get you on the shipping.

Re:I'd be happy to pay a million for it

[Anonymous Coward]

The formula assumes that the total value of all planets that Kepler discovers is equal to the cost of Kepler.

If you want to actually buy land on a planet you need to speak with the people who live on it. If nobody lives there you can't buy it. You need to travel there, or send your machines there and physically take possession of the land.

Re:space science

[JordanL]

Sci-Fi? This isn't fiction... our study of the Universe has directly led to realizations of many aspects of physics that are directly applicable to our lives. It is through the study of the stars that we had the proper information background for Einstein to formulate general and special relativity for instance, which impact things such as our ability to keep satellites in orbit, or our ability to calculate GPS coordinates.

People who see the value in knowledge simply because the unknown is unknown are not childish, and your rant only reveals your lack of imagination and general understanding of human history.

58 in habitable zone and 6 less than 2 Earth-mass

[peter303]

Kepler proposed 1200 planet candidates from its first four months of data collection. Approximately 58 are in the habitable zone and 6 may be smaller than two Earth masses. 19 of the 1200 have been confirmed as planets. As the study progresses, they'll see longer-orbit candidates and more habitable zone possibilities. And more of the 1200 will be confirmed as planets.

Universal Mirror

[Onuma]

Just wait until Kepler begins finding and identifying alien Kepler-like telescopes. Then the confusion will really begin.

I'm rambling way off-topic

[boristhespider]

Hey, sci-fi still can be fun sometimes, even though I feel going back to the Moon is pointless given its cost when there's so little money around and so many more important things to do with that (breaking our dependence on Middle-Eastern oil, finally defeating cancer, defeating AIDS would be my three main targets), going to Mars is seriously pointless, going to asteroids is more or less pointless, space escalators will never be built, humanity will never colonise another planet without prohibitively expensive ties to Earth being maintained, and we're doomed to die either when we pollute our planet enough that it kills us, when we exhaust every last exploitable resource or, ultimately, when the sun becomes a red giant.

I like the idea of massive solar panels in space, but getting that energy to Earth would be enormous fun. Either you tie them to Earth with insulated cable, which would be horribly expensive, wasteful, prone to terrorist attack or accident (or planes flying into it) *and* require the panels to be under more-or-less continuous thrust to keep them in geosynchronous orbit; or you try and beam it down. Forgive me for not wanting to stand beneath a beam of energy enough to provide power even for the UK, let alone the USA. Or we split it into loads of little beams, necessitating hundreds and thousands of receivers around the country... which birds shit on. A bit of a waste of all that power if it goes to heating up pigeon shit. Even worse, the first rainy day and all that energy gets blasted into the clouds, scattered, diffused, and bathes the entire country in low-level radiation. Sure, those problems could be overcome, but I'm sure there are thousands that I haven't thought of.

I *can* see the point on some manufacturing on the Moon though. If it was possible to get things back from the Moon cheaply (it's not) then it would be a brilliant environment for it. We manufacture on Earth and we shit in our own backyard. On the Moon, who cares what crap we pile onto it? We can dose the whole thing with uranium and not give a shit, although we might have to put the goods that come down from it into quarantine for a few centuries if we were silly enough to do that.

Though saying that I'm sure that some Diana-loving maniacs would complain about us polluting a barren, pointless ball of dust and rock.

Anyway. I agree with a lot of what you say... except that I'm employed to study cosmology, which is in all fairness amongst the most narcissistic of human sciences. It's simply an attempt to understand why the entire universe looks the way it does. Sure, there are knock-on effects that are useful - cosmology is a big part of the drive for evermore accurate telescopes which have helped drive everything from hyper-sensitive electrical motors to the CCDs sitting in your digital camera... but seriously, all that would have come anyway. Whether from spy satellites, where a lot of it was probably developed first anyway, or otherwise, even just from more sane, rational astronomy (which can actually have practical benefits) it would have come. Nah, cosmology is pointless. But it's of interest and governments around the world, from the USA to Iran, judge it of interest and use enough to fund its research. And who am I to argue if someone pays me to basically pursue my hobby full-time?

I'm starting to get good vibes from NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations NASA nerds for all the hard work done to achieved National Enquirer Certification.
I'm looking forward more than ever to the now certified daily astrology forecasts at www.nasa.gov
Once again, congratulations.

I read that as demolition...

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that as demolition and was thinking the 'Dark Star' mission had had another successful bomb run....

We're not even sure...

[vrythmax]

the lens cap was removed!

Good on them.

[Chardansearavitriol]

For looking back and IMMEDIATLY retracting their previous assessment when the data proved faulty. A triumph of science indeed. Don't let all the people who think a flawless god made everything; the most flawed will be barking hte loudest. We admit error. They turn it into religion.

Louis Vuitton Outlet

[Anonymous Coward]

Louis Vuitton Outlet
LV handbags
LV sunglasses

Major Demotion?

[mjwx]

Major is still a fairly high rank, I'm sure his pension hasn't been affected that much.

Re:Har

[cbiltcliffe]

Well, it was trumpeted as evidence for evolution before it was ever verified, obviously, and also when there isn't even a peep of an idea that there might actually be life on said planet. I don't see the difference between the religious fanatic creationists, and the religious fanatic evolutionists, to be honest. It's just the object of their unquestionable faith that's different.

Re:Har

[Coren22]

Do the AGW people and Anti-AGW people fit in that too? My understanding is that if you even peep in scientific circles that you have found any evidence that might weaken the AGW theory, you are shouted down just as bad as people who support AGW in non scientific circles.