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The US Public's Erratic Acceptance of Science
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. general population is often the butt of jokes with regard to their understanding of science. A survey by the Associated Press now shows just how arbitrary and erratic the public's dissent can be. 'The good news is that more than 80 percent of those surveyed are strongly confident that smoking causes cancer; only four percent doubt it. Roughly 70 percent accepted that we have a genome and that mental illness is seated in the brain; about 20 percent were uncertain on these subjects, and the doubters were few. But things go downhill from there. Only about half of the people accepted that vaccines are safe and effective, with 15 percent doubting. And that's one of the controversial topics where the public did well. As for humanity's role in climate change, 33 percent accepted, 28 percent were unsure, and 37 percent fell in the doubter category. For a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth and a 13.8-billion-year-old Big Bang, acceptance was below 30 percent. Fully half of the public doubted the Big Bang (PDF).'"
Not implying. There are a lot of willfully ignorant people that prefer their religion's tale of a 10,000 year old universe to cosmology, geology, astrophysics, and biology. but they really should be a tiny minority on par with other mental illnesses. Sadly, this affliction is rampant in the USA. Happily, it is a dwindling number, and perhaps will soon be eradicated.
Don't ALL scientists doubt the Big Bang and other models for the universe in the sense that they are all subject to comparison with observations? If a model conflicts with observation, the model either must be dropped or modified.
Science isn't about believing something to be true.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Funny thing about this is that anyone actually involved in science would reject the assertion that any theory of how we came to be is a fact. They might say it's a theory with strong evidence, or a weak hypothesis (as in the case of the big bang), but would reject any assertion that one theory was a "fact."
You are going to see that where Science conflicts with Religion, and in some cases Industry. The Current Science that we have, with the technology and Anthropology we have, rules out the possibility of the Christian religion having any basis in reality. It doesn't rule out the possibility a god exists. It only means that the current dominant Abrahamic religions are not realistic descriptions of the universe we live in.
But these religions justify how we treat other people, why certain social groups are stigmatized, and have a heavy impact on who are leaders are, what our laws are, how we raise our children, and the legitimacy of the standing governments. If the Religions aren't true, then there is no justification for the political positions of MANY people in the US Government.
In other cases, its that we are so dependent on dangerous sources of fuel, like Coal, and Petroleum, that there is the fear of an economic death spiral. So we shut our eyes and want to live in fantasy land, until it kills us.
Society calls that being "weird", or a "loner". Mental illness is completely different.
Put yourself in the shoes of the AP. All of those sciencey things are the same, because they're science. Anything more than 0% dissent is too much.
Soon on the cosmic scale perhaps. I will probably be several hundred years at best.
I'm not entirely sure what your point is supposed to be. If your definition of safe is "completely devoid of any possibility of risk," then I wonder how you justify getting out of bed every morning. A more reasonable argument is that safety is always a relative measure. Injuries attributable to common vaccines are uncommon, permanent damage is incredibly rare, and death occurs at a frequency that can best be described as vanishingly small. On the other hand, many of the diseases that we vaccinate against often cause permanent damage or death, and weakening the herd immunity puts not only the individual at risk, but society at large. So, yes, there are some potential (though very small) risks to vaccination, but that does not mean that they are unsafe.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Aren't vaccines statistically safer than surgeries (with all those MRSAs, VRSAs, potential post-op cardiac arrests and embolisms etc.)? Are anti-vaxxers refusing surgeries?
Ezekiel 23:20
I guess you can call crossing the street in a crosswalk safe. Some people do get run over and killed but most come out OK. Not as safe as simply not walking around lots of cars. But safer than jaywalking.
I guess you can call walking across a field safe. Some people do get hit by meteoroids and killed, but most come out OK.
There I fixed that for you.
Doubt "Big Bang"?
Well you should.
It can be said that: Under the conditions for which we need a working model, this 'Big Bang' hypothesis behaves in a way that consistently explains our extrapolations from observable phenomena. It also introduces some inconsistencies when take as a factual occurrence, when we introduce additional extrapolations from different phenomenal observations at quantum level. For those, notions such as "time" or "location" seem to be irrelevant, if not non-existent. This demolishes the very concept of actual measurement in any possible way - so let us posit additional models that require among other things, the hypothesizing of multiple, non-observed dimensions that nonetheless allow our maths to be validated and not face the ontological consequences of nothing being real.
Zeno had similar preoccupations, with time and position.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Compare the two questions:
"Are you confident that the earth is billions of years old?"
"Are you confident that the earth is 4.5 billion years old?"
Version 2 was the version they asked. Frankly, I'd not express too much confidence in that. Just too much precision. Version 1 would have been a much fairer test.
Ad hominem, no true Scotsman, a false analogy, an appeal to authority, some God of the gaps, and straw man arguments---and that's just what I can see off the top of my head. Nice. That is some mighty fine trolling.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Exactly which side are you arguing for?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
My biggest problem with surveys like these is that they public are being asked to reply with certainties that are far greater in clarity and definition than any scientist working on these fields would ever propose. And then the ignorant public are laughed at for doubting scientific truth. No cosmologist would ever state they were 100% certain that the big bang happened, and yet we laugh at the public for not being certain either. True ignorance shows itself as certainty, either for or against supposed "scientific" principles. Being uncertain is okay, as long as you are aware of some of the options.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
That'd be a fair point, but I'd wager that many of the people involved take bronze age writings and conspiracy theories at face value.
Are you being serious? None of the things in that article are seriously under any reasonable doubt. If given a choice between true/false/unsure on any of them, then yes, the only reasonable and rational decision is 'sure'. Anything more than 0% dissent is too much. Now if you were given the option to put a confidence estimate, like say 99% sure, then yeah, I'd agree with you. You could reasonably have maybe 1% doubt about the big bang. But that's not "unsure", by any metric.
There is controversy in science, and a lot of it. For instance, there's controversy on the efficacy of a lot of recent drugs and medical recommendations. But there's no controversy that vaccines are effective. There's no controversy that evolution is real and did happen. There's no controversy that global warming is happening. There may be controversy about the _results_ of global warming in the future - and that's an entirely reasonable, but separate, debate.
Much as most don’t understand the scientific definition of “theory,” you seem to be using the wrong definition of “doubt.”
Proper scientists recognize that a currently held theory is merely the best explanation we currently have for a phenomenon. In light of the evidence, they believe it’s PROBABLY MOSTLY true, but they are willing to easily accept that it isn’t if new evidence demonstrates that the older theory doesn’t explain all the facts. This isn’t “doubt” so much as “critical thinking.”
The doubters the article is referring to are people who, DESPITE the evidence, believe the theory is NOT true. Of course, most of them are painfully unaware of the evidence, they have no idea how to get to it, and they wouldn’t know how to interpret it if they had it. A lot of that is due to a broken educational system.
People say there’s “mounds of evidence” for evolution. So I’ve asked biologists if there was a compendium of major publications in the area, but I didn’t get very far. There are decent college text books, but many don’t present the original evidence; they only recount the findings from the literature. Part of the problem is that most of the “evidence” is boring tables of measurements of fossils and bones. If you won’t know what the numbers mean and how they relate, they’re just numbers. They are the evidence, but it doesn’t help they layman at all. Another part of the problem is that any summary of the evidence would leave out too much. A proper treatment of the topic would be on the order of “every peer-reviewed publication on the topic since Darwin.” This is because publications cite each other so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. They make “assumptions” they don’t have to justify because someone else already did, but it’s a major undertaking to follow all the rabbit holes. Biology PhDs have trouble with that. A farmer will be hopelessly lost.
With most sciences, most people are clueless. But since they have no other reason to doubt it, this doesn’t cause any conflict. People have heard of chemistry and astronomy and mostly just consider them to be overly difficult or esoteric. It’s only biology (and some of cosmology) that makes any statements that go against things people have been taught to believe. They have no hope of understanding the science, but they do believe what their religious leaders tell them, and there is nothing intelligible to the that says otherwise.
It’s this lack of understanding of what “common folk” go through that makes me really angry with people like Richard Dawkins. As far as many people are concerned, he’s nothing more than an arrogant jerk who thinks that everyone who believes differently from him is a moron. I’ve seen dozens of videos of him on YouTube, and I never see him present evidence. He merely claims that it’s there and believes that it should just be obvious to everyone what it means. It’s like me (the computer nerd) when I was in high school who treated people unkindly because they didn’t understand computer as well as I did. Now I’m a CS professor, and I have to teach basic CS concepts to young adults. It’s VERY challenging to get some concepts across, but I work hard to do it. Dawkins is terrible at this. Perhaps if he deigns to teach an undergraduate course now and then, he might do okay, but he strikes me as one of those all-too-common lecturers who has no patience for anyone who questions what he says. His attitude reminds me of so many religious people who insist that you’ll go to hell if you don’t believe blindly exactly as they do. I guess calling someone a moron isn’t as bad as telling them they’re going to hell, but it’s a similar intolerant attitude, intolerant to people who don’t share your same training
You also have a pretty fucked up understanding of Christianity
So do a lot of Christians. See "Christian economics", "protestant work ethic", and similar.
You might want to start with looking at who actually proposed the big bang theory in the first place, and until you do, shut the fuck up you ignorant twit.
Yes, a Catholic priest. As a general rule, Catholics seem to be significantly more sane than various American protestant sects on several issues.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The article conflates two very different types of science. One is experimental: cigarettes cause cancer. That's a testable, provable (and proven) hypothesis. The scientific method can be used. Alternate explanations can be systematically disproven.
Then there's the science that says, "because X and Y are true, it makes sense that Z is true". Note that it does NOT say "therefore Z MUST be true", which is what the article is implying. Z is something like the story of the universe from Big Bang through inflation up to today, or the story of manmade global warming. "Science" can project itself in those directions and come up with some answers, but there is no scientific method on a narrative. There are no controlled experiments. Every alternate hypothesis cannot be evaluated. They are at best projections, models. They're not "truth" without faith.
That sounds a lot like Ken Ham's distinction of observational vs historical science.
How do you actually test that cigarettes cause cancer? A big observational study? Well maybe people smoke because they're stressed or not health conscious, and they have a natural per-disposition to lung cancer. Build it from theory? Sure the smoke causes these problems in the lungs that we would expect to cause cancer, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're causing the cancer.
Now how do we test the Big Bang theory? A big observational study? We can see things that look a lot like after effects of what a big bang would look like, but maybe we're misidentifying them. Theory? There's a lot of theory about the universe that suggests a big bang, but that could be a mistake.
Clearly the cigarette cancer link is a lot easier to demonstrate than the big bang theory, or AGW, but they're not really alternative types of science. At the end of the day all of science is a mixture of observe X, where X is either a constructed experiment or a data set collected from the universe, and develop a theory Y, where Y has to explain X and all the previous observations we've made.
Putting a bunch of cigarette smoke into a lung and expecting it to develop cancer requires "faith" in the same way that putting a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere and expecting it to develop warming does. The latter problem is a harder one no doubt, but it follows the same approach of incremental collection of data and development of theories to explain that data.
I stole this Sig
From Dr. David Goodstein, 1994: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg...
"In the meantime, the real crisis that is coming has started to produce a number of symptoms, some alarming and some merely curious. One of these is what I like to call The Paradox of Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates. The paradox is this: as a lingering result of the golden age, we still have the finest scientists in the world in the United States. But we also have the worst science education in the industrialized world. There seems to be little doubt that both of these seemingly contradictory observations are true. American scientists, trained in American graduate schools produce more Nobel Prizes, more scientific citations, more of just about anything you care to measure than any other country in the world; maybe more than the rest of the world combined. Yet, students in American schools consistently rank at the bottom of all those from advanced nations in tests of scientific knowledge, and furthermore, roughly 95% of the American public is consistently found to be scientifically illiterate by any rational standard. How can we possibly have arrived at such a result? How can our miserable system of education have produced such a brilliant community of scientists? That is what I mean by The Paradox of the Scientific Elites and the Scientific Illiterates.
The question of how we educate our young in science lies close to the heart of the issues we have been discussing. The observation that, for hundreds of years the number of scientists had been growing exponentially means, quite simply, that the rate at which we produced scientists has always been proportional to the number of scientists that already existed. We have already seen how that process works at the final stage of education, where each professor in a research university turns out 15 Ph.D's, most of those wanting to become research professors and turn out 15 more Ph.D's.
Recently, however, a vastly different picture of science education has been put forth and has come to be widely accepted. It is the metaphor of the pipeline. The idea is that our young people start out as a torrent of eager, curious minds anxious to learn about the world, but as they pass through the various grades of schooling, that eagerness and curiosity is somehow squandered, fewer and fewer of them showing any interest in science, until at the end of the line, nothing is left but a mere trickle of Ph.D's. Thus, our entire system of education is seen to be a leaky pipeline, badly in need of repairs. The leakage problem is seen as particularly severe with regard to women and minorities, but the pipeline metaphor applies to all. I think the pipeline metaphor came first out of the National Science Foundation, which keeps careful track of science workforce statistics (at least that's where I first heard it). As the NSF points out with particular urgency, women and minorities will make up the majority of our working people in future years. If we don't figure out a way to keep them in the pipeline, where will our future scientists come from?
I believe it is a serious mistake to think of our system of education as a pipeline leading to Ph.D's in science or in anything else. For one thing, if it were a leaky pipeline, and it could be repaired, then as we've already seen, we would soon have a flood of Ph.D's that we wouldn't know what to do with. For another thing, producing Ph.Ds is simply not the purpose of our system of education. Its purpose instead is to produce citizens capable of operating a Jeffersonian democracy, and also if possible, of contributing to their own and to the collective economic well being. To regard anyone who has achieved those purposes as having leaked out of the pipeline is silly. Finally, the picture doesn't work in the sense of a scientific model: it doesn't make the right predictions. We have already seen that, in the absence of external constraints, the size of science grows
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
We have countless lungs to study. We have one (1) universe, and one (1) atmosphere. There is no repetability of the grand narratives, because there's a sample size of one, and we're in the middle of the "experiment". Completely different from studies on lungs.
The survey is crap.
Just take this statement: "A mental illness is a medical condition that affects the brain."
Does mental illness affect the brain? Or is it caused by the brain? Is distinguishing the two even sensible? Is it a "medical condition" or a behavioral state? Is asserting that it is a "medical condition" a political statement that someone should take issue with (e.g., PTSD is listed in the DSM--is that a "medical condition"? Is depression following sexual abuse a "medical condition"? Is obesity a "medical condition"?)
Or this statement: "Inside our cells, there is a complex genetic code that helps determine who we are." Does the genetic code "determine" who we are? What does "who we are" even mean?
"Childhood vaccines are safe and effective." *All* vaccines? Even ones I don't even know about?
"The universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang." I can't remember if it was exactly 13.8 billion years ago. Was it a big "bang" or a big "expansion"?
I'm just wondering, do people distrust science, or do they distrust corporations? I trust science that it is capable of producing vaccines that are perfectly safe (well, as safe as a medical treatment can become, there's always a minimal risk involved, but in general the gain outweighs the risk by some margin). I don't trust corporations to not cut corners and endanger lives if they can get away with it while making a buck.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unless you got a better theory, I guess there's little alternative.
And no, "a wizard did it" is NOT a theory!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I stopped listening when one of them wanted to argue that the King James book was God's word.
God's word? That book is a translation of a (very bad, I may add) translation of a translation of a translation. And possibly you have to add another "of a translation" in there, the jury's still out on that one.
That's like a homeopathic dose of God's word.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Pretty sure the sidereal movement of the Earth is going to cause a "sunrise" in a few hours, irrespective of the state of this unresolvable argument.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Climate change: A theory about very complex system to model with the most famous proponent being a politician [with vested interests and suspect behaviour]. Of course there will be some doubters.
Thank you for summing up the core of the problem: too many people think celebrities are more believable than science, when it comes to being told what to think.
If Al Gore had "discovered" climate change, and was the only significant person promoting the theory with little convincing evidence, then people would certainly be right to doubt. But when Gore is only one notable figure of many that's echoing what the huge majority of climatologists have been telling us for decades, and when those climatologists have reams of peer-reviewed studies summarising multiple lines of evidence to back up their conclusions, then who gives a flying fuck about Gore?
Sadly, the answer is "the public", or more specifically, that sector of the public that don't want to accept any responsibility and would rather reframe the debate to be about celebrities and their credibility. Same goes with vaccines - much of the focus is on McCarthy instead of the evidence. Plus of course the Bible itself is probably the biggest celebrity ever, in a way.
Solution? Dunno. Stop clicking on every damn story with a celebrity in it, maybe, and perhaps then "news" outlets might not give such weight to their opinions. Won't help people face facts, but it will reduce the noise levels at least.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
We should be glad we are a country which does not take the word of "authority" at face value. Surely the best scientists and innovators come from that tradition. If a person does not understand a proof, they should not blindly accept it.
That sounds like anti-conformism for anti-conformisms sake. There's nothing wrong with questioning authority, the problem is with assuming the authority is wrong just because they're an authority. There are a ton of mathematical proofs I don't understand but I blindly accept because I understand the mathematicians don't have a motive to mislead me. And even when something catches my eye and I do decide to question I'll do so aggressively but that doesn't mean I stop believing it. Whatever happens you've got to believe something, if you don't believe the authority then what do you believe?
Similarly with AGW, I can read a blog or skim a paper as well as anybody, but I can't understand the entirety of climate research. I can however understand the researchers and the scientific institutions and not every force pushes them in the direction of the truth. But given what I understand of the science and the scientists I can't think of a group who would be closer to the truth than them.
I stole this Sig
You sir are an idiot. And your mod +5 insightful shows the scientific illiteracy even on Slashdot. There is only one scientific method, and it contains "testable, provable (and proven) hypothesis", also called theories. Yes we do have only one universe and only one earth, but what makes a scientific theory successful is a) the explanatory power and b) testable predictions. How can we test that the earth is in fact 4.5 billion years old? For example by searching for old rocks and date them with the radioactive dating methods (no there is not just carbon-14, Wikipedia lists over 9 methods[1]) and geologists actively trying to find older rocks to push the limit of the age of the earth. Then we confirmed the age of the solar system (4.568 billion years)[4] and it confirms the age of the earth. Furthermore, we actually can see now protoplanetery disks (thanks to the hubble space telescope)[2] that confirms our theory of how a solar systems are formed. Please see How Old Is The Earth, And How Do We Know? [3]
The scientific method deals with models. There are no truths, there are best explanations. Only religion deals with truths and for that you do need faith. But science makes correct predictions, whereas religious "prophecies" are all failures.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
[3] http://www.talkorigins.org/faq...
[4] http://www.universetoday.com/1...
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Some times it is a bad thing.
A dissenting opinion which has no evidence to back its claims has little to no value.
When the proponents of that dissenting opinion misrepresent the scientific method to fool the science illiterate masses, it is a bad thing.
Several dissenting opinions we hear now days holds on by plain deception.
I don't think that's even the point. If people doubted the big bang because they carefully considered the arguments and found some flaws that made them doubt it, that would be fine. They doubt it because they can't imagine the terms involved, because a religious book says it isn't true, or mainly just because they don't want to think about it. For the same reason that people think low frequency radiation from their computer is dangerous but Gamma radiation from water at a hot spring isn't. For the same reason people use IE instead of Firefox or Chrome. It usually isn't that they've educated themselves and weighed the evidence - it's that they can't be bothered - and yet at the same time, they feel a need to express their uneducated opinion.
Anecdotal Evidence/Case in point: A friend of a friend who lives in Kansas, USA started trying to buy up bottled water after the Tsunami incident in Japan. Because, you know, the water in the US was going to be contaminated soon. Riiight. Here I live in Tokyo and the water is generally safe, but the water in Kansas was to be undrinkable. Yet he was going to solve this by somehow buying enough water to last a lifetime? I guess food wasn't to be affected. People are just, in general, stupid and illogical - and it doesn't seem to bother many of them.
People in society need to start doing two things:
1. Educate themselves so that they can do some critical thinking about the world in general and enlarge their world view. Start actually caring about things other than which celebrity is cheating on who.
2. Recognize when you don't know and don't care to put forth the required effort and defer to the experts instead of talking bullshit. Sure, the experts may be wrong occasionally - especially about models of the universe or financial predictions - but they have in general a much better chance of knowing what they are talking about than you do, if you can't be bothered to do #1 above.
Age of the earth; Personally I think a global flood story fits the geology better than reliance on gradual processes. Perhaps triggered by a huge asteroid bombardment that hit the entire solar system (my fathers pet theory that he has been researching and may write a book on). Most of the geological record is made of very clean flat sedimentary layers with no signs of habitation or erosion. I believe the Fossil record was mostly sorted by water, sinking based on size or density not age or biological complexity. All those dinosaurs died out quite quickly after the climate changed or humans decided to hunt them. I have yet to see any evidence that compels me to believe that evolutionary processes can create new cellular machines. Yet animals change in various ways and adapt to external selection pressures quite rapidly. Most evidence of adaptation seems to be achieved though tweaking the parameters of existing features, or the destruction of existing cellular machinery.
Read up on Strata Smith. Basically your theory is similar to the theories before he noted that fossils were increasing in complexity as they went up the layers, and he could identify the layers based on the fossils he found in them and he could successfully predict the next layers above and below. This made him money predicting where coal would be found, which was big money back in Victorian england. So basically your theory was disapproved over a hundred years ago, assuming you take into account the evidence. If you ignore the evidence, well then, basically any theory can be proved. That is how religion works.
I suspect most of these results aren't necessarily coming about because of religion, but from basic ignorance of science. Ask questions about something the listener has no knowledge about in any meaningful way, then they either guess the answer or they give the answer that they are expected to give by society. This applies to even people who give the "correct" answer, I doubt many of those who agreed that smoking caused cancer ever read the scientific reports about it or that those who agreed with the big bang theory understand what it really is.
In other words, this is not a poll about understanding science but a poll about which viewpoints are commonly accepted or not.
And this is not use a problem in USA, you will find this around the world, but it's more fun to make fun of the US and pretend that it's more ignorant than elsewhere.
Even if you will find more people in Europe that agree that climate change is caused by humans this does not mean that there are more people who read science journals over there, but that the prevailing public attitudes lean in that direction more than in the US. In the US we've got some people trying to actively sway public opinion about climate change for economic reasons, thus lots of doubt is created which is less common in Europe. For both Europe and the US the vast majority of the people have only heard about climate change from the news media anyway.
A huge issue is that even the people claiming to be intelligent can not differentiate between theory and fact. I blame our horrible education system and 'reward everyone including people that get it wrong' methodology. These same people lump inductive and deductive reasoning into one category because they are not taught the difference. Unless of course they happen to take an elective college class or by happenstance figure out the difference on their own.
Hell, if they took 10 seconds to look at the Wiki page for the inductive reasoning they would realize their idiocy.
Inductive reasoning forms the basis of most scientific theories e.g.; Darwinism, Big bang theory and Einstein's theory of relativity.[2][3]
Good luck getting these morons to think, I gave up long ago because these same idiots get mod points so if you debate them you must be a troll.
In my opinion, articles like TFA make matters worse. They don't point out that these theories are just that, it's expected that everyone has an absolute belief in what ever theory they are handed. Interestingly there are thousands of doctors that question the massive vaccination policies today, but we are not allowed to debate any of their merits because it's taught as fact that vaccines cause no harm. (also makes a few companies assloads of money, go figure...). We still have no idea what caused the Universe to exist, and if you ask that question you must be one of those religious people and not believe in the big-bang theory.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Well I don't thin it's unreasonable to declare Vaccines "safe" and still have a few people die from them every year.
People die from placebo pills. People die from injections of saline solution. People die from nothing or from unrelated things.
"Safe" means that your chances of dying are less after the vaccine than before it. If the vaccine has a 1% chance of killing you, but you have a 50% chance of dying from a horrible disease without it - then the vaccine is safe and effective. If the vaccine has a 1% chance of killing you, but you have only a 0.001% chance of dying from the disease it prevents then it may be a bad deal (not "safe") even if it is effective at preventing the disease from killing you.
From the numbers I have seen, most vaccines are both safe and effective by those criteria. Of course, the more the disease numbers go down through the use of vaccines, the less danger you will be in to start with, so in the short term, it may start to look like some vaccines are a bad deal. The POINT though is that the vaccines have a very low "incidence" rate and they don't cause half the people who take the vaccine to develop autism or anything like that.
But the problem is that people _aren't_ questioning authority. They're told vaccines aren't safe, and they believe it. Questioning authority means, "I don't know if it's safe or not, but I intend to find out." What's happening here is, "Somebody told me it wasn't safe, so it probably isn't."
The article doesn't even go there. The polling is figuring out if the responder has heard of the topic being asked or not and is willing to give an answer. If the topic is relatively unknown then the responder tends to guess or claim ignorance (thus a 33/33/33/ split in answers). If the topic is a hot topic in in the news a lot but not really controversial (cigarettes causing cancer) then the responder gives the answer that is generally accepted, possibly just what they were told in school (thus an 80/10/10 answer). If the topic is a hot topic but which is causing a lot of debate for various reasons then the responder gives an answer that fits the generally accepted answer for their particular peer group.
Nowhere is the poller asking if they understand the science at all or if they understand what a hypothesis is or other things like that. In fact it's not even a poll about science itself but about how much someone knows about these topics in science and how much politics influences the belief this for certain topics.
"s/electric universe/flat earth/g"
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
As opposed to food that is fertilized with a substance that does not come from the excretory organs of an animal.
You say that like its a bad thing.
I think the KJV has some distinct advantages. For instance:
1. It's written in Shakespearian-era English, which has been proved to be about twenty percent cooler and over seventy percent more epic than modern english.
2. Some of the edits were—pardon the expression—simply divine. "I have become a brother to jackals"? Weak. "I am a brother to dragons"? Loving it. Somebody deserved a bonus for that gem.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Not implying. There are a lot of willfully ignorant people that prefer their religion's tale of a 10,000 year old universe
That's both sad and amusing. Having read and learned about the Bible, I can tell you this much: the geneologies in Genesis and elsewhere are not complete and exhuastive. They do not claim to be complete and exhaustive. Nowhere in the Bible is it so much as implied that they are.
The standard ancient Hebrew practice of listing such geneologies is to list only the most famous/notable ancestors. More mediocre and lesser-known ancestors are left out deliberately because they were not considered worthy of mention. Thus there are large gaps of unknown time in the geneologies listed in Genesis and elsewhere. Nothing to the contrary is ever claimed. This fact is not even difficult to find out, except that it does depend on doing your own homework instead of letting the TV and the culture do the thinking for you. The main point of all the geneologies in the Bible is to establish that the line of King David was known (old testament) and is the same line from which Yeshua (new testament) is descended, which is important because various prophecies concerning the Messiah predicted this (e.g. Isaiah).
To infer some kind of final ultimate Age of Humanity or Age of The Earth from this is madness. The Bible never represents it as such, and anyone claiming it does is simply unfamiliar with the very book (and ancient Hebrew culture) they are claiming to understand. The Bible makes no claims whatsoever concerning things like how long ago Adam lived, how long ago Noah lived, how long ago the Flood was, etc.
Most self-described Christians don't know this and that's just plain fucking lazy, to be frank with you. You believe this is the WORD OF GOD and yet you can't be bothered to learn a few easily researched facts about it?? This is what happens when people always have some excuse for why they won't do their own thinking and their own learning.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
What about the multiverse? :)
What?
This was a joke about him saying there was only one universe.
The atmosphere isn't some single indivisible thing anymore than the universe,
What??
Notwithstanding other planets the atmosphere consists of multiple layers of atmosphere, different regions of the planet, different aspects like storms, rainfall, temperature, etc.
For instance CO2 warming doesn't just explain the earth getting warmer right now, it also explains that different layers of the atmosphere will warm to a different degree, it also explains past warming events.
I think you misunderstood what I meant, they don't specialize in 'the universe' because the universe is actually an insanely vast and complex thing, they instead specialize in some arcane aspect of inflation theory.
Your issue with the multiverse and specialist thing was a misunderstanding, similarly with the atmosphere I wasn't saying it was infinite, I was saying it was way too big and complex to treat as a simple thing.
The theory that Zeus threw thunder, if the atmosphere was as simple as a thing that made thunder then the only thing we could repeat was the observation that thunder happens. But we can test the Zeus theory multiple ways, we can fly up to the top of the clouds and see if a giant is hanging out up there, we can look at multiple clouds in different parts of the globe and see if there's more simultaneous lightning strikes than Zeus has limbs, we can check to see if lightning strikes correlate with sacrifices, or if there are other cloud characteristics that predict lightning. There is only one atmosphere but I just named four ways to test the Zeus theory, its not as simple as one atmosphere means one observation and no way to double check your theory, that's why the observational vs narrative model is false.
I stole this Sig
The problem is that people aren't questioning "authority" in the form of celebrities with no qualifications at all, and are unreasonably questioning authority, in the form of people who have spent decades training and studying the things they're talking about.
By unreasonably questioning I don't mean skepticism, I mean unshakeable disbelief.
Those who would advocate AGW need to provide a solid convincing answer to one thing: the temperature of every planet in the solar system has increased, not just Earth's. I think we can agree there are no humans on Venus and Neptune cutting down trees and burning fossil fuels.
Bullshit; there is no evidence supporting the idea that all planets are warming uniformly and at the same relative rate (which would be necessary for this idea). Any climate variations on other planets is perfectly well explained by proximity to the sun and natural environmental fluctuations. The warming of the Earth, on the other hand, is not explained by these factors. Besides, there's no evidence that the current epoch of warming of the Earth has tracked solar output (in fact there's no evidence that the sun's output has varied significantly, on average, in the past few millenia).
But it's curious how people would cling to the data on the climate on other planets - which is tenuous and sparse at best - and ignore the massive amount of evidence we have for Earth's climate, CO2 concentration, and the interlinking of these two.
And yes, ocean acidity is a huge problem and it's caused by CO2. In fact it's one of the main problems that our carbon emissions have caused.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
OK, I give. What was it that really eradicated polio then? I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it wasn't fluoride in the water that did it either.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
It IS inconsistent with a rapid deposit. The depth isn't correlated with density, or weight or buoyancy. Instead it's correlated with complexity. Organisms survive because they are still well adapted to their environment. Anyone with the slightest education in evolution would be able to answer that. Also, a few strata have isotopes that aren't found on earth anywhere else, but are found on meteors, and these strata perfectly partition fossil - just as if a large meteor broke up in the atmosphere and was distributed over a large area, somewhere between two ages with different animals. This is completely inconsistent with all the strata being deposited at once. Not to mention we have a very good idea of the rate of sediment deposits which is consistent with the estimated ages of the fossil records. Also consistent with documented volcanoe eruptions which have caused identifiable deposits. Also, the types of plankton and krill have changed over time in ways that leave different variants in different strata, but inconsistent with a sudden deposit, since these species all were essentially the same, and wouldn't be expected to differ in buoyancy. That's just off the top of my head - and I'm no expert. If you want to attack the science, at least learn some of it first.
All those dinosaurs died out quite quickly after the climate changed or humans decided to hunt them.
You almost had me going there, +1 Funny
There isn't actually much evidence of the Big Bang directly, it is implied as a way to explain the red shift we see of distant galaxies (red shift = it seems like remote galaxies are moving away from us).
There's the cosmic background radiation which is considered to be the echo of the big bang as it fits and there are a few other independent things that imply the big bang. When you measure the age of the Universe using unrelated observations and coming up with close to the same numbers give or take it lends credibility to a theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The article conflates two very different types of science. One is experimental: cigarettes cause cancer. That's a testable, provable (and proven) hypothesis. The scientific method can be used. Alternate explanations can be systematically disproven.
Then there's the science that says, "because X and Y are true, it makes sense that Z is true". Note that it does NOT say "therefore Z MUST be true", which is what the article is implying. Z is something like the story of the universe from Big Bang through inflation up to today, or the story of manmade global warming. "Science" can project itself in those directions and come up with some answers, but there is no scientific method on a narrative. There are no controlled experiments. Every alternate hypothesis cannot be evaluated. They are at best projections, models. They're not "truth" without faith.
Global warming is a scientific result from the study of climate and the physics/chemistry governing the climate system. Fourier came up with Greenhouse theory in the 1820's and the first climatological model to show anthropogenic global warming was developed by the father of of physical chemistry Svante Arrhenius in the late 1800's, long before computers came on the scene.
No scientific method? No controlled experiments? Have you ever cracked open anything other than an elementary school textbook? And you seriously wonder why scientists don't bother listening to people like you? "The last 200 years of physics, thermodynamics, and chemistry is all bullshit," is basically what you're saying, and has as much credibility as a prostitute preaching abstinence.
~X~
The Current Science that we have, with the technology and Anthropology we have, rules out the possibility of the Christian religion having any basis in reality. It doesn't rule out the possibility a god exists. It only means that the current dominant Abrahamic religions are not realistic descriptions of the universe we live in.
Which science is that then? Is it the science that claims we live in a multiverse where there are infinite universes where every possibility happens? Is it the science that claims our universe is a hologram? Is it the science that claims we popped into existence through a fluctuation in quantum probability? Is it the science that claims to explain what the universe is and how it came about, except that it doesn't know what the dark matter and dark energy are that constitute the overwhelming majority of it ... assuming it exists at all and the explanation isn't actually a modified theory of gravity like TeVeS or some such? Is it the science that claimed that the coelacanth was dead for 66 million years .... until one was caught in 1938? Is it the science that claimed the city of Troy didn't exist ... until it was found? Is that the science that said that the Antikythera Mechanism shouldn't exist? Is it the science that claimed that the walls of Jericho falling outward was a myth ... until it was proven? Is it the science that claimed it was impossible that the Bible was transmitted accurately through the centuries.... until the Dead Sea scrolls and other document fragments were found to prove that it had been?
Perhaps you should prepare yourself for further "refinement" in the understanding of science on various matters?
But these religions justify how we treat other people, why certain social groups are stigmatized, and have a heavy impact on who are leaders are, what our laws are, how we raise our children, and the legitimacy of the standing governments. If the Religions aren't true, then there is no justification for the political positions of MANY people in the US Government.
Shall we contrast Marxism or Marxist-Leninism which has been claimed to be a "science" by countless millions over the last century, and which has been the governing philosophy for a large percentage of the earth's population into the 1990s (and still governs China and three lesser nations) with the Bible? Marxist principles (14:16-23:16) call for the destruction of the class enemy in the revolutionary struggle, and the destruction of primitive societies that were too far behind to catch up with the revolutionary struggle which at the time would have included groups such as the Serbs, Bretons, Basques, and Scottish Highlanders. The National Socialists, another set of socialists inspired by Marx, exterminated the "unfit," the deformed, gays, Jews, and many others.
Should we branch off into the Progressives and their ideas about eugenics?
And what of the Bible?
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” -- Mark 12:28-31
Your views seem very questionable on both the science and the question of religion.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Well, yes, ... - but what you are saying is nothing more than what all scientists agree on: that all theories are models limited by our understanding and observattions. The big bang model is a proper theory, by the way: a hypothesis, that has produced predictions, none of which have been falsified. And it is amazingly accurate for such a long shot. We have very little reason to doubt that something very much like a huge explosion happened around 13 - 14 billion years ago; where the doubt creeps in is some time before inflation. That is no surprise, since we, as scientists, are working within the limits of our observations and can only speculate about what we can't (yet) observe.
I'm not convinced about what you say about time and location, or measurements; for one thing, we still don't have a clear understanding of several of the fundamental concept we use. For example, why does time seem to be so different from other dimensions? Why does the speed of light seem invariable? What is a particle? And a field? And mass, electric charge, ....? Just because we have a mathematical form to fit these observables into, doesn't mean that we actually understand what they are.
Everyone skeptic of AGW needs to not only ignore basically all of climate science, but also the common sense argument:
The energy captured in coal, gas, and oil is the result of many millions of years of sunshine. How, exactly, does one reasonably maintain an expectation that our releasing that in a matter of a couple decades should have no significant effects?
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Doubt "Big Bang"?
Well you should.
I agree with you post but...
And there's always a but.
There's a big difference between someone who doubts the big bang because they evidence isn't conclusive and it's just the best hypothesis we have right now and someone who doubts the big bang because an 1700 year old book says a sky man created the earth in 7 days.
The former has doubts because their mind open to other possibilities, the latter because their mind is closed to other possibilities. Doubt is really the wrong word for the latter, but they like it because it allows them to get a word in to rational conversations and once that happens, well you know the old saying about arguing with an idiot.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Another thing that the American public is confused about, is the difference between the way science uses the word "theory," and the colloquial use of the word. In other words, most Americans think "theory" means "hypothesis." They hear "the theory of evolution" as "the hypothesis of evolution" because they have that idiom, "it's just a theory," (meaning mere speculation), at the front of their minds. This gives rise to specious arguments, even from otherwise intelligent people, such as, "Gravity is just a theory, too!" Better to explain the difference between an hypothesis and a theory, if you're going to say anything at all.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
No, he will be modded down for claiming something practically all the evidence says is false. And quite rightly so. Ignoring evidence because you can't understand it or because you don't like the consequences is not "questioning theories" - it's being lazy and/or dishonest.
Funny thing is two of the main three that pointed out the problems with the flood idea were clergymen. If your religion cannot survive contact with reality then it's a far weaker thing than theirs.
The "fossils are from a flood" thing is not from the Bible but instead an extrapolation from it to try to explain fossils. If they are from a different cause that's only challenging the extrapolation and not the religion itself. The truly sad thing is the step backwards were branches of a religion founded long after the flood theory was abandoned by the mainstream decided to revive it again - something about seeing educated clergy as an enemy I believe. A lot of this anti-science bullshit grew out of seeing Jesuits as competition for flock members.
Sadly, this affliction is rampant in the USA. Happily, it is a dwindling number, and perhaps will soon be eradicated.
I wish you were right. I wish it was a dwindling problem, soon to be eradicated. I want to believe that. However, conservative Christians (which should make heads explode with paradox) aren't going away anytime soon. I think you are right that most Boomers that hold these beliefs will be departing in the next decade or so. But they have grandchildren, many of whom listen. I have been teaching middle school geography for ten years. This year was the very first time I had 2 sets of parents question my teaching of the Big Bang as they didn't believe it. I teach at a private school with intensely involved parents so this was not an issue of some parents just happen to start paying attention. While not a strong example, it does lead me to believe that the idea that Young Earth/ID types are fading away is simply not true.
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The energy captured in coal, gas, and oil is the result of many millions of years of sunshine. How, exactly, does one reasonably maintain an expectation that our releasing that in a matter of a couple decades should have no significant effects?
Except that the energy being released by burning all that fossil fuel is trivial.
Google gives me 144000TWh in 2008 world energy consumption. Call it 2x10^17Wh
Solar flux at Earths surface is around 2x10^17W. Geothermal is around 5x10^13W.
Almost 10^5 hours in a year, so Geothermal heating is about 4x10^18Wh/year
The heating from burning all that fossil fuel is small in comparison to the heating due to natural radioactivity in the Earth's crust which, in turn, is negligible in comparison to the energy from the Sun.
It's the CO2 that is the problem. Even though it traps a tiny extra fraction of that incoming solar radiation, a tiny fraction adds up to a lot of energy and it's year in, year out.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
>The Current Science that we have, with the technology and Anthropology we have, rules out the possibility of the Christian religion having any basis in reality.
What the fuck?
No. Not in the slightest.
You can certainly argue against literal interpretations of Genesis, but most Christians do not and have not believed in a literal interpretation. Biblical literalism is a very modern phenomenon, dating to the start of the Fundamentalist movement with the publication of The Fundamentals in 1910.
1910 AD. Not BC.
Only someone with no understanding of either science methodology or history would make the claim that you did.
Unless of course you think the more complex theory full of mysterious unobservable entities like dark matter is correct and better uses Occam's razor.
Well, yes. There is no evidence at all supporting the Electric Universe folderol and none of the predictions that it makes come true. For that matter, most of them are impossible. On the other hand, the current construct is internally consistent, can make predictions that work, and is supported by a couple of centuries of observation. So-called 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' simply mark the threshold where our current powers of observation fail, we need better equipment to explore that section of our universe. So yes, Occam's Razor would come down on the side of current cosmology.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The scientific process requires that alternative (or unpopular) theories that seem to be supported by experimental observation be tolerated and given due consideration. Calling people names is the antithesis of the process. Maybe they are dead wrong about the steady-state theory of the universe, and/or maybe the big bang theory is dead wrong. Science allows for the possibility that the unlikely is true and the likely is false. To me, this is the maddening thing about general apathy/hostility to science; what science considers a strength (always allowing for new evidence to contradict current generally accepted theories), un-science (for lack of a better term) considers a weakness. Some people are so consumed by the need for absolute truth that they dismiss science out of hand, because by definition science defies the concept of absolute truth. They can't handle the fact that some things can't currently be explained fully, it's too much grey for them. The universe is a complicated, subtle, and unimaginably diverse place, with laws of physics that may not even be consistent in all locations.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I was with you until:
Per capita, I'll bet you've got more stupid fucks than we do.
I don't think that's something that's particularly easy to measure. I agree that pretty much every country has a large number of stupid people and a large number of intelligent folk. To suggest however that the ratio of intelligent to stupid is better is in the US than everywhere else however is pushing it a bit.
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And they should. You can't go around screaming "mercury" like there's only one form of an element, and it always has the same property no matter what chemical compound it's part of. Imagine we had the same lecture about "sodium" (an explosive metal) or "chlorine" (a deadly poison). Can you BELIEVE they put sodium AND chlorine in our TABLE SALT! It's an explosive deadly poison! They're killing us all!
Oh, actually, I didn't get through the quackery far enough to see that chlorine came up in drinking water. This AC really hasn't ever heard of table salt.
Most of the stuff in that post is conspiracy level "they're lying to us and everything's a poison" diatribe. Do a little research and you'll see that 1) thimerosol wasn't in most vaccines and was removed from nearly all of them at this point because of the paranoia and FUD, 2) even when it was in some vaccines, it is mercury compound with no demonstrated physical harm, unlike, say, the stuff in old thermometers, 3) this "mercury is always evil" argument ignores any rational analysis of toxicity levels, disregarding how minimal the amount of mercury was in any of the vaccines compared to other general exposure.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
You are Glen Beck-ing again. Asking questions is fine, but when you don't listen to the answers, you are a muppet. Sorry - senior system engineer/architect/muppet.
There is a metric shit-tonne of evidence for AGW. Every single question you have has already been asked, and already been answered. You suck at science, but your ego thinks you don't, hence you being on slashdot looking like a muppet to everyone. If it's as easy to disprove, spend a lazy afternoon doing so, and collect your Nobel prize. Go on! Surely if it's so easy to do, you've already written your paper, and are waiting for a good time to publish.
I would guess that the source is an anti-vaccination site.
I found this dissection of his first quote, when I searched for "Dr. Bernard Greenberg". Basically, the good doctor appears to have been most concerned with how the media was overstating the effectiveness of the vaccine.
The other two quotes may be real as well, but both come from anti-vaccination campaigns, so while the quotes may be real, they are less likely to be truthful.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Doubt can often be cured by study, and people who objectively study the evidence agree that the planet is warming up, almost certainly largely because of human activity. Blind repudiation isn't cured by study, and so as people study the issue the honest doubters find strong evidence for AGW, only leaving blind repudiation. You are correct in that they are much different things.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
when science gives me antibiotics and cell phones, i believe in it totally. when it tells me i need to be careful about where I toss my waste products, it's a hoax. I've found this rule to be easy to follow.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.