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Can Science Ever Be "Settled?"
StartsWithABang writes "From physics to biology, from health and medicine to environmental and climate science, you'll frequently hear claims that the science is settled. Meanwhile, those who disagree with the conclusions will clamor that science can never be 'settled,' and then the name-calling from 'alarmist' to 'denier' ensues.
But can science legitimately ever be considered settled, and if so, what does that mean? We consider gravitation, evolution, the Big Bang, germ theory, and global warming in an effort to find out."
all attempts to disprove it have failed and until evidence can be presented to disprove or bring the results into question it is settled
it doesn't mean "this is doctrine never challenge it" it means challenge it knowing that it has been challenged before and the theory has held
There is always, always, an infintesimally small chance you're wrong. And on a universal scale, that means you will be wrong at some point somewhere.
Newton's laws have been pretty much settled. Einstein found a way to get more precision under certain circumstances, but Newton is good enough most of the time.
Because if God had intended science to work, he would not allow that Dolby guy to be blinded by it!
That's not a summary, that's a click bait.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
It will ensure there's plenty of work to do on both sides.
Where ignorance attempts to shroud the light of reason, the light of reason must endeavour to shine thus more brightly.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It is quite well settled scientific fact that those who find themselves at a business disadvantage due to the existence of facts they don't like will immediately lobby for legislation to overturn these silly facts in the interest of being pro-business.
Short of that, then the next best thing is to create a controversy. Since it is a creative work, shouldn't the controversy be copyrighted? Or even better . . . patented to protect the idea! Or maybe the observations underlying scientific advancement should be made privately owned, or subject to a government auction. I wouldn't have expected anyone to take these suggestions seriously twenty years ago. But today? Who knows?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Claiming that a topic is "settled" is, typically, a tactic to shut a viewpoint down as no longer being a live option the community will consider in its collective deliberations.
At best, this is a necessary pruning tactic, so that old, disproven arguments can't be repeatedly raised. Without some mechanism like this, it would be difficult for groups to proceed when they have a majority, but not unanimous, consensus.
At its worst, "settled" talk is a rhetorical trick, to shut someone with a potentially valid point out of a public deliberation. We see this somewhat with climate science (since new data are regularly obtained), and also in law / public policy. For example, Marbury vs. Madison may have "settled" the law regarding whether or not court decision trump the other two branches' judgment in matters of law. But that doesn't mean the position is correct, or that the count-arguments were ever adequately resolved. One could argue that it's a thin veil over the military victor's (the North's) version of history.
It's a process.
I think I read there really is no more "chemistry" left to investigate. Apparently it has moved on to molecular physics. Kind of like Newtonian physics are as settled as can be. The bordlines have moved far beyond them by now.
"evolutionary criticism . . . is completely forbidden in US schools."
Well, unless you go to school in one of those states where the school boards also don't think children should be trusted to learn about puberty, carbon dating, and history that wasn't vetted by the Club for Growth and the Daughters of Confederate Heroes.
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
-- Albert Einstein
First class example is that evolutionary criticism (missing intermediate species or disputed claims of finding them, Darwin's doubled-down denial of genetics, etc) is completely forbidden in US schools.
They're not "completely forbidden", and they're certainly not forbidden in private schools. What is forbidden is using petty nitpicking of details, which are at best only marginally relevant to the validity of evolutionary theory, to advance religious doctrine, which is the only reason these issues are ever raised in the first place. If you want religion taught in public schools, move to Iran or some other country where superstition is mandated by law.
For well over a thousand years Aristotle's work in the physical sciences (including zooology) was considered settled... until people started testing his theories
We called that period the "Enlightenment"
You approach closer and close to the "absolute truth", but never get there, and every pi microns there is an e chance that there will be a step function and the whole convergence has to start again.
And then the cylons show up (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
People come up with theories, they get refined, debugged, and eventually tagged as a release candidate.
If the theories seem solid enough, there is a major/product release as something which is solid enough for other people to use in production environments.
As people keep using it, it gets minor patches/revisions. If people find a serious enough flaw/bug, then people start working on creating another major version release (or competing product.)
And, just as in software, if the new version of the theory/science is not backwards compatible to the previous one, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Not a result. Thus, attempts to claim that the science is settled are attempts to shut down the scientific process.
If the results of the scientific process are good, they're reproducible, and there's no point in trying to build up a religious dogma of belief on something that simply is.
Questioning the "settled science" is science. Shut it down at the cost of shutting down science.
A process, not a product?
Many things in science are settled beyond any reasonable doubt as false simply because they contradict obvious observed facts. Sorry, Earth is not flat and was not created literally 6000 years ago in literally 6 days.
Stalinism
Is it petty of me to wish that people who accuse their political opponents of being Nazis, Communists, etc., could live for a little while in the world of their paranoid fantasies? If they survived the experience, a month in the actual USSR under Stalin, for example, might give them much more perspective.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The answer is obviously only when we have observed all that there is in the universe, and given the universe is expanding there is that which we never see: so no.
Once a theory or even a law becomes unfalsifiable its not longer science. Until every observation has been made, it remains possible a contradiction will be discovered. Therefore nothing can ever be settled.
With that said there are lots of cases like inertia where the evidence in support of it is so strong and so complete; we can reasonably depend upon its truthfulness and pretty much reject anyone who disputes it unless they have some really really solid independently reproducible observations to the contrary.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
a scientist who isn't interested in writing the next chapter in the text is a disciple.
A common definition of science is "knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study."
Science is never stable. There is always layer upon layer of detail that is waiting to be discovered. The "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" is the underlying concept. Our level of scientific understanding is driven by our current understanding and our needs to go deeper. The knowledge can change and grow based on deeper systematic study.
In the middle ages, when transportation was limited to horse, cart and walking. The naivety of a geocentric university was sufficient for the time. And for the most part motion of planets was fairly accurately explained by epicycles. The "Science" of the age was sufficient. As travel and migration required more detailed knowledge, the science improved to explain what was seen. New models were formed, and tides, winds and so on became more accurate and combined into a deeper understanding.
The beauty of science is that as the foundations of one area is broken down and rebuilt, what replaces it must not only encompass what was there, but also link deeper into other areas that caused the original science to fail. It doesn't make the previous science and knowledge bad, just incorrect. One can't deny that a model that explained a known phenomena for that point in history was bad science.
In 40 years time*, we'll look back at the misguided fools at the start of 21st century and our futile and plain incorrect approaches to fusion. We may not be there, but we'll probably dealing with all sorts of funky and interesting materials on the way to get there.
Those of us who will have children should know that their science *will* be different in a lot of areas than our science. That is a good thing.
* Bonus points for replies that say why I chose the "40 years time".
Settled, but only one counterexample away from oblivion.
Evolution is taught in U.S. schools. Once in a while some gray haired old man in some podunk backwoods county tries to change that and makes us all look bad. So don't believe everything you read on Slashdot.
:wq
Or maybe Evolution is just supported by so much overwhelming evidence that 99%+ of scientists accept it as the best theory. Most of the scientific discussions around Evolution are centered around how we dot the i's and cross the t's, not whether Evolution is a better theory than "last Tuesday God said 'abracadabra' and the Universe was formed as is with its 'history' as an illusion."
In a school's science class, students should learn what the prevailing scientific theories are. They should learn why those theories are the prevailing ones. However, school is not the place for students - who are just learning the material and who will have a highly incomplete knowledge of the subject - to make a determination of which theory is the "right" one.
Whenever someone says "we need to teach the weaknesses of Evolution", what they really mean is "I would like schools to teach Creationism, but that was struck down by the Supreme Court... as was Intelligent Design... so maybe if we sow enough doubt about Evolution in the students, they'll grow up believing that God created it all 10,000 years ago."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
you'll frequently hear claims that the science is settled
No, you don't. Science is, by definition, always ready to accept a better theory. Nothing is settled. It's just that there are, at this moment, no better theories to explain observations.
Very true. You do, however, frequently hear claims along the lines of "Warmists say it's all 'settled science!' Stupid warmists, nothing is ever settled in science!" This article does an excellent job of addressing that particular straw man.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
That's not religion, that's dogmatism. People can be dogmatic about both religious and non-religious topics. People can be dogmatic and non-dogmatic about religion.
My working definition of religion would be "passionate dogmatism". Dogmatism isn't really a threat unless it's passionate (i.e. there's something critical at stake). Thus, religion is a more worrisome form of dogmatism.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Is it petty of me to wish that people who accuse their political opponents of being Nazis, Communists, etc., could live for a little while in the world of their paranoid fantasies? If they survived the experience, a month in the actual USSR under Stalin, for example, might give them much more perspective.
Yes, it's petty, but I do it too, all the time. For instance, just last week I was thinking about how helpful a smallpox epidemic would be in demonstrating why we have vaccines. Likewise, I'd like to see the American Christians who claim to be persecuted spend some time in Saudi Arabia or China so they could understand the true meaning of persecution. I don't actually think any of these people deserve this, but I can't think of anything else that would convince them of how stupid they sound.
Nothing is ever settled. There are axioms that can be used to conduct further science and base theories on but without constantly proving something we'll never find out if something is wrong.
People who say something is settled want the exact opposite. They don't want anyone to test their hypothesis because the findings might be different, not necessarily the opposite, but at least different from the observed original answer.
This is obvious flame bait.
Science doesn't have views.
Still, I liked how you used this as an opportunity for some moral relativist attempt to defend your anti-science religious doctrine.
I really liked the way one person put it to me a while back. Some people used to have some idea the earth was flat, but then some people realized that wasn't true and said it was a sphere. Well, that was clearly wrong too but a sphere is a lot closer to the truth than flat; treating wrongness as a boolean would just label them both wrong but, one is clearly a lot less wrong than the other.
So to some degree, it was settled...possibilities were excluded. Then, well its clearly not a sphere, it bulges in the middle, I have heard "slightly pear shaped" is a good description.... then you have the satellites that have precisely measured variations in gravitational field...they have an even more complex picture.
Whether it is settled or not depends on to what degree you need the answers.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You should be aware, then, that your definition of religion is inconsistent with that belief structures of many people who describe themselves with that label.
Can "science" ever be settled?
No, almost certainly not, since that implies perfect knowledge of all existence--all that is, was, or ever could be.
Can science settle particular questions? Yes.
The point of science is to develop a better understanding of the world/universe/whatever we live in. That understanding can be refined and improved. This question doesn't even make any sense.
Science is never settled and always ready to accept change.
However, science pendants are often heard claiming certain science is settled and are highly resistant to accept additional input.
Certainly no rational person would disagree with they, would they?
Or to put it another way, if someone feels the need to say "XYZ is settled science" that's a clue that it might not be.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Absolutely. Settled doesn't mean True - science is unconcerned with Truth, perhaps even actively opposed to it. Because there is no theoretical way to distinguish between Truth and an extremely accurate and reliable misunderstanding. Accepting something as Truth denies the ability to challenge it - and those challenges are the very essence of science.
Settled means it has so thoroughly withstood all challenges that nobody much even bothers to challenge it anymore, and you'd better have some really solid new evidence to back any new challenge or expect to be laughed off the stage.
This is why the vast majority of anti-AGW positions are considered so ridiculous: The studies they're based on are almost universally either so laughably bad as to be obvious paid "science" propaganda, or are so badly misrepresented that the researchers themselves object to the claims being made by the pundits. Meanwhile the handful of potentially legitimate challenges are largely ignored by the media, presumably because they're either so esoteric they can't be expressed in sound bytes, or so outlandish that only other scientists could take them seriously. Unlike the propaganda being fed to the public, the larger climatology community generally treats those challenges with polite skepticism and constructive criticism because they are at least plausible, even if they need a *lot* more supporting evidence before they could be considered viable alternative explanations.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You are not really expecting any useful answer to your question? You do not give a definition of what settled means. If it means a theory has been proven right, then by all means science is never settled. See Karl Popper for details. If it means a theory has been proven useful to us to understand a certain aspect of what we call reality, then yes there are many fields in science which are considered settled.
When I say theory, I mean scientific theory. Not that "theory" which people often use to describe that they have an opinion. If you do not know the difference then see Karl Popper again.
By the way even in religion there is no absolute truth, as the absolute truth varies between people and over time even in one person. So in general settled is only a vague term used in real life to describe some inter-subjective object of thought which is believed not to change. And in that definition many things in science are settled.
Can you prove that or are you proposing this as a universal truth?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If you can't handle other people having opinions, your views are weak.
Excellent point! One that is lost on most in more than just scientific arguments.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Because that's exactly what third graders are doing when they ask questions in the classroom. Advancing their religious doctrine. Down with inquisitive third-graders!
It's not the third-graders who are campaigning to have theology taught in biology class, it's grown adults who should know better. And there's nothing wrong with students asking tough questions, but I doubt any third grader has actually read Darwin, or done any research into "missing" intermediate species other than whatever nonsense they were told in Sunday school.
speaks to this issue. Here's a link, and here's their link to the essay.
missing intermediate species or disputed claims of finding them
The "missing intermediate species" boils down to moving the goalpost. Creationists, such as yourself say "Find a link between these two thing you claim are related." An intermediate species is found and they say "Find one one between that one and this then!". It is a handful of unqualified crackpots, such as creationist engineers, disputing the claims.without evidence. Their personal incredulity is not evidence against anything.
Darwin's doubled-down denial of genetics
I have no idea what you are talking about with this. Nothing in Darwin's theory denies genetics. In fact, the Theory of Evolution relies on genetics for both a mechanism and evidence.
What we don't need is a return to the dark ages creationists would love.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
What you're effectively saying is that a little bit of taking away people's freedom to choose is not so bad as the Stalinism of the USSR.
That's sounds bland to me. It's like you're asserting it's OK to raise recommended dosages of hemlock from 0 to some small amount. Even if you're right, so what?
In a worst case, of course, you are advancing Stalinism.
I'm not saying your views stand on assertions and ad hominems ...
... but you're sure acting like they do.
I could see if some result is not repudiated in thousands of years or more, then it becomes settled for all practical purposes. The scientific method is still very young - only a half millennia with a few spurts in earlier civilizations. A hundred thousand years from know it could be different.
taking away people's freedom to choose
Stop being hyperbolic. No one is advocating taking away your freedom to choose; you have every right to believe what you want, and to home-school your children or send them to fundamentalist private schools. You do not have the right to have your ancient superstitions treated as equivalent to scientific research, or to push your theology on a captive audience of other people's children.
Science is settled until new contrary evidence comes along to unsettle it.
There is an obvious contextual reference here to the contemporary scientific debate raging around global warming. If I may push back against the OP's question for a moment: The question "is the science ever settled" is not framed in a useful way. I think it is more useful to ask "does the science ever prove a political position"? I frame it this way because typically, when partisans point out that "the science is settled" on some subject, what they are really trying to do is put the weight of scientific authority behind their political positions.
Furthermore, I think this has demonstrable, detrimental effect on science. There has been a recent uptick in global warming disbelief. The typical response to this kind of thing falls into one of two categories: either Americans are unwashed idiots or the effort to disseminate scientific knowledge is somehow flagging in the internet age. But there is a third explanation which receives little attention; namely, the relentless push by partisans to make science speak for particular political ends brings science itself into disrepute. In this view, rising skepticism of scientific consensus comes from backlash induced by, essentially, partisan bullying on scientific issues. With respect to global warming, people see partisans making statements attempting to link currently held scientific views to political ideas that run the gamut from signing bad treaties like Kyoto, adopting economically ruinous policies, or enriching crony operators of new "carbon" exchanges. And then they conclude that maybe the science wasn't all that necessary or important to these partisans after all.
Same agenda-driven bullshit. Different day. Next.
Contrast this with the scientific method: This can be applied widely. But do not confuse a solid body of science like in physics with something that changes when being observed. Unfortunately, envy and the limitations of language (add to this the missing understanding in much of what is published) conspire to make real science look bad in the public eye.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
Honestly, how many high schoolers can actually understand a typical journal article? The target audience is experts in the field.
Also, it's quite common for physics or astro articles to appear on arxiv or similar, and a lot of bio articles are open access thanks to a US NIH mandate.
First class example is that evolutionary criticism (missing intermediate species or disputed claims of finding them, Darwin's doubled-down denial of genetics, etc) is completely forbidden in US schools.
They're not "completely forbidden", and they're certainly not forbidden in private schools. What is forbidden is using petty nitpicking of details, which are at best only marginally relevant to the validity of evolutionary theory, to advance religious doctrine, which is the only reason these issues are ever raised in the first place. If you want religion taught in public schools, move to Iran or some other country where superstition is mandated by law.
The idea that questions about evolution are only raised to advanced religious doctrine is a bit of a religious doctrine in and of itself. Literally the moment that anybody questions anything main stream the immediate response is that those people must be backwoods religious extremists. You see it EVERYWHERE. Somebody raises questions about monetary policy and excessive spending and people immediately go straight to conservative therefore religious. Anybody had the gall to suggest that it was possible for some people to be predisposed to have a negative reaction to something in a vaccine you'd immediately hear "right-wing-religious-nut-job" thrown into the conversation somewhere.
At some point public branding began happening that if you ever dare to discuss an issue, point out flaws, or raise dare I say "valid" discussion points that your question was invalid simply by invoking "right-wing-religious-nut-job" in the conversation.
The sheer fact that so many people immediately use that as a go-to rather that even thinking of defending any questions would seem to indicate that those people feel their own doctrine is being questioned, which makes the idea of those people calling others extremist nut jobs kind've ironic.
One of my all time favorite quotes:
"The test of first rate intelligence is to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." - Dwight Whitney Morrow
There's a lot of people who believe themselves to be intelligent who cannot allow themselves to try to see things from another angle. Nobody holds a viewpoint strongly without having a good reason for doing so. If more people recognized that and tried to understand the other side you'd see a lot less vocal hostility.
Odds are very good that if you feel strongly about something there are a whole lot of times where you're right and a whole lot of times where you're also wrong.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
True. It's like their beliefs have completely supplanted their reasoning powers(, and are providing the only bulwark against a completely overwhelming fear). Thus, they aren't really able to characterize their position in the first place, nor can they join in debate.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Why does it matter how we look? On your deathbed, are you going to regret that we all didn't look a different way?
Why would I want to be lumped in with everyone else?
On the one hand it seems poor to accuse others of being sheeple, but then to justify something in the name of all becoming sheep?
There's little point in trying to figure out when science can be settled in questions like gun control, climate change, and evolution. When one or both sides dig in, there's no way either is going to be convinced. Evolution, for example: the yelling match is only going to stop when the last creationist dies, or when God comes down and tells us "Uh, hello? I TOLD you I made the world in six days. How did you think it was a metaphor? The devil CLEARLY put those bones there! I even sent a bunch of prophets to tell you. Did you not see them in the parking lot of walmarts throughout the deep south?"
"99% of scientists" is pretty monolithic for a claim that can't be reproduced (not to mention probed, imaged, corraborated with evidence that isn't disputed by the proponents thereof or missing altogether, etc).
Any claim that refuses to allow other people their God-given right to their opinion is too weak to deserve to live.
So we just ignore all scientific progress from like 1900 to the NIH mandate!? There's shit 3x older than I am that I have to have my friends steal for me just to read. Also, how many highschoolers actually understand calculus? Should we take away calculus? WILL IT HURT THEIR BRAINS TOO MUCH OH NOOO. I might not be with some expensive managed IT firm or anything, but I got where I am today by studying college-level course material when everyone in the grammar 'school' "system" thought I was outright retarded.
Look it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Darwin's theory rested on oversimplifying the complexity of life, so he came up with a bizarro view of heredity reminescent of how the Nazi's invented the "frost" cosmology because they were embarrased by all the advances made by Jewish cosmologists (who incidentally were mostly Germans themselves).
My money is being used to expose children to views I don't agree with.
And the federal courts disallow criticism of these views.
How is this better than living in a state of nature?
First class example is that evolutionary criticism (missing intermediate species or disputed claims of finding them, Darwin's doubled-down denial of genetics, etc) is completely forbidden in US schools.
Much like that sentence was unadulterated bullshit.
My interpretation is that there is enough confidence from the scientific community for anyone who is not a scientist researching the topic to accept the current understanding as fact. It doesn't mean they should think it is a fact, just that they should lead their life and form opinions based on the assumption that it is a fact.
Research should of course continue, probably until the end of time, but at a certain point the general population should no longer question the findings. They simply are not trained enough to form an opinion that differs from the general consensus.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
In the past 30 years Darwinists suppressed information about inheritance of acquired traits. The Lamarckian-looking genetics that explain this are now FINALLY being accepted as science and are called, as a group of phenomenon, "epigenetics".
This simply demonstrates your ignorance of the field. Epigenetics is far more fundamental and complicated than Lamarckian inheritance - it's a basic mechanism of genetic regulation in all multicellular organisms. This wasn't even remotely controversial 15 years ago, when I started studying biology; any freshman biology course would cover the subject. It still isn't terribly well understood, but what can you expect when we still don't know the function of half of our genes?
What was genuinely controversial was the extent to which epigenetic regulation affected germ cells and was therefore heritable. It was not controversial because "Darwinists" (whatever that means) tried to suppress information, it was because none of the loudest proponents of the theory had found molecular evidence to support it. This is now slowly changing, as biologists are realizing (yet again) that genetic regulation is even more complex than they imagined.
In any case, none of the new information contradicts modern evolutionary theory; likewise, it does not have any relevance to the issue of whether modern life forms were designed or evolved. It also doesn't overturn the "central dogma" of molecular biology or prove that Lamarck's overall hypothesis was correct. We still have every reason to continue to believe that the unmodified genome is the most important carrier of genetic information and determinant of phenotype, and the extent to which epigenetics is heritable is still an unsolved debate. That makes it a fascinating target for more research, and I'm sure there will be more startling discoveries (and perhaps Nobel prizes) in the near future. I'm also very confident that any new discoveries will be made by actual scientists doing actual research, not theologians.
Darwin's doubled-down denial of genetics
I have no idea what you are talking about with this.
Neither does he!
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
No.
I'm not saying your view depends on assertions and swearing ...
... but you're kind of presenting your view that way, right?
At least I gave some examples.
There's one big difference to illogical arguments. When you bolt something extra to a scientific "argument", it has to apply to everything already tested too. When arguing with an ex, there is selective application of everything.
Not in the traditional sense where you gather everyone involved, hear them out, make a decision and then the matter is settled. In science things are settled when nobody sees a reason to argue anymore, the prevailing theory adequately explains everything in its scope. After all it's mostly mathematical formulas which happen to match the real world, if my contact lenses curve light the way optics say they should what's there to argue? In that sense, I find the resistance to evolution incredible because all it really says is that there'll be more of those who reproduce more and less of those who reproduce less. Sounds to me like a "well, duh" statement, particularly when you look at what we have done with domestication. If you shape the environment, you shape the animals and nature's been doing it much longer than us.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Settled Science though is not generally referred to as settled. Who goes around saying that the sun "rising" tomorrow. is settled science.
The problem with much of modern "science" is that it is being done by politicians pretending to be scientists for political purposes and making the claim of certain things being settled.
I have no idea how monetary policy or vaccine reactions are relevant to this debate, or what they have to do with religion. Nor are politics particularly relevant, since you can find scientists of all ideologies working productively without making extravagant pseudo-scientific claims.
As a biologist, I do know that nearly every single objection I have ever encountered to evolution - and, in particular, common descent, especially as applied to humans and apes - has ultimately been driven by a religious viewpoint, usually a belief in the literal truth of the Old Testament. (I was going to say that the panspermia advocates were the biggest exception, but even they aren't really arguing with the fact of evolution, but the origin of life, which is a different matter.) This goes doubly for the age of the earth, which is even less controversial than common descent. The creationists are also almost uniformly not practicing scientists (or even trained as biologists, in all but a handful of cases); I have yet to meet any biologist who continues to be productive while completely ignoring 150 years of scientific evidence. Conversely, I've known a decent number of biologists who were religious, but did not see the need to distort every scientific finding to fit into their theological worldview. (Francis Collins and Ken Miller are two of the most famous examples, but I've never met them, although I think I used Miller's textbook in high school.) In fact, the one who found "intelligent design" the most infuriating was a conservative Catholic.
In summary: why shouldn't I assume that creationists are religious? You've given me absolutely no reason to think otherwise.
I was quite please to get so far through the comments before a post by an idiot denier.
Then you find the "proof" of warming down at the bottom. A carefully excised anomalous temperature chart that. 0.5C total range with a tail pointing down.
The "tail" seems to be wagging your dog.
This graphic illustrates the stupidity of your view. http://www.skepticalscience.co...
Plot the temperature folks. It ain't hard. BEST has it available for free. http://berkeleyearth.org/data
BEST, a study financed by deniers, hiring the team and setting the goals in the hope of producing an anti-AGW result. And the conclusion was: AGW is real.
I have been pawing through the data from each station.
As you're not a scientist, that's a sure sign that your denial comes from mental illness.
The best story about "settled science" I've ever heard was about ulcers. Barry Marshall was ridiculed for this hypothesis that peptic ulcers and gastric cancer could be related to bacteria, because other scientists didn't believe that bacteria could live in the stomach with all that acid. So what did he do? He DRANK A PETRI DISH containing the bacteria he suspected of causing the problem and.... he was proven right Got a Nobel prize in Medicine in 2005 because of it too. And that's just one of the reasons when I hear someone screaming "the science is settled", I just laugh.
Science is, by definition, always ready to accept a better theory.
New ideas can meet stiff resistance even in the sciences.
David Attenborough: ''I once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could I prove there was a force that could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I was informed.''
Geological maps of the time showed huge land bridges spanning the Atlantic and Indian oceans to account for the similarities of fauna and flora and the divisions of the Asian continent in the Permian era but failing to account for glaciation in India, Australia and South Africa.
Continental drift
To make the case for continental drift, you shouldn't have to demonstrate a priori that there is a force that can move continents, if you can produce sufficient evidence that the continents have, in fact, moved.
My money is being used to expose children to views I don't agree with.
My money is being used to enforce laws I disagree with, and buy weapons I don't approve of. It's called representative democracy; deal with it, or move somewhere else. We do, however, have a specific clause in our constitution about establishment of religion, and the courts have decided that teaching religion in taxpayer-funded schools is included in this prohibition. (This does not equate to disallowing all criticism of science; you are welcome to spout any nonsense you wish, as long as you do not expect the government to pay for it.) If you're unhappy with that, work on getting the 1st Amendment repealed, or move to another country. I'm sure you won't find much support for teaching evolution in, say, Somalia. (But they're probably not going to be wild about your religion either.)
Science is never settled. But it can be accepted by the large majority given overwhelming evidence.
On the contrary, there is a lot of settled science. That doesn't mean it's always right, instead it means exactly that it's been accepted by the majority of scientists because of the overwhelming amount of evidence supporting it.
The world was once flat.
Is it Ironic that you're repeating one of the examples that the article explicitly cites as a stupid argument presented by ignorant people? European and Middle Eastern societies have known the world was round since the 3rd century BC. Other cultures may have taken longer to reach the same conclusion, however, I'm not sure how that relates to science. Do you really intend to conflate pre-science beliefs about the world with actual scientific discoveries? Or are you trying to imply that tomorrow we may find that the world is actually a giant disk floating through space on the back of four elephants standing on a turtle?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Even if it were settled, why would it have to remain so?
From the Guide:
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
Three is my favourite number
I was arguing with a Physicist friend of mine who was adamant that most of Physics is known and the rest only knowable via number crunching. The Physicist was adamant that dark matter was real.
When I illustrated that we have no idea what gravity is, the physicist blew up.
Seriously how can we consider our knowledge nearly complete when we cannot understand the mechanics behind gravity ?
how is one taught to be inbred exactly? are the midterms hard?
How is asking critical questions about view points being pushed onto children with my money establishing religion?
Representative democracy only works when government is minimally intrusive. When government takes initiatives in stealing (i.e. redistribution by another name) or murder (abortion by another name) then it is pursing the very things it was intended to prevent. So I say minimal government or a state of nature for me please.
As you noted there are no government-free zones because governments want to collect as much as they can.
Hundreds of other blokes going "Hey, this guy is right, that also perfectly explains $other_problem I was having". a.k.a peer review.
This discussion turned out mostly useless because the concept of "settled" was not well defined. Taking the definition to be "completely describes reality", all evidence points to this being impossible. My question is why is this so? Is this a fundamental property of nature? Has this property itself been studied?
so he came up with a bizarro view of heredity
According to your own link, his "provisional theory"(this should really be labeled an hypothesis) was replaced by Mendel's laws of inheritance. In his time, no one knew the mechanism of inheritance and genetics. Darwin proposed a possible answer, but his possible answer was replaced by current genetics. It may surprise you to learn that science is not religion and if a better explanation of observations and facts can be found, then the new explanation is adopted. Darwin proposed his hypothesis in 1838. Mendel proposed his in 1865.
reminescent of how the Nazi's invented the "frost" cosmology
You do know that the Nazis came about 100 years after Darwin came up with his hypotheses, right? Darwin didn't copy them as you seem to imply.
because they were embarrased by all the advances made by Jewish cosmologists (who incidentally were mostly Germans themselves)
I am not sure what this has to with anything. I can only guess the entire Nazi thing was just a pathetic combination of red herring and poisoning the well
To put it bluntly, your entire post is bullshit and shows your ignorance of both the scientific method, how scientific advancement works, and the current state of the Theory of Evolution. You should go read an actual scientific book on the Theory of Evolution before you spout off and make a fool of yourself again.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
How is asking critical questions about view points being pushed onto children with my money establishing religion?
Stop playing dumb. We all know that the only reason these "critical questions" (which never come from actual scientists) are ever introduced into a classroom is to promote a religious alternative. Pretending otherwise is just disingenuous and insulting. At least Ken Ham has the honesty to admit this is his goal.
Conceptual, qualitative, or practical? All very different things. Things with mass are attracted to other things with mass. That's settled, because that's how we define it. All the math that goes into that attraction? Will always be open to further refinement. Will a rock always fall if you drop it? Well, antigravity is theoretically possible, so maybe not.
This is about as useful a question as "have you stopped beating your wife."
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Weaknesses of Evolution that are okay to mention:
-The fossil record is incomplete, and will always be incomplete because we will never be able to catalog everything that ever lived.
-The fossil record can occasionally be misleading, because sometimes animals that look similar aren't as closely related as we thought. (DNA and genome science has fixed a lot of this problem with molecular clocks.)
-The fossil record only captures creatures that have hard parts - soft bodied fossils are difficult to find since the soft tissue is so rarely preserved.
-There are no fossils of life before the Cambrian explosion. (I'm leaning toward the "God interference" part of evolution as being when a prokaryote ate an archaea and they merged into a eukaryote 3.5 billion years ago. ID people and Creationists alike hate that idea, but we have evidence it happened and the miracle of complex life was born.)
The problem is that these are not the weaknesses that they want to discuss, at least not completely. They'd rather go on about eyeballs and "irreducible complexity" and the Earth coming into creation in the first place, which is planetary science and not biology.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
It's the only fair way to settle science!
Two scientists in, only one comes out!
It would also have the added benefit of over time creating a species of super strong buff scientists that are designed for fighting... oh wait...
Calling Darwin's view of heredity a "provisional theory" is very gentle indeed.
His view basically said that organisms can pass on characteristics acquired during their own lifetime (see Lamarckism).
Prima facie observations show this is just bad, bad, bad. You don't even need the scientific method to throw this out. In calendar time Darwin was in a different place, but qualitiatively speaking these guys were true contemporaries.
Anyway, Darwin had no knowledge of DNA during his lifetime because evolution (and the spontaneous migration of non-life to life) is tightly coupled to life being vastly, vastly more simple than it is.
This is why there are no more people calling themselves "darwinists". There are neo-darwinists who are basically saying, "Yeah, I don't agree with all the wierd, euguenticist, Lamarkian, racist nonsense that the original guy came up with". Many of Darwin's assumptions that he needed to get the exalted academics cover have been abandoned.
There are no fossils of life before the Cambrian explosion.
Not true! But it's very, very sketchy and weird compared to what comes afterwards, and doesn't provide a neat, continuous path to the animal phyla we're more familiar with. We certainly don't have a fossil record that explains the origin of complex multicellular life - just lots of small clues and educated guesses based on modern forms and molecular evidence. It's a fascinating scientific question but extremely difficult to study, unfortunately, which is why it's almost always going to be an easy target for nitpicking creationists.
I did, however, say that because things LOOKED Lamarckian there was a knee-jerk response against it. I distinctly remember a college biology teacher explaining the case of field mice who developed webbed feet in one generation after a field was flooded.
He said that regardless of the data, we were to reject the idea that an adaptation emerged as a response to stimuli.
If that's not suppression, I don't know what is. Of course I'm probably just making this up, because I like to develop detailed conspiracy theories between different branches of sciences I have no stake in.
No, it is how we stretch ourselves.
Every single person here learns word(s)...from everywhere, including this site. Are we supposed to jam them in a can under the sink?
Only a jerk would complain about someone trying to use a new word, a word they might not be intimately familiar with.
Someone used "dimensionful" and I proceeded to use it a bunch of times (in a physics paper) right after I read it.
I come here for the love
I don't think the government has an obligation to push religion. Really. Paying people to be religious leads to phony religion (see Eusebius History of the Church, the writings of Kierkegaard, etc).
I don't want the government to promote religion (since the government can't do anything very well). I want it to stop saying this view I don't agree with is beyond question.
The European model my ancestors left was one where only the expert's opinion mattered. American thrived because it abandoned that and let people pursue their business without telling them what to believe.
Get the government out of policing ideas!
I distinctly remember a college biology teacher explaining the case of field mice who developed webbed feet in one generation after a field was flooded. He said that regardless of the data, we were to reject the idea that an adaptation emerged as a response to stimuli. If that's not suppression, I don't know what is.
So, one college biology teacher, discussing an anecdote that I can't seem to find on Google, is evidence of "Darwinists suppress[ing] information about inheritance of acquired traits" as a monolithic group? Surely you can do better than that.
That post read like a conversation gone wrong between me and my wife.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Thanks for the correction. I also note I mistakenly put eurkaryotes as 3.5 billion years old, when I meant 1.5 billion. Stupid keyboard, not reading my mind properly!
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Look it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Darwin's theory rested on oversimplifying the complexity of life, so he came up with a bizarro view of heredity reminescent of how the Nazi's invented the "frost" cosmology because they were embarrased by all the advances made by Jewish cosmologists (who incidentally were mostly Germans themselves).
Baby...bathwater. Darwin was trying to posit a mechanisim to describe his observations on hereditable traits. Remember, Mendel was a contemporary, and his work developing genetic theory wasn't to gain general acceptance until after his death...which was two years after Darwin died. Once genetic theory was developed and refined, it was simply applied to Darwin's Theory of Evolution and found to be a better description of how observed heredity actually works than his original hypothesis.
Claiming that "Pangenesis was wrong, therefore evolution is wrong" is akin to claiming that Copernican theory is incorrect because Galileo thought tides were caused by variations in the motion of the earth as it revolved around the sun.
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
He insists that since scientists just attribute whatever they can't explain to "random chance" (Can't recall ever hearing one actually utter those words) there must be an intelligent designer. Yeah, I'm dropping the class and complaining to the department head. 'Merica.
Nothing after "evolution is a fact" that you said is actually a true statement.
If you have no way of showing that the truth is the truth then how do you know it is the truth?
Evolution is a fact. The method of evolving is what is in dispute. What kills me is when people assume that there can be only one primary method, ie Natural Selection. I don't see much difference between most 'Darwinists', ie Natural Selection explains everything, to 'Creationists'.
How narrowly are you defining Natural Selection?
What other candidates do you have for a primary method?
OK, missing species. Because things get eaten by other things, get buried deep by land slides, volcanoes, asteroids, etc, or because this planet is so fucking big, and the animal density is so small, we can't dig it fast enough to find more.
For me, the mathematics are just too improbable. For example, we have Tyrannosaurus, which undoubtedly evolved from something else, although from what I am not able to find in my research. Allosaurus is apparently a disproven theory. But whatever it evolved from, it seems that we ought to have some fossil examples. I mean what are the odds that we would have more than 30 examples of Tyrannosaurus fossils, while having zero examples of anything leading up to a Tyrannosaurus? Is this the evolution in spurts approach where the change from some other species to Tyrannosaurus happened so fast that fossils were unlikely, but then the species Tyrannosaurus happened to be incredibly stable and so we found lots of examples from one side of the Earth to the other.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Long answer is nooooooooooooooooooo.
The "missing intermediate species" boils down to moving the goalpost. Creationists, such as yourself say "Find a link between these two thing you claim are related." An intermediate species is found and they say "Find one one between that one and this then!".
Has an intermediate species ever been found? I know there are plenty of unsubstantiated "may have beens" and plenty of related species, but I can't think of a case where we had a missing link that was subsequently found.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You really don't know many religious people, do you? Many of them believe things that are evident, like you, and in addition have beliefs about things that science has nothing to say on. Plenty of religious people reason very well, and usually their other beliefs are not based on fear.
If we contrast their beliefs, which cannot be disproved, with your beliefs on religious people, I'd say the religious beliefs are less harmful.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What the hell is an "intermediate species"? Just out of interest?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I find it's more often because they've gotten sick of refuting spurious arguments. You can only tell the Time Cube guy's fans that he's full of it so many times before you just decide it's not a discussion worth having.
Essentially "The science is settled" = "Unless you have a solid argument, STFU."
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
They are doing a lot of it at the moment and have had a fair bit of political muscle since the 1980s. At this point, if someone steps into a field they are totally unfamiliar with and publicly questions the mainstream it's an almost certain bet that they are a backwoods religious extremist or bankrolled by them.
Students are a different story and are supposed to question stuff to help them get a handle on what is going on - which is why I bolded "publicly" above.
No. It's rarely about "feelings" or other relativism bullshit where anybodies opinion is supposed to be as valid as anyone else's. When you spend a lot of time on a topic you get to know a lot about it, which skews your "odds" and makes your above comment have little or no relationship with how people do things. It should be obvious that people get better at things with experience instead of it being random as you seem to suggest.
Anyone who looked out from a high mountain or a mast top and thought about it for a bit would laugh at anyone who suggested the Earth was flat.
The scientific way to disprove the hypothesis that objections to evolution come from religion would be to provide examples of such objections that are clearly not religious in nature. Got some? ("Questions about evolution" are asked all the time by a lot of people. They range from attempts to understand to serious research about the details.)
That some people might be predisposed to a bad reaction from something in a vaccine is well accepted. For example, some people are allergic to eggs, and therefore are expected to have a bad reaction to certain vaccines. Every time I get a flu shot, I get asked questions to determine whether I'm likely to have problems.
I agree that it's a good idea to try to see things from other viewpoints, but to do that you really need to understand the viewpoints. You obviously understand the normal viewpoint on vaccines as little as many /.ers understand any sort of religious viewpoint.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That isn't true. The term law was used in the past with the expectation that certain things were settled. The philosophical underpinnings of science have advanced since then and the term law is no longer used.
I find this funny because many of our laws change more frequently than our theories.
We're pretty damn lucky to have the fossil record that we do have since it takes special conditions to turn something dead into a fossil.
Besides, Mendel and microbiologists have documented changes in much shorter time periods which blow the claims of the hard core creationists out of the water. Let's see them try to question the piety of Mendel?
Creationism is about having a simple God that build stuff and buggered off. It's the Christianity-Lite fluffy, feel-good crutch for those that never want things to change and want to be assured that a lack of change is hard coded into reality.
Whether the "world is flat" was a fully accepted principal or not through all societies, or what time its acceptance came to pass, is of less import to my point than the progress of human activity, where its passing was inevitable based on what became common knowledge. You can try to make more of it if you wish, but that was not intended. There was not a defined point in time where beliefs in any given society could be cited as transitioning from "that of the ignorant" to "scientific". That progress in the understanding of what we observe in the world around us varied from one group to the next is even more irrelevant.
I suppose the list of what science is 'settled' would likely vary from person to person. In that regard, what is actually settled would need to be common to all those lists. If settled means we see no possibility that it could change, then maybe some science is settled to most. If that is your point, then I would concur. It is in our inability to see all possibilities that I hold the door slightly open on any given scientific principal, however impossible it is to imagine it not being absolutely correct.
There's nothing that makes one more stupid than being too arrogant to learn from one's mistakes. Accept corrections, like compliments, gracefully and move on.
Not so. Arrogance bothers us emotionally and the inability to learn from mistakes bothers us as scientists. Yet I could pick out dozens of people easily who would remain smarter than the vast majority of the population if they never learned another thing.
Stupidity is relative, and at any given moment, we all have different starting points.
Maybe those proto-Tyrannosaurus examples didn't get stuck in the mud for some reason. They could have been in a different habitat, light enough to not get stuck, or there just was not a vast amount of sediment getting laid down where they were living.
Or on the other hand maybe the rocks their fossils are in are just a bit more inaccessable than the ones where those T-Rex's were found. Note that it's more than 30 examples but a lot less than 30 sites.
Anyone who looked out from a high mountain or a mast top and thought about it for a bit would laugh at anyone who suggested the Earth was flat.
You would think so. Its amazing to see how societal belief systems impact the perception of the surrounding world.
>So, what makes one's opinion more worthy then another?
Rigor. Any idiot can have an opinion - having an opinion based on solid, reproducible data and well-reasoned arguments is what elevates you above the morass of brain-dead punditry.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
https://theconversation.com/no...
Now, there are a lot of articles that you can read across the web that talk about the "debunking" of Lamarck. Implied in this is a rejection of the data which now seems irrefutable. I like this quote, "Although it has been known for a long time that the inheritance of genetic traits does not always follow Darwin’s laws of inheritance, the majority of molecular geneticists disregarded these findings.", from:
http://www.bio-pro.de/magazin/...
But yeah, I totally make this stuff up. It's my hobby.
And the neo-Darwinists? They are today described by eminent scientists and scientific historians as ‘hopelessly out of date’. Evolution has entered a new era of scientific agnosticism, freed from prejudice, bigotry and the idolatry of dogma. Lamarck has emerged intact from two centuries of doubt, adulation, criticism and hope.
http://lamarcksevolution.com/e...
... But concerning theories with a lot of evidence supporting them, you had better present a comprehensive argument.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You seem to be confusing the implications of "theory" with "hypothesis". Theory is the highest title that can be bestowed upon an understanding of the reason that things behave the way they do. Law is the only thing arguably higher, and as a rule that only gets applied to purely descriptive statements, i.e. it describes *how* things have been consistently observed to behave, with no attempt made to explain why they do so. And even then it's not bestowed much anymore.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This seems to suggest that a theory must be complete to have utility, which is absurd. General Relativity and quantum mechanics aren't complete and in some ways are even contradictory and yet both are incredibly useful at describing physical phenomena. Hell, even string theory, which may not even describe a real physical system at all, has created useful mathematical and conceptual tools for physics.
The fact of the matter is that AGW models while not perfectly matching up, all generally agree on certain trends, so this idea that you have all these models with wildly contradictory and incompatible predictions is wrong, and is exactly the kind of hyper/pseudo-skepticism which isn't deserved.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Bible doesn't say anything about a flat Earth so societal belief systems don't come into it at all. What does come into it is some Victorian era writing designed to make people feel "modern" by building a strawman and pretending it was the people of the past.
What made Aldrin's calculations by slide rule for docking Eagle with Columbia so impressive was that he couldn't rely on Newton's laws of motion alone. However that was his thesis topic so he was probably better prepared than anyone for docking after the computer had failed.
Okay, so you have a single example from the 1920s, well before the basic principles of molecular biology were discovered. Plus a couple of vague examples like this:
Ten years ago a colleague of mine working in epigenetics at a large genomic institution was told by the boss that epigenetics was not a real part of genetics and that he should change subjects to “something more serious”
This is a favorite ploy of pseudo-scientists: anonymous references to someone working in mainstream science whose revolutionary work is suppressed by the hostility of the rest of the faculty. I call bullshit. You can always dig up a few geriatric senior scientists, whose best work was done decades ago, willing to pooh-pooh some newer field of research. Most scientists have their own favorite examples. This is not evidence for an organized conspiracy of suppression. As I said before, epigenetics was already a well-established and growing field when I started - and people were already doing "epigenome sequencing" ten years ago.
And I repeat: the importance of "Lamarckian evolution" to the process as a whole has still not been demonstrated. Again, it is important not to conflate the role of epigenetics in organismal development and cellular regulation with the issue of inheritance. Clearly epigenetics is more important to inherited traits than was previously assumed, but we have a handful of examples versus a huge amount of evidence for Darwinian evolution. Presumably we will eventually converge on some new "modern synthesis" that incorporates elements of both, but anyone who argues for the primacy of Lamarckian evolution is grossly overstating the case.
Honestly, how many high schoolers can actually understand a typical journal article?
Depends on which state they are from.
Texas, nope.
Kansas, nope.
.
.
.
When teaching science to the rest, we have to be clear about the fact that the high school level stuff is simplified, although still useful. And a few decades out of date. If they want the up to date view, go to grad school, specialize in a field and catch up with the current thinking. Until then, its not that we are lying to you. This is just all we expect you to absorb between cigarette breaks in the high school parking lot.
Have gnu, will travel.
A theory is science that's been proven one or more times. A law is science that was proven a very long time ago. But it seems like we need a name for settled theories.
I suggest a scientific "conviction". How do you get a conviction? You prove something beyond a reasonable doubt. Of course, a conviction can be overturned. One piece of solid evidence can do it. But there is strong reason to believe that for most convictions such evidence will never appear.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
An intermediate species is one that fills the gap between one species and another one that it supposedly evolved from but is clearly so removed that there must have been one or more species in between.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Science can be settled. This happens when there is a consensus that the evidence for a theory is overwhelming. When there is a consensus that the current theory doesn't explain observations, then it is settled that a new theory is needed.
The atomic theory of matter is an example. Atomic theory was once nothing more than conjecture. Experimentation and observation determined that matter is made of atoms. All modern industries involved in biology and chemistry as well as manufacturing rely upon this theory. We can now "see" atoms with a variety of different tools, but their presence is still inferred much like I infer that there is a computer screen in front of me because light reflected from it is hitting my retina.
Atomic theory being wrong has the same probability as someone discovering that a 2013 Prius is not made from parts.
hows that for settled?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
The fact of the matter is that AGW models while not perfectly matching up, all generally agree on certain trends, so this idea that you have all these models with wildly contradictory and incompatible predictions is wrong, and is exactly the kind of hyper/pseudo-skepticism which isn't deserved.
The problem is not that they don't agree with each other, but that they have trouble agreeing with what we actually observe.
and is exactly the kind of hyper/pseudo-skepticism which isn't deserved.
You ignore here that the stakes are about as big as they can get for a scientific debate. Nobody's multibillion dollar business model is based on string theory being an accurate description or not of some part of reality. But AGW is, both for its supporters and detractors. Either side can buy a lot of science and scientists, including all of climatology. As a result, the AGW theory really does need to be able to pass inspection by this degree of skepticism.
Prove that you love your children or your wife?
The shortcoming or fallacy of logic is that there needs to be a proof for everything.
I stand corrected. Choices of pick up, put down, or pick up in such a way that everyone wishes they'd never picked it up at all sound like a pretty fucking silly third choice to me.
The question is: when does skepticism turn into shilling? There is a point when a subject area becomes so well explored that there is nothing to be gained by taking potshots at the fundamentals. Claims against the foundations become extraordinary and require extraordinary evidence. So, when you hear a lot of noise about a well explored field with claims that the experts are frauds etc... it is pretty easy to infer that the noise is coming from money being spent to raise doubt to protect commercial interests. The link between smoking and cancer was very well established, but many shills were employed to question it in public, as an example. That is not debate, it is a fraud perpetrated on the public.
Natural selection comprises two types: ecological and sexual. Both work the same way: An individual passes its genes down more successfully by surviving longer and in good enough health to produce more offspring.
Ecological selection is what we normally think of as "natural" selection (survival of the fittest). In this case the "selection pressure" is determined by fitness for the environment where one lives. In sexual selection, the selection pressure comes from other members of the species.
Though they work in similar ways, the two may often be at odds with each other. The classic example would be the peacock's tail, which is "costly" to produce and maintain, and actually makes the bird less well adapted to the environment -- dragging all that plumage around slows him down, making him more susceptible to predation. The only useful purpose it serves is to attract peahens. The peahen's preference for a large, showy tail creates a positive feedback, pushing the peacock's tail to its maximum "survivable" size.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
You make an excellent point. Giraffes also have the same type of selection pressures. People assumed that giraffes had long necks because it allows them to reach higher leaves. There's some truth to that but it's also true that male giraffes compete by pushing each other with their necks.
Anyone seeing a giraffe eat would make the first assumption, only someone seeing male giraffes during rut would notice the second.
Unlike the peacock, the long or thick neck may not hamper a male giraffe's viability
Claiming that there's powerful monetary interest in proving AGW true is paranoid delusions.
Abengoa SA is a powerful counterexample. Their business model is based on providing various sorts of renewable energy solutions on the public dime. It doesn't matter which public those dimes come from as they have a number of pricy projects on several different continents. Without the threat of "climate change", they'd be out of luck.
There's also the carbon emission markets traders. That's at least two counters to your argument that it is "delusional".
Phlogiston was proposed as an explanation of why a fire would stop even though fuel was still present. Then, Priestly and Lavoisier explained the properties and function of oxygen. So, did this kill phlogiston? Not quite; see thermodynamics (2nd Law) and physical chemistry (free energy) which brings back part of the phlogiston explanation. So, the Global Warming / Climate Change people have two interesting things to deal with: Yes, carbon dioxide can act as a "greenhouse" gas. But, why is it that carbon dioxide increases are leading events prior to ice ages as revealed by the ice and sea bottom mud cores? This is why that science is still about as settled as the San Andreas fault.
Yeah, because "scientists" are infallible and deserve a degree of authority and influence that exceeds the right of the public to question.
Excuse me, but your bullshit ideal of "science" sounds a little to much like the fucking Inquisition.
What's disingenuous is ignoring your own arguments logical fallacies, and presenting it just like a fucking religion.
Thanks, but no thanks, you both suck.
a purely "scientific" pursuit, entirely separate from culture, religion, politics, natural inquisitiveness, and simple greed.
That way we can gloss-over the entire history and current state of scientific development and discovery, including the nasty little things about "science" and the way people perceive it, thus making it indistinguishable from religion.
Thanks, but no thanks.
It is really not possible to prove hypotheses in science. We can only disprove hypotheses, and "proof" only occurs when all other current hypotheses are eliminated except for one.
We can also create models, often with mathematics, that are just another form of hypotheses. So being "settled" is only a transient state until someone else proposes a consistent model with the evidence.
As such, we must embrace "deniers" that challenge the standing hypotheses and ask them to propose their own testable hypotheses.
Religion is often another hypothesis, but it is often not one that cannot one that can be scientifically disproved. An all powerful deity can alter our reality to erase or manipulate evidence.
If we disallow standing hypotheses to be challenged, then Science becomes an institutional religion. True science must always allow hypotheses to be constantly challenged by well formed alternate hypotheses.
"Settled" is a subjective word, and not a formal description of anything scientific. Scientific theories can be disproved (falsified) but not proved (unlike mathematical theories which can be proved). So science doesn't prove things, and nothing is truly "settled".
But from a practical standpoint, some things are for most purposes settled. For instance relativity (both special and general) is settled to the extent we stake our lives on it holding every time we take an air flight guided by GPS. And before we were staking our lives on relativity's predictions, relativity had survived so many attempts at falsification, most scientists considered it settled.
But the term "settled" has come up recently in the politics of climate science. I would say this climate science is not "settled", certainly not to the extent something like relativity is "settled". But the fact that one can argue that climate science is not "settled science" is basically a red herring, we don't need "settled science" to drive policy - the overwhelming consensus on climate science is a good enough to drive policy.
Throughout my long career supporting decision makers I have always contended that "action defines truth". So, if I am on top of a tall building, the science of gravity is "settled" in that I would not step off the top expecting to hover like Wiley Coyote. In that sense, then settled is a function of the importance of the decision I am making. So, is the science of evolution settled? With respect to actions that allow bacteria to evolve yes, and I use that "settled" state to inform actions regarding overuse of antibiotics. But I seldom make decisions that need to know if Neanderthals could interbreed with Homo Sapiens Sapiens, so that science need not be considered settled. Global warming? Of course it is not "settled". But I do note, and act on, the fact that insurance companies are adjusting rates to reflect the new risks that global warming has introduced (see FL and wind insurance, see MN and house insurance rates). So it is settled in that sense. Beginning of life? Not a scientific question, this is all about where a life deserves protection at the expense of another. Because I believe in the sovereignty of the individual (don't force me to donate my spare kidney, thank you very much), there really is no scientifically answerable question. But there the "settle3d" question is removed from the table by the sovereignty question. My final point? Arguing about when scie3nce is settled in the absence of an actionable question makes as much sense as arguing about angels dancing on the head of a pin.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
The problem is not that they [climate models] don't agree with each other, but that they have trouble agreeing with what we actually observe.
And yet they come closer to agreeing with what we observe than any other methodology we have. When you have something that does a better job than current climate model I'll start listening to you.
Maybe you can pay for lots of scientists but all the money in the world won't change the underlying empirical truth of science and in the end that's what wins in science. Most scientists are intelligent enough to know this and thus won't promote science they know to be wrong.
As Sique says you started with the outlier year of 1998 which is called cherry picking. The fact is that if you statistically analyze the trend from 1998 it's impossible to say whether the warming trend has continued as before or the warming trend has stopped. Both statements fit within the uncertainty of the statistical analysis. That just shows that 17 years is too short a time for conclusive statistical statements in this area.
Some day in the future "He" will come down and
let us all know how foolish or clever we have been.
Until that day -- settled science might be settled in the context
of known data. Add a body of "new" knowledge and data
then revisit what is known.
Newtonian physics is a good example. It solved most if not all of the
problems at hand within the reach of instrumentation of the day. There
were however a number of later measurements that were unexplained as
methods improved. Orbit of Mercury was one IIRC... at which
point Albert and friends explored new solutions.
Today... with the exception of dark matter and dark energy there are
rare examples of unexplained data. Some particle physics research
has taken a different approach and by the exploration of a model attempt
to discover something that has yet to be observed.
Molecular biology is odd in that we know that we do not know very much at all.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
If people would get over their fear of not knowing Truth, be it scientific or otherwise, then we might not invest so much in it once we believe we have found it, and might have an easier time chaining our beliefs when they become outdated.
If it is settled, it ain't science.
Science produces imperfect models of the world it measures.
If you believe there is no way to improve the measurements or to put forth a better model, you are a believer, not a scientist.
--
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov
Of course there is no such thing as settled law. After 100 plus years, Einstein is still being tested again and again. and anyone who thinks he's a better theory unsettles every theory. Newton, Galileo, even Crick & Watson get questioned again, re-philosophized, and tweaked again .. and again. That's the very nature of science ... Anyone who declares a law (or theory) as settled science either doesn't understand science, or is merely a political hack chasing glory or grants.
Alcaide's Cafe,
Sure, as soon as the eventual heat death of the universe stops changing the data!
Why do you need to prove that you love your children or your wife? Your behaviour shows that you do (although you may do it for other reasons). You are a single sample and not a universal model of "loving your wife"
To drive the point home:
Ok, you love your wife, now how much? A lot? A little? Prove it.
The first point is -- it doesn't matter to anyone else, you already _know_ it.
The second point is there are at least 3 different types of knowledge:
* intellectual -- e.g. math, science
* experiential -- as a man you will *never* know what it is like to give birth
* intuitive or subconsciousness (which is mislabeled super-consciousness)
Dismissing intuitive knowledge simply because ones are to fail to understand the concept of a Higher Mind is one of the fallacy of Science & Scientists.
Lastly, ALL Objective truth IS FIRST SUBJECTIVE.
Betteridge says so.
We're at an impasse on that. I attribute the difference to Darwin declining to accept the complexity of biological life to make his theory more persuasive, but your claim is that you don't need to be 100% right about everything to move the field forward (although I think curriculum should note where modern-era people in labcoats diverge from Darwin, but is that establishing religion as well?).
You're painting this as a picture of Darwinian vs. Lamarckian. That's a false dichotomy. I never once argued for the primacy of Lamarckian evolution. That's a strawman. I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge the contributions and relevance of multiple schools of thought. In fact, my original point was not that Darwinists were wrong about many aspects of Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms, but that other schools of thought were rejected by the very wrong attitude that evolutionary mechanisms are exclusively Darwinian.
Naturally, much of the struggle of this was taking place pre-internet and in conversations between student researchers and advisors. If you don't want to accept my contention that there was suppression of these ideas, fine. But don't accuse me of arguing for the primacy of Lamarckian mechanisms, or maintain an ignorant attitude that only one school of thought is legitimate. Which, oddly enough, kind of proves my point.
And the very assumption that complexity = difficulty is unrealistic as well.
That has got to be one of the stupidest things I have ever seen written. So your claim is complexity makes things easier? Wow. But I'm the ignorant one. Do you even know what the word means?
See, we have these great things called tools. And tools let us do things we couldnt normally do. Things like lift things heavier that we could normally lift, or see things we couldnt normally see.
So we have these tools which means at this moment in time we understand everything there is to know about the universe. Ok, now you're making sense. I get it.
And it is the science you trust that takes your voice into a little hand-held box and teleports it hundreds of miles away so you can talk to your mom once a day.
Once again the level of ignorance is astounding. You seem to have no concept of what science is even about. Here is a hint. It has absolutely nothing to do with trust. Amazingly it has nothing to do with how often I talk to my mother either.
Anyway, we absolutely have the means to experiment on climate. It is very easy to fill a clear conatiner with methane and another with air, put it in the sun for an hour and see what happens.
No, we absolutely do not. Your experiment is so lacking as to be pointless. Climate is literally billions of types of interactions each of which has a significant affect on the overall system. What happens in a couple containers filled with gasses is about as significant as the affect of my pissing in the ocean would be. We don't even know what we don't know. The complexity of what we do know is way beyond our ability to model. Hell we can't even measure much of it to any degree of accuracy. They take a core sample from one or 2 spots and then try to conjecture the entire worldwide atmospheric conditions going back 100,000 years from that. We have too little information and there is so much more we have no information about because we don't even know what to look for or measure. Add to that the period of time we have any kind of accurate data for is extremely limited. Going back more then 50 years is all pretty much conjecture. Also no where did I say anything is impossible. I said we don't know nearly enough right now.
I am going to publish my data and see if else sees the same data" -that was just my made-up scenario. But that is exactly what you want from the scientific community.
No, it absolutely is not. Nor is is it scientific method. Scientific method requires that you actively try and find faults with your law or theory. Climate science seems to have turned into science by consensus. It's settled. Anything contrary to the conventional wisdom is looked upon as either something to disprove or twisted to fit current theory.
And lastly, if all you see is scientific studies reinforcing the theory that mankind is affecting the climate, why is it so hard to beleive? Scientists were right about alot of other things right?
The problem is no one seems to be actively trying to disprove it. That is the whole of scientific method, actively looking for things that don't fit your theory. Science is far more often wrong than right. Hell, it seems they don't even have gravity figured out yet and that's something we can do quantitative experiments with.
Just the idea that anyone can think any science is settled shows an absolute ignorance of what science is.
Who is John Galt?
Worse - act A may *only* depend on X, Y, and Z, and it's only in the presence of M,N and O that A, B and C consistently co-occur with X,Y and Z.
And if we presume that free will is an illusion and/or that time is more complicated than we tend to believe and cause need not precede effect, then the potential misunderstandings could get *really* bizarre.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
People already have paid attention to the variables and inputs, and have stayed open to different possibilities. Time and time again that's pointed to the same science - AGW. Just because the last ice age ended thousands of years ago has little to do with what's happening at the moment. You might as well say there's doubt whether volcanoes are hot, as someone burned their mouth on a particularly hot pizza. The science is in - human industry is to blame.
Jump in an fMRI machine and show them. Or measure your body's chemistry when around them vs. away from them. I don't get your point. Measuring something like love isn't impossible.
The problem is that these are not the weaknesses that they want to discuss, at least not completely.
Actually, I've heard the Cambrian explosion used as "scientific" evidence for "Let There Be Animals".
Of course, the "explosion" part of the Cambrian explosion was, what, tens of thousands of years or something? Some time period longer than a day, at any rate. But I just thought I'd pass that little nugget along.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock