Slashdot Mirror
The Moment of Truth For BICEP2
StartsWithABang writes: Earlier this year, the BICEP2 team shook up the world by announcing the discovery of primordial gravitational waves: a signal from the earliest stages of the Universe, going all the way back to before the Big Bang! By looking at the photon polarization data, they claimed to have surpassed the gold "5 Sigma" standard for announcing a discovery in physics. But recently, that's been walked back, as there could have been a systematic error at play: simple emission from our own Milky Way. Later this month, the Planck team will release their results, and either confirm or refute BICEP2. Here's where we stand on the eve of that announcement.
Not moment of truth.
[...] a signal from the earliest stages of the Universe, going all the way back to before the Big Bang!
God!?
Oh dear... and not even "here's the news", but "we will have news, sufficiently far in the future that you will forget about this before it happens"....
Whenever I read articles about astrophysics, it always sounds very detached from reality. This work usually ends up making big assumptions based on radio waves that were supposedly detected in some way. We aren't talking about ones that are visible to humans, either, like light from stars. Then there's often talk about how it's the "remnants of the Big Bang" or something vague like that. And then they start throwing around numbers that we couldn't possibly be sure that we're measuring correctly. Even after reading into this subject in depth, and even taking college courses on it back in the day, it's still almost a religion in many ways.
That's right. All those fancy-pants "scientists" are actually idiots and frauds. Nothing they say can be trusted.
Have you ever seen a neutron or muon? Experienced time dilation? Put a particle into a superposition of states? I suppose you can call most of modern science religion if you doubt what you can't perceive with your own senses. That's actually what a significant percentage of the population is starting to do, unfortunately...
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Whenever I read articles about astrophysics, it always sounds very detached from reality.
It's not but I can see how it might seem that way. A lot of the physics is pretty out there and not all of it can be experimentally confirmed, at least not directly. The logical underpinnings and evidence used are fairly sound but there is a LOT we don't really know. There is a lot of "if A is true then B must be true" going on but sometimes we're not actually sure A is really true. It's not faith but much of it is very theoretical. Almost everything relating to stuff like black holes should be taken with a huge grain of sodium chloride.
And then they start throwing around numbers that we couldn't possibly be sure that we're measuring correctly.
Sometimes that is true and sometimes it isn't. There are plenty of measurements we are quite confident about. Others not so much. Unfortunately for the lay person it can be hard to tell the difference. Apparently sometimes it can be difficult for those in the field to tell the difference too sometimes.
The funny thing is that there is a meeting in Italy this week to discuss the Planck polarization result. Except that the Planck team doesn't have the result ready yet, for reasons they are not explaining. To make matters worse, there is no internet access at the venue, so the rest of the world is hearing about it primarily through Twitter feeds. The Planck team should be seriously embarrassed to cock up a major announcement as badly as they have.
Regardles, Planck is releasing its polarization measurements in three weeks, on December 22. Get back to us then.
That's right. All those fancy-pants "scientists" are actually idiots and frauds. Nothing they say can be trusted.
They reason they're no longer trusted is because they make big announcements of amazing results and then... later have to admit that they were wrong. Or, worse, they don't admit they're wrong, and we have to wait for someone else to retry the experiment and find that out for themselves.
Whenever I read articles about astrophysics, it always sounds very detached from reality
I feel the same way as a researcher... but usually because of how bad most articles covering astrophysics are, and how much they emphasize the sensational parts without reminding people how much mundane stuff there is, connected or not. The result is that people who only read pop-sci have a view of what astrophysics is that is very disconnected from reality...
...the dumbo eared pseudo-Obama picture in the odds chart ITFA it's hilarious!
"I suppose you can call most of modern science religion if you doubt what you can't perceive with your own senses."
We make fun of them when they believe their priests telling them their truth and then mock them further when they don't trust our "real priests" telling them the new truth.
It's a Win-Win setup for us.
It is very possible that some constructs of contemporary astrophysics will someday come to be seen as unreal, like the epicycles of Ptolemy. But the only way to find out is to take steps forward, as Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton did, and not to brush the subject aside.
They reason they're no longer trusted is because they make big announcements of amazing results and then... later have to admit that they were wrong. Or, worse, they don't admit they're wrong, and we have to wait for someone else to retry the experiment and find that out for themselves.
What you're describing as the "reason they're no longer trusted" is called the scientific method: science is trustworthy precisely because when people are wrong, they admit it. Either that, somebody else proves them wrong.
Do you expect this shit to sprout from the head of Zeus or something?
All scientists outside the massively politicized field of climatology know this. Let the Planck and BICEP2 teams work this out in the way of science.
All scientists outside the massively politicized field of climatology know this.
Climatology has only been politicized by people who aren't climatologists. The actual scientists get along just fine.
guess they needed to generate some traffic.
In any event, even "inflation" (in the cosmological sense) is not a certainty and has taken on a life of its own similar to the legions of string theorists (who have so much invested they can't just walk away).
They reason they're no longer trusted is because they make big announcements of amazing results and then... later have to admit that they were wrong. Or, worse, they don't admit they're wrong, and we have to wait for someone else to retry the experiment and find that out for themselves.
Trustworthy or untrustworthy as applies to scientists is much more closely related to Political, Religious, or financial outlook of the people who don't trust scientists
Because scientists tell them things they don't want to hear. As an example, If my entire outlook on life was based on a book that other believers in that book determined that the universe was created in 4004 b.c.e., I'd not trust some silly pants liberal who told me differently.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Do you expect this shit to sprout from the head of Zeus or something?
Why yes, yes they do. They demand something written down they can accept without thinking about it. Which leads to this thread. Arguments from personal incredulity.
One of the funniest arguments that springs from the mouths of those who hate science is personal incredulity.
"Because, since I don't understand something, it cannot be correct. Therefore: God, or ancient aliens, or that guy on Youtube that heats his entire house using a couple clay flowerpots and two tea candles".
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Because, since I don't understand something, it cannot be correct. Therefore: God, or ancient aliens, or that guy on Youtube that heats his entire house using a couple clay flowerpots and two tea candles".
No, it is really more of:
"Because, since I don't understand something, how do I know what is correct? How do you know the difference between God, or ancient aliens, or that guy on Youtube that heats his entire house using a couple clay flowerpots and two tea candles"?
Everything sounds detached from reality if you're ill-educated and ignorant enough.
"Because, since I don't understand something, how do I know what is correct?
And there is the difference. Those who would demand surety need absolutes. So God or Ancient Aliens.....
We're all still learning, except for those of us who already know everything.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They reason they're no longer trusted is because they make big announcements of amazing results and then... later have to admit that they were wrong. Or, worse, they don't admit they're wrong, and we have to wait for someone else to retry the experiment and find that out for themselves.
And also because politicians keep saying that 97% of them agree that we need a massive tax hike on energy or the world will heat up like a furnace and we're all going to burn up and die and the oceans will cover rise up and destroy all the coast lines and Florida will be underwater and there will be no more polar bears.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
They forgot that galaxies have a lot of dust. The measurements are useless.
Art: The little lights aren't twinkling, Clark...
Not quite. We mock them when they believe their priests/pastors/whatever tell them bold-faced lies that can't possibly be true. You know, things like a 6,000 year old earth, jesus riding dinosaurs, faith healing, speaking in tounges, transubstantiation, and how their souls are going to be harvested by that alien space-ship hiding in Hale-bop's comet tail. Stuff like that is laughable, and if you believe in it, yeah, that's an easy laugh.
There are also the people that mock the religious sorts for trusting priests/whatnot on matters that are unknowable. The afterlife, who/what kickstarted the big-bang, and why we're all here. And philosophical issues. Yeah, those people are kind of dicks and I don't find that sort of humor all that productive. I see where they're coming from though, I mean, if the thing is unknowable.... why trust that guy over any of the other people preaching their flavor?
As for us expecting everyone to trust scientists, hey man, we have a pretty robust system of NOT trusting those scientists until they have a pretty good argument. If someone finds reason to question them, that is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged, whereas the religion side usually responds to questions with excommunication and damnation. Some of the religions have demonized the idea of being a skeptic. And skeptics can believe in things, you know. It's not like they're in a perpetual state of untrust. They can approach something, be skeptical, look at the facts, and then accept it.
Anyway, all that aside, you're fighting against people who believe in the scientific method. Good luck with that.
The extents to which the scientific community is going to support inflation and the rigor they defend it in internet chat rooms is more representative of religious zealots than scientific method.
I can't 100% slight you but you may have been taken more seriously with a real world example of what baffles you. On top of that you may find people who are willing to discuss the science in a way that may make more sense to you. I'm not calling you a liar but if you took a serious science course in college and you're still fumbling around with concepts like "based on radio waves that were supposedly detected in some way" you probably did it wrong.
Oh please. There is such a thing as overly inflated news reports science. In each field in astrophysics for example, there are dozens to hundreds of people working on a given topic. They regularly compete each year for an (at least in the US) increasingly drying-up pool of funds. The success rate in grant proposal review panels is something like 10-20% or worse. As a result, they need to gain "mindshare" by being the first/most famous of the bunch to arrive at a result. Because of this, there is an arms race of who can gain the media's attention and "sex up" their research so as to gain their 15 minutes of fame and rise above the crowd, thus increasing their chance at getting funded for their next mission. Witness the faster-than-light neutrinos debacle as another example. You might say "this is how science works," but the people at BICEP2 and the faster-than-light neutrino people should have know better than to make such a big announcement so prematurely. The press aren't technically competent so scientists need to self-police about what makes it to the top of the CNN science segment. The point is, for every self-aggrandizing scientific team, there are dozens that work hard, reviewing their results, testing over and over again, publishing in tough, reputable, but non-sexy journals, and these kinds of researchers doing important work rarely get the limelight that they reserved, as compared to the self-aggrandizing types who at the slightest hint of a controversial/world-changing results ring up the New York TImes.
So, either primordial gravitational waves have been detected or they haven't. The cat box will be opened on December 22. Meaningful discussion can begin then.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Well, that explains thing. The OP is 16 years old.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You might say "this is how science works," but the people at BICEP2 and the faster-than-light neutrino people should have know better than to make such a big announcement so prematurely. The press aren't technically competent so scientists need to self-police about what makes it to the top of the CNN science segment.
On both counts you mention, I guess I disagree. The faster-than-light neutrino people were very clear that they expected it to eventually be resolved by something mundane, which it of course eventually was. The jury is still out on BICEP2, although it sure isn't looking good. If you believe the tweets, Planck puts an upper limit on tensors that would be strongly incompatible with the BICEP2 claim.
In any case, isn't it a good thing for the press to show scientists getting really excited about a potential new discovery, and then eventually finding out that it was a false alarm? This gives a much better picture of how science actually progresses than portraying it as an unbroken series of perfect truths. And if the scientists themselves are a little vain, a little hungry for fame, a little fractious with one another, that reflects the fact that science is done by actual people, and manages to arrive at the truth despite that. I wish more science reporting made the sausage making more evident to the general public. I think scientists tend to be a little too afraid that if scientists as a group are portrayed as anything less than heroic examples of a detached and objective stereotype, that somehow public perception of science will suffer, when in reality what that does is project a false image and create unrealistic expectations.
The press aren't technically competent so scientists need to self-police about what makes it to the top of the CNN science segment. The point is, for every self-aggrandizing scientific team, there are dozens that work hard, reviewing their results, testing over and over again, publishing in tough, reputable, but non-sexy journals, and these kinds of researchers doing important work rarely get the limelight that they reserved, as compared to the self-aggrandizing types who at the slightest hint of a controversial/world-changing results ring up the New York TImes.
There isn't a clear line between two such groups as you seem to paint. Most of the scientists in the news are also publishing in the reputable journals too. It is pretty easy after enough years in a career to get articles in top journals, and every field has their go to journal for papers reporting solid incremental work that nearly every scientist in the field will publish in at some point. There is also limited control over what makes it into mainstream media, and especially what becomes popular there. I've seen university PR departments submit stories that quickly disappear, while other cases a third party picked up a story from a colleague's paper in a "non-sexy journal" and go to town on over-simplifying it. I've had solicitations for interesting research, and then had information rejected for being too boring or even once as too old because of the time spent analyzing data. It is not as simple as there being quite researchers too busy working versus those with a media friend on speed dial, as how stuff in the news can involve a wide variety of involvement from the original researcher.
Well, that explains thing. The OP is 16 years old.
Like me old man told me - "Better move out while you still know everything!"
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Is it really an easy laugh? Seriously, even if you're a scientist, you haven't done all of the experiments yourself, even if it is technically possible to do them.
Priests used to say: "The Earth is this way because God made it. I know this because He told me so and the other priests verified this vision against scriptures. Unfortunately, He doesn't want to talk to you too. Probably because you're impure and have sex with women, or something. As consolation prize, you're going to heaven when you die, if you listen to me. You can thank me later."
And that was just as good as any other explanation because no one really had a way to actually prove or disprove that. And the competing theories really sounded the same, or were fairly unsatisfying.
Today scientists say: "The Earth is this way because.... I know this because I did all these experiments and they were peer reviewed. Unfortunately, these experiments cost millions of dollars to do and require a PhD in that specific field to even understand what the experiments do. Luckily for you, I've written this popular science book that you can all read where I tell you what this all means. Feel free to quote it at your leisure."
Most people aren't even at the level of technological savvy that is represented on this board, let alone actual PhDs. That means that people have to accept what another person tells them is true without being able to personally verify it. Although today people would scoff at calling science "magic", the reality is that your average person treats technology and particularly science at the level of astrophysics to be something that a respected authority tells them what it is and they believe it based on trust. That may not be a religious faith, but it is a practical sort of faith.
That's why some people love to bash scientific theories, and other people just as angrily think that the first group of people are morons. But both of them are usually appealing to authority, even some of the scientists who are discussing things outside their field. And that's why a common person honestly believes that if a priestly class can trick them for their own benefit, a scientific class is just as able to do so for their own benefit.
Is it really an easy laugh?
Well, it's a bit of dark humor, but yeah that heaven's gate suicide pact had all sorts of one-shot jokes made about them. And jesus riding a dinosaur? Come on. Yeah, that's an easy laugh. If you consider comedy to be a sport, you've got your hard cases like the terminally ill and the depressed. The risky maneuvers like joking about ebola or the sectarian violence in Iraq. Making a joke that has faith healers as the butt of the joke? Easy and safe. The only people you'll offend are nutcases anyway.
And that was just as good as any other explanation because no one really had a way to actually prove or disprove that
Right. The unknowable. I think I covered that. Today's scientists make claims about things that are falsifiable. And there is significant incentive for other scientists to prove that other's claims are false. Back in the day of religious claims, ANYTHING could be said to violate some part of whatever scripture, and the result was either a schism or an excommunication. That's a significant difference. You're trying to say the two scenarios are the same, when they're really not.
Now... things like this primordial gravity wave are honestly above my head and I don't pretend to understand what they're talking about. I vaguely have an impression of what the big-bang was and a collection of tidbits about it. But I'm not going to particularly care because it doesn't impact me much. (It's actually pretty exciting if we can glimpse past the big bang though.) But I dole out my tax money, and vote in the people pushing money to things like the NSF which helped fund the BICEP2. I do this and, yeah, somewhat blindly trust that the people the NSF employ to vouch for and approve grants for this sort of thing. A lot like I trust my mechanic to replace the wheel bearing. I trust that dude with my life, I can trust the NSF guy to read up on background radiation.
Today scientists say: "The Earth is this way because.... I know this because I did all these experiments and they were peer reviewed. Unfortunately, these experiments cost millions of dollars to do and require a PhD in that specific field to even understand what the experiments do.
Luckily for us we have enough PhDs in that specific field to call bullshit. Just like (some) open source projects have enough developers to keep everything running.
Most people aren't even at the level of technological savvy that is represented on this board, let alone actual PhDs. That means that people have to accept what another person tells them is true without being able to personally verify it.
Not quite. Even people that aren't the most well read or brightest can question things, and if they happen to have access to a smart enough accomplice can have the thing explained to them in a matter they can understand. And they can pick apart any section of it they feel like and see if it jives with everything else. Honestly, that's the basis for the technologically savviness of most people around here.
I'd agree that it's a practical sort of faith. But the system has a large number of self-correcting actors and occasional reality-checks that was severely lacking with the religions of old. If you REALLY boil it down, all of mathematics is based on a number of axioms that you simply have to accept as true, dare I say, "on faith". Have you ever really questioned the null set axiom? But of course, 2+2=4, due to an overwhelming amount of evidence.
Science is more like math than religion in that regard.
Unfortunately, these experiments cost millions of dollars to do and require a PhD in that specific field to even understand what the experiments do.
Not really, especially with a bit of patience and some effort. A lot of science papers, especially experimental ones, are pretty readable. A few fields are much harder than others, but even those can be approached depending on how well you want to understand it and your willingness to grab other material. Or wait a few years, and instead of reading bleeding edge papers, read a review paper. Or wait a few more years and read a textbook. Don't assume all of your information has to come from pop-sci, unless you don't care enough to put effort into a topic.
It is rather annoying how often I hear people complain they don't know what to believe about science news, yet don't know how to look up papers. E.g. in astrophysics, arXiv typically has free versions, or for medical and diet claims to check pubmed...
Some of those could possibly be true. It's possible that there is a God that intervenes in specific human affairs, and that would permit such things as faith healing. It's conceivable that prayer helps healing, if the prayer involved is something other than the prayer scientifically tested*. Transubstantiation is specifically defined to be unfalsifiable (which, in my opinion, makes it philosophical nonsense, but I'm not a neo-Aristotelian).
Also, as far as I can tell most Christians belong to religious groups that actually welcome hard questions, and have extensive discussions over how to reconcile fundamentals of their faith with empirical evidence. One of my friends took theology (aka arguing) in Catholic school rather than Biblical history (aka whobegat) because it sounded like more fun. It also eventually ended his relationship with the Catholic church. A whole lot of Christian clergy are even cool with the idea of somebody losing their faith in Christianity, as long they think it's temporary. Of course, these Christians don't make as clickbaity stories as the fire-and-brimstone-and-shut-up Christians, so they tend to be less visible.
*The studies I'm aware of randomly selected patients to pray for, and said patients were generally prayed for by people who didn't know them. I find it entirely plausible that "Please, God, don't let Mom die!" has different results than "Please, God, let that Harry T. that I don't know in the experimental group live" - except that I'm not going to believe the prayer does anything without some evidence. IIRC, while the well-run studies found no effect of prayer, some of them found that a patient who's told he or she is being prayed for will likely do worse.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes