This was the only period of my life where I experienced degradation in my eyesight.
Additionally, the eye strain and feeling of my eyes being hot stopped as soon as I switched to using LCD's.
My eyesight started deteriorating rapidly before they even had computer monitors and my prescription hasn't changed in the last five years. By your reasoning, the CRT helped my eyesight.
There are a lot of theories we research which assert phenomena we cannot repeat by experimentation,at least in our lifetimes, like the inorganic oil question or the ever popular evolution. When this is the case, we are left to consider conflicting evidence. This leaves our discussion with its own ultimate questions of fact to research by inference or experiment:
The inorganic oil question is simply a question of logic: that oil can be produced inorganically does not mean it is all produced inorganically. It is possible that it could be all inorganically produced, but the scientific evidence is very much against it. But the experiments which show the oil to be organic in origin are repeatable and the interpretation of those experiments is open to review. If they want to claim the biological markers which indicate it is organic are simply contamination, they should present good evidence which supports the assertion instead of just making the claim.
In the case of evolution, there is no conflicting evidence. Just misguided attempts at discrediting a theory using faulty logic and misrepresentation of the findings.
My theory is education.
Ding ding ding. Give that man a ceeegar! It's the same reason why movies are so full of faulty physics: people don't know enough to notice. If more people understood physics, then the shotgun blast knocking the victim back twenty feet without budging the shooter would be unbelievable and people would complain. If more people understood science then the outrageous claims of a nut would not be nearly so interesting and the reporters wouldn't present it.
This will vary depending on the witness and the evidence.
In the case of science, the claims should always be repeatable by independent experimentation. If the results are not repeatable, the witness is discredited.
Ask any reporter and they will tell you they provided enough information for the inquiring viewer to learn more on their own.
Technically it's true, but so is the statement "My opponent may be an eloquent speaker, but I don't beat my wife." The implied statement is that his opponent does beat his wife although he never said he did. Even such statements as "he has received virtually no support from the scientific community but insists his methods are sound" lead the viewer to believe that the scientific community is suppressing his research simply because it goes against popular belief and not because the claims are not supported by evidence.
Just because one presumes to know how the world came to be does not preclude him from wanting to know how it works.
I didn't imply that it did, only that his faith is not what drives him to seek knowledge. I have no illusions that all scientists are atheists. I just don't believe that their religious beliefs are what made them become scientists.
In fact I would venture to say that knowlege for its own sake is the driving force behind VERY few research projects.
If, by knowledge for its own sake, you mean strict curiosity, then yes, this is true. There is usually a desire to apply the knowledge once learned. But there are far more research projects searching for the truth than there are projects looking to prove a preconceived notion.
In the end, you and I, like the Jury, must be allowed to consider all the evidence. On this we agree. This means news articles including the wacky bits. The wacky bits should be considered for what they are, this is where journalism fails us.
It is not possible to present all the evidence. They only have a limited amount of time. I would prefer the wacky bits not be given any more attention than they deserve. Simply reporting the wacky bits can give them credibility they otherwise wouldn't have. You see very few stories about perpetual motion machines although many have claimed to have built one. They are scientifically unfounded but worse, usually attempts to defraud the public. They don't deserve any attention. The real problem is that people in general don't understand science. They don't understand the process that makes one claim accepted and another not. They believe that saying a claim is not supported by evidence is identical to claiming it is not possible. They believe that not being able to prove something impossible makes it true. But this is a failure in education. If the goal of journalism is to inform, it should take this into account. But, sadly, the goal in journalism these days is to sell advertising. As long as their primary focus is to get people to watch, they will continually inflate the story to make it more interesting. The line dividing "reported" from "not reported" is not based on the story's merit, but on whether or not people will watch.
The mountain of physical evidence can often be impeached by alternative reasoning just as easily as the witness can be impeached as forgetful or a liar.
Given your experience though, which does a jury tend to believe more, the mountain of physical evidence or the one witness?
Science has offered these, but they may not necessarily be better explanations. They're just different and based on physical evidence rather than the eyewitness.
But they are alternative explanations which shoots the "it couldn't have happened any other way" argument full of holes. "No other alternative" no longer supports the argument if an alternative can be shown to exist.
If we filter all theories from the public press such that only the one which is most probable under current evidence will be seen, we do ourselves a considerable disservice. I think in the end the question comes down to one of where we would draw the line. How do we determine when a theory is too "silly" to be considered by the public, and who will make this decision?
I never suggested we do any such thing. My complaint all along is the reporters treating all theories as if they are equally valid. They clearly aren't. When a reporter presents a study that may indicate that food X can [cause/reduce the risk of] cancer when the study is only preliminary, shows only a correllation but no causation, or has not stood up to scientific review and may be entirely untrue, as if it was hard fact, he is misrepresenting the science and misleading the public. Even more so when the vast majority of scientific evidence refutes the claim. Either wait until the study is confirmed, or be very specific that it has virtually no support in the scientific community. There is no need to create balance by artificially inflating the study's merit.
How do we determine when a theory is too "silly" to be considered by the public, and who will make this decision?
I have no problem letting the public make up their own minds so long as they are given all the information. Their biggest crime is confusing correlation with causation. "Studies have shown that people who do X are more likely to have Y". The implied message is that doing X causes Y when the study says no such thing, yet many believe that not doing X will reduce their risk of getting Y. Unfortunately, as long as the primary goal of "news" programs is to get people to watch so they can sell advertising, you're not going to see any reform in this area.
I think that even modern christians are totally in favor of doing research to learn more about how our world works, and their preferred theory of origin encourages that research, but in the context of one who studies the great artists. Secular science does the same for us, but in the context of pure humanism. Both have as their end goal the accumulation of knowledge about how our world works, where then is the laziness?
I don't doubt your claim, but I don't believe it is their faith that pushes them towards research. I fail to see how "knowing" the answer beyond all question can encourage anyone to look for it. Few creationists are searching for the truth rather than attempting to justify their preconceived beliefs.
Re:640 bits should be enough for anybody
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Intro to Encryption
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Well my porn passwords are Juliet and Juliet. It's a lesser known work, to be sure, but it's certainly steamier.
But much weaker since the dialog is little more than "oooh, yeah, right there baby" over and over.
Actually as I understand it religion is more about conforming your beliefs to a set of documents which purport firsthand accounts.
In other words, an appeal to authority. We believe it because he told us to believe it. Hardly strong evidence. People have been known to lie. Faith is believing, whole-heartedly and without question, that what someone else claims is the absolute truth, regardless of the evidence against it.
Now perhaps I'm biased because my udergraduate studies were in history and I practice law, but if a witness wrote it down - that's pretty good evidence.
I am not a lawyer, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't stronger physical evidence contradicting an eyewitness account tend to discredit that witness even under the law? If a single witness places the suspect at the scene of the crime, but a mountain of physical evidence: cell phone records; credit card receipts; fingerprints; DNA evidence; ATM, convenience store and parking lot security cameras; his signature in a hotel registry; etc, all independently verifiable and consistent, put him a thousand miles away at the time, who do you think is right? Do both sides have the same merit? Take the converse. If the suspect was caught by the police at the scene with the victim's blood on his clothes, holding the gun which shot him (the ballistics evidence supporting the assertion), do you still believe his buddy claiming the suspect was at his house watching television that night?
In the case of our religion issue perhaps where we differ is in the area of giving any credit to cotemporaneous writings.
An eyewitness account is better than nothing. But in the face of strong physical evidence which contradicts the account, I have to go with the physical evidence. Especially when the time period in which the accounts were written is in doubt. Especially when, when at least one of the accounts was written, by definition, nobody could have been there. Who witnessed genesis?
Perhaps I should clarify, we observe complex systems in nature. We observe that the only origin we can find for complex systems to be newly generated is from intelligent designers - people. Among people, we find neither the intelligence nor the capacity to design these systems (cute little fuzzy ones.) Therefore we induce that some other intelligence must have produced them.
This is entirely dependent on the idea that there is no other way to explain it. Science has offered many ways to explain it that don't require the belief in a super-natural intelligent designer.
It is interesting that the scientific unprovability of the divine was articulated well before the scientific method was developed. Lazy would apply if this notion were developed after the fact as an excuse, but it wasn't.
I'm not implying that it was an excuse for science not agreeing with it. But even if the scientific method didn't exist yet, that doesn't make it less lazy. It's simply a matter of believing the answer that is more convenient than actually looking for the real one. It's no different than blaming leprachauns for my grass problems when, in fact, it's because I don't fertilize. If I can't do anything about leprachauns, I don't have to try.
The example still stands, if SOME oil probably comes from inorganic sources, then both theories are potentially correct even if the majority of evidence currently available seems to support one over the other.
But they are not equally potentially correct and that's the entire point. Of the two, the idea that all oil is inorganic in origin is much, much less likely to be correct than the idea that some is and some isn't. Pretending they are is misrepresenting the facts. Before the notion that (at least some) oil was organic in origin, science had to conduct experiments and studies to produce enough evidence to convince the scientific community that it was true. Claiming that it isn't should take at least that much work. Explanations of what might be possible aren't enough to show that it is.
I Might be convinced that the scientific method is as good a means of learning about our world as has yet been devised. I don't think it is reasonable to assert that when applied by real people it deserves any more credibility than a religion.
Maybe I'm just confused, but I don't see how you can make the latter statement given the former. The scientific method is entirely based on confirming your beliefs to the best of your ability. Faith is entirely based on not confirming your beliefs. One is a methodical approach to determining cause and effect. The other is akin to just guessing and hoping you're right. They simply don't compare.
We accept that if you flip a coin enough times, you'll get it to land on heads. If we roll the dice enough, we'll get snakeyes... so we extrapolate this out over a few billion years and say if you breed enough worms you'll get people. Unfortunately the math suggests this is utterly improbable. (I think the book was "Rare Earth.")Call this reasoning by deduction.
This is, again, a misrepresentation of evolutionary theory. Evolution does not claim "all this" happened at random. Natural selection is anything but random. That which has a greater ability to survive has a greater chance of reproducing and passing its abilities on to the next generation. Those that inherit its abilities also have a greater chance to survive to reproduce than those that don't. Flip 100 coins and the odds of them all landing heads up are roughly one in 10^30. That's about a billion times more chances against than there are stars in the known universe. Truly astronomical odds. However, if you flip the same 100 coins and pick up all the coins that landed tails up (the heads up coins "survive") and flip those again, repeat ad infinitum, chances are you will have every coin heads up in as little as 7 throws. It's hardly an accurate model of evolution but it is much closer than simply tossing 100 coins once. The only random element in evolution is genetic mutations and there is even argument that they aren't random.
The other side says: things were created by a divine power you cannot see, feel, touch, hear, taste or smell. But we induce from the evidence - lots of complex organizms that follow similar themes - that they have a common origin. They must have come to be somehow, so we compensate for that seeming impossiblity by ascribing the origin to a God.
This, to me, seems to be a little lazy. "We can't think of another reason why this would happen so, rather than look for one, let's make one up."
Unfortunately that god made himself utterly unprovable.
This is rather convenient, don't you think? How is this different from me attributing the color of grass to a leprachaun that you can't see, hear, feel, smell or taste? What gives the argument for a god more merit than the argument for a leprachaun? My main problem with this type of reasoning is it gives no incentive whatsoever to do any further investigation. And the whole faith concept, in fact, discourages any further investigation.
Call this reasoning by induction.
It's really not. You can induce that the organisms did have a common origin based on their similarities, but nothing in the argument suggests that the origin in question must be a god. It is simply one explanation chosen arbitrarily out of any number of different explanations with no indication why this explanation is any better than any other.
My assertion, and I hope that of the already discredited reporter of our discussion, is that both sides must be considered by any reasonable mind. Thus both parties should be reported.
If we are not going to distinguish between which ideas about our world have merit and which don't, then why bother reporting them at all? In fact, why investigate them at all? Why not attribute it to "god did it" and be done with it. Our gardening shows could just tell us "god doesn't want you to have green gra
Sciencee may be so limited, but facts are not. I think we may irreconcilably differ on this point. I prefer to think that the whole point of science is to better the condition of mankind.
The whole point of science is to learn in a way which assures, to the best of our ability, that how we think things work is how they actually work. Whether we use that knowledge to better mankind or kill it is entirely up to us. This is where the values of religion can play a beneficial part, but not as long as they are arguing whether or not the science is correct.
These seem to me to be pretty good evidence that more than one approach to the nature of our world should be explored.
There have been many different disciplines which explore our world, all using different techniques. Science has been the most successful discipline to allow us to manipulate our environment and make predictions that can help us. Quite simply, it works very well. That we are able to even have this conversation is a direct result of science.
You seem pretty fond of the biblical arguments though, so tell me what kind of fact you would accept as supporting an intelligent design theory?
No assumptions based on faith and doesn't rely on trying to disprove one theory as proof of another.
Now that I think about it, why the resistance to facts which tend to discredit certain parts of a given theory?
Because, even if they can invalidate the one theory, it does not prove theirs. I can spend all day proving that grass isn't green because a leprachaun painted it. It doesn't prove that chlorophyl makes it green. It only proves that a leprachaun didn't paint it.
Isn't science all about finding that one fact that wipes out or revises an existing theory - requiring us to develop a new one?
Science is about gaining knowledge by collecting evidence to support or refute a theory. You are partly right: disproving invalid theories is a valuable part of science. The problem is that's where most creationists stop. They engage in a false dichotomy: it must either be evolution or creationism. They completely ignore the third, or more, unknown choices. There is no revision of creationism to fit known evidence. It is as it always was forever and ever, amen. The other side of that is their "science" is usually faulty and doesn't really refute the theory at all. Their only aim is to attempt to discredit evolution so they can feel better about believing what they want to. Let me ask you this: what's the difference between creationism and, say, the Flat Earth Society? Here's a group of people, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that continue to believe that the earth is flat and, in fact, shaped like a pentagon. What makes them wrong and creationism right? What in general makes one religious belief more valid than another? How do you choose?
When it comes down to it, the scientific method cannot prove anything, only suggest probable connections that allow us to make predictions.
And manipulate our environment. It cannot absolutely prove anything (except mathematics, but that's a different subject entirely). But the volume of evidence collected through science allows us to be 99.997% sure this is the way it is. And if the.003% turns up, then we revise the theories, conduct new experiments, and it grows. It can, however, absolutely disprove quite a bit.
So one needs only a little bit of the funding they can't get.
From where I'm sitting, right now, for little more than the cost of my internet connection, I can conduct a number of preliminary studies including the one in my example. It just isn't that hard.
On the other hand, neither is assuming that any idea worth researching must be based entirely on physical evidencee & facts external humanity.
How else are you going to support your claim? If your "research" isn't going to turn up anything concrete and verifiable, then of what value is it?
Why is the research that starts with the premise, "These fossils have traits similar to modern mammals, therefore one must have drived from the other," better than research which starts with the premise, "many people belive in a divine power, and similarity between these fossils and modern mammals suggest a common designer."
Because the second is based on an unsupported assumption. That many people believe a thing to be true does not, in any way, shape or form, make it true. To beat Galileo up a little more, most people believed that the earth was the center of the universe. They were wrong. If you want to show that two species are similar because an intelligent being designed them that way, you first have to show that the intelligent being, in fact, exists.
The reason I do think both camps' research is subject to debate regarding the truth, is that it seems to me that the former limits is ability to speculate to that which it can research directly while the latter, while able to speculate beyond its ability to research tends to get limited by established faiths.
Science is completely limited by what it can research directly. That's sort of the point. Why research it at all if you have no chance of learning anything? Are you suggesting we give funding to people who know they can't prove what they are setting out to prove? What's the point? Faith, by definition, is the belief in something despite a complete lack of evidence, or the availability of evidence to the contrary. If you are going to believe despite the evidence, why look for any? If science can't prove what you want it to prove, why claim it does?
But seriously if I'm to do any research like this for you, without funding, first tell me what kind of facts you would demand to support a creationist approach?"
It's very telling that you can't suggest one now. After all, you did direct me to "any creationist textbook" But, here are a few guidelines:
1) Doesn't rely on "evolution can't explain this" to claim creationism is right. That evolution can't explain every single detail does not invalidate the entire theory. And even if evolution is entirely wrong, it doesn't make creationism right. There could a third unknown possibility.
2) Uses scientific research based on good scientific practices, and references to actual scientific studies.
3) Doesn't misrepresent the theory of evolution.
4) Can be corroborated with everything else we know about the known universe, including the accepted age of the planet[1] and the universe.
5) Doesn't rely on statements like "can you believe they actually believe this". That has no scientific merit. As stated before, whether a person finds it credible has no bearing on it's truthfulness.
6) Doesn't rely on passages from the bible as "proof".
7) Doesn't say "it can't be explained any other way" because usually it can, and even if it can't it doesn't prove this is the correct explanation.
This isn't an all inclusive list, but it should get you started. Keep in mind "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Note that I haven't made any claims of this text that I wouldn't make of any other scientific paper.
[1] I'm sorry. I cannot accept the idea that hundreds of different studies in dozens of different disciplines all arrive at roughly the same answer through entirely independent methods and they're all wrong because the government wants it that way.
This is circular reasoning. If an idea needs evidence to support it before it gets funding, and needs funding before it can get evidence, the idea can never be explored.
No it isn't, because there's things called preliminary studies. A preliminary study is research done to see if the idea has any merit. It is usually a small scale version of the study which would provide the real evidence. For example, a scientist wishing to see if radio waves cause cancer would need to conduct a massive study involving many groups of people, both near radio antennas and not near them, and examine the statistics of those with cancer near antennas, those without cancer near antennas, those with cancer not near antennas and those without cancer not near antennas. A preliminary study would examine a much smaller segment of the population looking for correllation, but not necessarily causation. If there is no correllation, it's safe to say there's no causation and therefore no reason to look for one. Preliminary studies usually require comparatively very little funding and only sound reasoning to get it. "We believe it because we believe it" is not sound reasoning.
Again, the circular reasoning above removes the credibility of this assertion.
No circular reasoning. See above.
In addition, there really is quite a collection of evidence to support the young-world folks. I direct you to any creationist textbook.
Show me one creationist textbook that has scientific evidence supporting it the idea.
(Which of course you may choose to discount because of bias and being outside the mainstream of science.)
I'm discounting them because they are bad science, not because I don't believe in their views. There is no evidence to support the idea that man was placed on this earth in his current form by an intelligent being and a mountain of evidence supporting the theory of evolution. This is not because there has been no funding for creationism. It's because there's no evidence.
The first was supported by all available evidence. The sun and stars clearly spun around the world. They saw this every day. Therefore the reasonable inferrence drawn by scientists was that the earth was in the middle and everything spun around it.
Aristarchus first proposed the idea that the earth revolved around the sun about 300 BC. Astronomy came to a standstill during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire so the view that the earth was the center of the universe remained. The precious little evidence that suggested the earth was the center of the universe didn't explain the motions of the planets (Mars, Jupiter and Saturn appear to move backwards sometimes from our point of view). When Copernicus and Galileo suggested that the earth revolved around the sun instead and had evidence to back it up, the church, which held the view that the earth was the center of the universe, had no evidence yet suppressed the findings anyway because it conflicted with what they wanted to be true.
What I would have is a system where every idea was evaluated on its merit without regard to how well it fits in with other established ideas.
The point your missing is that the established ideas already have tremendous merit. They aren't believed for the sake of believing as your comparison with Galileo keeps trying to imply. The evidence is already there. Any idea trying to supplant these established ideas without sufficient evidence doesn't have any merit. That's the bloody point. Any idea that does have merit will get funding and researched.
My main point, and the central problem that draws reporters to fringe science is that the conflicts in the system do not allow for multiple, even conflicting ideas to be pursued with the same zeal at the same time.
This is a crock. What draws reporters to fringe science is that a) it is exciting and b) they don't understand science.
For example, at no time have I endorsed either the 6000 year old earth or the 4.8 billion year old earth theory. From what I personally have observed both ideas have potential to be correct.
This is the main problem with your idea of merit. You are assuming that both views are equally valid while one has all the evidence supporting it and the other has none. They are not equally valid. Assuming that they are is exactly the problem with journalists looking for balance. There is no suppression of evidence that the earth is only 6000 years old. There just is no evidence that the earth is 6000 years old. Period. When all of science agrees the earth is somewhere around 4-5 billion years old, why should the idea, with no evidence to support it, that it is only 6000 years old get any attention at all?
Would that our funding machine, and newspaper reporters, could both do the same without fear of reprisal.
What reprisals? There aren't any. The ideas that aren't getting funding are the ones that have no merit. End of story. There is no conspiracy. There is no suppression of unpopular views. You're trying to fix a problem that just doesn't exist.
We accept for example as scientific fact that an object falls at 32 feet per second, squared because we can reproduce it. Does this mean we should also accept as fact the notion that objects always fall at this rate?
"Always" is a loaded word. Science never says "always". To follow your example, the evidence supports the notion that the force of gravity will accelerate objects, with no other forces acting on them, towards the earth at a rate of 32 ft/sec/sec. There is a ton of evidence supporting this and none disproving it. We can be reasonably certain that this is so. And unless someone can show some evidence that this is not so, it will be continued to be accepted as fact.
The distinction I'm trying to illustrate is that science suffers from the assertion that commonly used inferrences can become so entrenched that they get accepted as "fact."
Not without sufficient evidence they can't.
Then when the next galieo comes along and starts talking elements that our inferrence fails to consider, he gets excommunicated.
Your confusing that which is accepted as scientific fact because of the evidence with that which is believed on faith. Galileo's findings were suppressed because they disagreed with the church's teachings, not because they were unsound. The current scientific facts these days have evidence to support them. In short, there is very good reason to accept the scientific facts. The only reason to suppress Galileo's findings was a desire to have it not be true. See my sig.
Back in the day, too many people had too much invested in the world being the center of the universe. That's what the church taught. That's what the schools taught. That was the accepted inferrence.
Today, too many people have too much invested in ideas like about the organic origin of oil, electron shells, or the distance between stars.
The first was a religious belief with no supporting evidence. The second is based on scientific research with supporting evidence. There is no comparison between the two.
If someone were to offer to disprove these ideas, or even pursue an unrelated theory, it would hamper the funding of pretty much EVERYONE Else.
If anyone was to publish findings that bucked the existing evidence, of course it's going to be met with resistance. It's called skepticism and it's how science is supposed to work. What would you have us do, believe every yahoo with a notion of how things work? If the idea has merit, it will get researched. The idea that an unpopular view will be ignored is simply unsupported. It happens all the time. That it happens a little slower than you would like is because they are taking the time to validate the idea rather than hastily accepting it. That's how it is supposed to work. If the results are validated and the ideas accepted, then the people who continue to ignore the evidence are going to lose funding. That's also how it should work.
He said it, didn't he? His research was eventually accepted, wasn't it? It didn't take that long either.
You find all the stuff about him being a crackpot and that he should be fired, thoses are from other scientists.
You'll have to point that out. From what I have read, it looks like his methods were, at best, unconventional and at worst, reckless. That he happened to be right doesn't make his science good.
Government is not spending their money wisely. Big surprise. None of this supports the idea that the government is deliberately suppressing research of religious ideas.
If your idea is that natural phenomena A is most easily explained by Divine origin. You don't get government funding.
Probably because "divine origin" is just a synonym for "we don't know how it happened". It's a catch-all. We can't explain it, therefore it must be god's doing. It's a logical fallacy and has no evidence to support it.
Either everything you see happend by chance, or it go there through a divine origin of your choice.
This is flat out false. In evolution, for example, the only random element is genetic mutations. Natural selection, however, is a very deliberate process: either the mutation helps, hurts or doesn't affect the species survival. If it helps, it gets passed on. There's nothing random about that. It's a common argument the religious use to prove god's existence based on a severe misrepresentation of the findings.
The problem is not with the scientific method, but with the fact that track records matter in funding. Researchers that are "right" more often get more funding.
As it should be. A scientist who is wrong a lot is probably not a very good scientist.
This has the effect of turning scientists into lawyers. They are pressured to gather evidence that supports their premise, and find ways to discount contradictory facts.
Your entire premise is based on the idea that scientific fact is just a matter of opinion open for debate. It's not. With the exception of the few using junk science to sway public opinion, there are very few scientists looking to prove some preconceived idea. They want to know the truth. They find out through experimentation and if the process doesn't support their original theory, they revise the theory. This is the essential difference between science and religion. Science: 1) I believe X is caused by Y. 2) See if I'm right. Religion: 1) I believe X is caused by Y. 2) go back to 1.
As for the few, well, that's entirely what the article is about: journalists giving too much attention to junk science in the guise of balance. Junk science gets discredited very quickly. Not because the view is "unpopular", but because it is bad science.
Trust me, if there were any good reason to believe a religious claim was right, the scientists would have no trouble finding funds to research it. The churches and the vast majority of people in this country who do believe in god would love nothing more than to have it scientifically proven.
Most research funding comes from government sources.
This is an awfully broad statement with nothing to corroborate it. But even if it is true, most is not all. And nothing is stopping the religious powers from funding their own research. That they choose to use junk science to further their agenda is not the fault of science or the government.
Government sources in most nations cannot fund research that involves a religion-affiliated theory no matter how sound.
This is just plain wrong. That the government cannot fund religion does not prevent them from funding research just because it happens to agree with religious beliefs.
Contrary to what you would have me believe, science is not in direct conflict with religion. Science doesn't care if you believe in a god. The scientists aren't out to prove religion wrong. Only find the truth. It isn't until religion attempts to use junk science to either discredit accepted scientific claims or promote their own beliefs that science steps in and says, "no, this is wrong." If good scientific evidence was presented that supported a religious belief, it would receive the same scrutiny as any other claim. As it should.
That's true, but it takes more digging to discover that later experiments do not support earlier conclusions. That's way beyond what journalists are doing today.
That's not really the journalist's job. The real problem is journalists give way to much credit to preliminary, or even junk, studies without evaluating their merit. I'm not asking them to do independent experimentation, simply realize that a single study is not conclusive proof, and an opposing viewpoint does not always equally valid.
Not really. Millikan asked an important question and created a great experiment to find it. But his numeric value for e/m_e was too low. Possibly because he cherry-picked the data, possibly because his value for the viscosity of air was off, etc. For whatever reason, his answer was off. What you don't hear about as often is how subsequent experiments slowly diverged from his:
Like I said, I'm not that familiar with it. But it looks like science did work, if a little slowly. I never claimed it was perfect...
I never said any such thing. I just didn't fall into your trap trying to equate a belief in science with a belief in religion.
even though there is considerable evidence to suggest otherwise.
What evidence? You've presented none. All you've done is claim that the lack of scientific proof of religious beliefs is due to some conspiracy theory that science is somehow being funded to suppress religion. That you believe you have presented evidence really shows how little about science you do understand.
You thump your government funded textbook, they'll thump their bibles, and if you get into a rhythm maybe it'll drown you both out.
This could go on all night... But I really don't think you're thinking clearly.
Oh, that's rich.
I did suggest, by analogy, that secular funding for research influences the results.
You said that scientists were directly being influenced to disagree with the church, completely ignoring the fact that the church does not have to support its claims and science does.
Government cannot fund religion
They cannot suppress religion either.
Democratic government will not fund people who disagree with the majority.
The majority of people in this country believe in god in one form or another.
Therefore anyone who wants funding is encouraged at the very least to produce results that meet the expected norms.
Government is not the only source of funding, and most sources of funding are interested in the truth, not support for presupposed conclusions. The few that are are quickly debunked by real science. Research loses funding if it fails to be useful, not because it agrees with the church.
If you believe that even though this funding regime is in place research still proceeds in a perfectly neutral and unspoiled eden, are you not demonstrating a faith in something unprovable and contrary to observable fact?
I'm terribly sorry. Please forgive my overestimations.
Okay. Fine.
Your very subject implies that it is the scientists who are biased, and then proceed to claim that science is biased because of some conspiracy theory suppressing religion analogous to the suppression of science by the church, claim my argument is the result of "some well meaning but over zealous christian [that] did something to you in the past to really make you mad", and then backpedal into some weasly claim that what you really meant is journalists are just betting the long shots hoping to get lucky, and yet I am the one who misunderstood.
Go back to whatever bridge you crawled out from under, troll.
But there are places that will only continue to provide funding if they like the conclusions.
Obviously. It's called business. But commercial research is usually motivated by truth as much as independent research. It does a manufacturer no good to have forged scientific results if they can't apply them. But even if they do forge their findings, they won't stand up to scrutiny. That's where science works.
And there are ways findings can be publicized without peer review.
Any findings that have not stood up to peer review should be discredited as such. That's the whole point of the article: that journalists are giving undue attention to bad science.
And there are cases where scientists have been deceived by their expectations or even falsified their data.
These results won't be repeatable in independent experimentation. That's also where science works.
Consider the controversy surrounding the Millikan oil drop experiment
I had to do some research to find out about this, but it is a little different. Millikan turned out to be right. That it took 14 years for the scientific community to accept his results is not a failure in science. Science cannot prove that something is conclusively true. It can, however, prove that something is conclusively false. That they took some time to verify his results is infinitely more desirable than believing him without verification and have it turn out to be wrong.
Of course. But I'm not sure about your specific example - I heard somewhere that he made that bet as sort of a consolation prize. "Well, at least if I turn out to be wrong, I'll get this money." I'm not sure that he ever changed his mind. (I don't care enough to find out for sure.)
Not that it matters, but evidently he has. He had a conference in July where he admitted he was wrong.
As radical as it may seem, perhaps the journalists studied enough history in College to remember all the times when the general view of accepted science was horribly wrong. We're pretty sure now that the world is neither flat nor at the center of the universe.
Back in the day, scientists couldn't say anything that disagreed with the church because they'd loose their funding, credibility, and probably their lives.
Today, scientists can't say anything that appears to agree with the church, because they'll loose their funding, their credibility and possibly their lives.
is entirely different from this:
A reporter who looks at history can observe that there are from time to time scientists who bucked the commonly accepted ideas about things and were eventually proven right. They are few and far between, but that ONE disagreeable scientist who disagrees with the whole world might just be the reporter's Pulitzer Prize.
Try saying what you mean instead of accusing me of not understanding you.
The reason why people don't like to acknowledge that some opinions have merit and others don't is because that means that someone is wrong, and heaven forbid that anyone is wrong! It might damage their self esteem! *gasp*
It's got more to do with that we have taken "tolerance" to such a level that you can't tell someone he's full of shit, even if he is demonstrably full of shit, without being accused of dismissing his viewpoint out of hand. "Why don't you present both sides?" is the battle-cry of the nutjob whose opinion has no basis in fact yet wants to be treated as equally valid. Ignore the nutjob and you're accused of bias. Well, guess what. It is bias. But it's bias based on the evidence. That kind of bias is good and, in fact, necessary. Would anybody seriously give arguments from the Flat Earth Society equal weight as an argument that the world is round? No. So why do we have to give equal weight to claims that are just as junky?
I often like to joke with people that "All men are created equal" doesn't mean "for all purposes".
The line I like (and I'll be damned if I can remember where I heard it) is "All men are created equal. After that, it's up to them."
But who's going to waste their time reviewing evidence collected by a right-wing, bible-thumping, wacko with ties to the oil industry?
It happens all the time. The problem is that, more often than not, the "evidence" "collected" has been done so in an unscientific manner. When the results can't be independently verified, and there is a ton of scientific evidence showing him to be wrong, why should they bother?
Peer review is fine and all that, but what happens when the peers have a vested interest in maintaining a certain point-of-view. Scientists are motivated more by prestiage than money -- funding is only a useful tool in developing prestige. Prestige, as measured by academic titles and citations, is based on challenging details of the currently accepted model in order to get attention, but without discrediting the majority of peers by attacking the models foundation.
It doesn't work that way. Science isn't just a bunch of people with dubious credentials agreeing with each other based on their whims. The claims must be supported by evidence and that evidence must be verifiable by independent experimentation. Any one person can show a claim to be false simply by conducting the experiment. No real scientist is going to ignore that kind of evidence. It's the entire basis of science that there is no ultimate authority and that the claims must be born out by experimentation.
Sure everyone wants scientists to be completely objective, but scientists are people too and an un-biased scientist is about as common as an un-greedy entrepreneur.
Every single scientist does not need to be completely objective in order for science to work. If the most biased researcher submits results that don't stand up to peer review and independent verification, they are not accepted. Whether or not people are objective, the process is.
Slashdot Mirror
This was the only period of my life where I experienced degradation in my eyesight.
Additionally, the eye strain and feeling of my eyes being hot stopped as soon as I switched to using LCD's.
My eyesight started deteriorating rapidly before they even had computer monitors and my prescription hasn't changed in the last five years. By your reasoning, the CRT helped my eyesight.
There are a lot of theories we research which assert phenomena we cannot repeat by experimentation,at least in our lifetimes, like the inorganic oil question or the ever popular evolution. When this is the case, we are left to consider conflicting evidence. This leaves our discussion with its own ultimate questions of fact to research by inference or experiment:
The inorganic oil question is simply a question of logic: that oil can be produced inorganically does not mean it is all produced inorganically. It is possible that it could be all inorganically produced, but the scientific evidence is very much against it. But the experiments which show the oil to be organic in origin are repeatable and the interpretation of those experiments is open to review. If they want to claim the biological markers which indicate it is organic are simply contamination, they should present good evidence which supports the assertion instead of just making the claim.
In the case of evolution, there is no conflicting evidence. Just misguided attempts at discrediting a theory using faulty logic and misrepresentation of the findings.
My theory is education.
Ding ding ding. Give that man a ceeegar! It's the same reason why movies are so full of faulty physics: people don't know enough to notice. If more people understood physics, then the shotgun blast knocking the victim back twenty feet without budging the shooter would be unbelievable and people would complain. If more people understood science then the outrageous claims of a nut would not be nearly so interesting and the reporters wouldn't present it.
This will vary depending on the witness and the evidence.
In the case of science, the claims should always be repeatable by independent experimentation. If the results are not repeatable, the witness is discredited.
Ask any reporter and they will tell you they provided enough information for the inquiring viewer to learn more on their own.
Technically it's true, but so is the statement "My opponent may be an eloquent speaker, but I don't beat my wife." The implied statement is that his opponent does beat his wife although he never said he did. Even such statements as "he has received virtually no support from the scientific community but insists his methods are sound" lead the viewer to believe that the scientific community is suppressing his research simply because it goes against popular belief and not because the claims are not supported by evidence.
Just because one presumes to know how the world came to be does not preclude him from wanting to know how it works.
I didn't imply that it did, only that his faith is not what drives him to seek knowledge. I have no illusions that all scientists are atheists. I just don't believe that their religious beliefs are what made them become scientists.
In fact I would venture to say that knowlege for its own sake is the driving force behind VERY few research projects.
If, by knowledge for its own sake, you mean strict curiosity, then yes, this is true. There is usually a desire to apply the knowledge once learned. But there are far more research projects searching for the truth than there are projects looking to prove a preconceived notion.
In the end, you and I, like the Jury, must be allowed to consider all the evidence. On this we agree. This means news articles including the wacky bits. The wacky bits should be considered for what they are, this is where journalism fails us.
It is not possible to present all the evidence. They only have a limited amount of time. I would prefer the wacky bits not be given any more attention than they deserve. Simply reporting the wacky bits can give them credibility they otherwise wouldn't have. You see very few stories about perpetual motion machines although many have claimed to have built one. They are scientifically unfounded but worse, usually attempts to defraud the public. They don't deserve any attention. The real problem is that people in general don't understand science. They don't understand the process that makes one claim accepted and another not. They believe that saying a claim is not supported by evidence is identical to claiming it is not possible. They believe that not being able to prove something impossible makes it true. But this is a failure in education. If the goal of journalism is to inform, it should take this into account. But, sadly, the goal in journalism these days is to sell advertising. As long as their primary focus is to get people to watch, they will continually inflate the story to make it more interesting. The line dividing "reported" from "not reported" is not based on the story's merit, but on whether or not people will watch.
The mountain of physical evidence can often be impeached by alternative reasoning just as easily as the witness can be impeached as forgetful or a liar.
Given your experience though, which does a jury tend to believe more, the mountain of physical evidence or the one witness?
Science has offered these, but they may not necessarily be better explanations. They're just different and based on physical evidence rather than the eyewitness.
But they are alternative explanations which shoots the "it couldn't have happened any other way" argument full of holes. "No other alternative" no longer supports the argument if an alternative can be shown to exist.
If we filter all theories from the public press such that only the one which is most probable under current evidence will be seen, we do ourselves a considerable disservice. I think in the end the question comes down to one of where we would draw the line. How do we determine when a theory is too "silly" to be considered by the public, and who will make this decision?
I never suggested we do any such thing. My complaint all along is the reporters treating all theories as if they are equally valid. They clearly aren't. When a reporter presents a study that may indicate that food X can [cause/reduce the risk of] cancer when the study is only preliminary, shows only a correllation but no causation, or has not stood up to scientific review and may be entirely untrue, as if it was hard fact, he is misrepresenting the science and misleading the public. Even more so when the vast majority of scientific evidence refutes the claim. Either wait until the study is confirmed, or be very specific that it has virtually no support in the scientific community. There is no need to create balance by artificially inflating the study's merit.
How do we determine when a theory is too "silly" to be considered by the public, and who will make this decision?
I have no problem letting the public make up their own minds so long as they are given all the information. Their biggest crime is confusing correlation with causation. "Studies have shown that people who do X are more likely to have Y". The implied message is that doing X causes Y when the study says no such thing, yet many believe that not doing X will reduce their risk of getting Y. Unfortunately, as long as the primary goal of "news" programs is to get people to watch so they can sell advertising, you're not going to see any reform in this area.
I think that even modern christians are totally in favor of doing research to learn more about how our world works, and their preferred theory of origin encourages that research, but in the context of one who studies the great artists. Secular science does the same for us, but in the context of pure humanism. Both have as their end goal the accumulation of knowledge about how our world works, where then is the laziness?
I don't doubt your claim, but I don't believe it is their faith that pushes them towards research. I fail to see how "knowing" the answer beyond all question can encourage anyone to look for it. Few creationists are searching for the truth rather than attempting to justify their preconceived beliefs.
Well my porn passwords are Juliet and Juliet. It's a lesser known work, to be sure, but it's certainly steamier.
But much weaker since the dialog is little more than "oooh, yeah, right there baby" over and over.
Actually as I understand it religion is more about conforming your beliefs to a set of documents which purport firsthand accounts.
In other words, an appeal to authority. We believe it because he told us to believe it. Hardly strong evidence. People have been known to lie. Faith is believing, whole-heartedly and without question, that what someone else claims is the absolute truth, regardless of the evidence against it.
Now perhaps I'm biased because my udergraduate studies were in history and I practice law, but if a witness wrote it down - that's pretty good evidence.
I am not a lawyer, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't stronger physical evidence contradicting an eyewitness account tend to discredit that witness even under the law? If a single witness places the suspect at the scene of the crime, but a mountain of physical evidence: cell phone records; credit card receipts; fingerprints; DNA evidence; ATM, convenience store and parking lot security cameras; his signature in a hotel registry; etc, all independently verifiable and consistent, put him a thousand miles away at the time, who do you think is right? Do both sides have the same merit? Take the converse. If the suspect was caught by the police at the scene with the victim's blood on his clothes, holding the gun which shot him (the ballistics evidence supporting the assertion), do you still believe his buddy claiming the suspect was at his house watching television that night?
In the case of our religion issue perhaps where we differ is in the area of giving any credit to cotemporaneous writings.
An eyewitness account is better than nothing. But in the face of strong physical evidence which contradicts the account, I have to go with the physical evidence. Especially when the time period in which the accounts were written is in doubt. Especially when, when at least one of the accounts was written, by definition, nobody could have been there. Who witnessed genesis?
Perhaps I should clarify, we observe complex systems in nature. We observe that the only origin we can find for complex systems to be newly generated is from intelligent designers - people. Among people, we find neither the intelligence nor the capacity to design these systems (cute little fuzzy ones.) Therefore we induce that some other intelligence must have produced them.
This is entirely dependent on the idea that there is no other way to explain it. Science has offered many ways to explain it that don't require the belief in a super-natural intelligent designer.
It is interesting that the scientific unprovability of the divine was articulated well before the scientific method was developed. Lazy would apply if this notion were developed after the fact as an excuse, but it wasn't.
I'm not implying that it was an excuse for science not agreeing with it. But even if the scientific method didn't exist yet, that doesn't make it less lazy. It's simply a matter of believing the answer that is more convenient than actually looking for the real one. It's no different than blaming leprachauns for my grass problems when, in fact, it's because I don't fertilize. If I can't do anything about leprachauns, I don't have to try.
The example still stands, if SOME oil probably comes from inorganic sources, then both theories are potentially correct even if the majority of evidence currently available seems to support one over the other.
But they are not equally potentially correct and that's the entire point. Of the two, the idea that all oil is inorganic in origin is much, much less likely to be correct than the idea that some is and some isn't. Pretending they are is misrepresenting the facts. Before the notion that (at least some) oil was organic in origin, science had to conduct experiments and studies to produce enough evidence to convince the scientific community that it was true. Claiming that it isn't should take at least that much work. Explanations of what might be possible aren't enough to show that it is.
I Might be convinced that the scientific method is as good a means of learning about our world as has yet been devised. I don't think it is reasonable to assert that when applied by real people it deserves any more credibility than a religion.
Maybe I'm just confused, but I don't see how you can make the latter statement given the former. The scientific method is entirely based on confirming your beliefs to the best of your ability. Faith is entirely based on not confirming your beliefs. One is a methodical approach to determining cause and effect. The other is akin to just guessing and hoping you're right. They simply don't compare.
We accept that if you flip a coin enough times, you'll get it to land on heads. If we roll the dice enough, we'll get snakeyes... so we extrapolate this out over a few billion years and say if you breed enough worms you'll get people. Unfortunately the math suggests this is utterly improbable. (I think the book was "Rare Earth.")Call this reasoning by deduction.
This is, again, a misrepresentation of evolutionary theory. Evolution does not claim "all this" happened at random. Natural selection is anything but random. That which has a greater ability to survive has a greater chance of reproducing and passing its abilities on to the next generation. Those that inherit its abilities also have a greater chance to survive to reproduce than those that don't. Flip 100 coins and the odds of them all landing heads up are roughly one in 10^30. That's about a billion times more chances against than there are stars in the known universe. Truly astronomical odds. However, if you flip the same 100 coins and pick up all the coins that landed tails up (the heads up coins "survive") and flip those again, repeat ad infinitum, chances are you will have every coin heads up in as little as 7 throws. It's hardly an accurate model of evolution but it is much closer than simply tossing 100 coins once. The only random element in evolution is genetic mutations and there is even argument that they aren't random.
The other side says: things were created by a divine power you cannot see, feel, touch, hear, taste or smell. But we induce from the evidence - lots of complex organizms that follow similar themes - that they have a common origin. They must have come to be somehow, so we compensate for that seeming impossiblity by ascribing the origin to a God.
This, to me, seems to be a little lazy. "We can't think of another reason why this would happen so, rather than look for one, let's make one up."
Unfortunately that god made himself utterly unprovable.
This is rather convenient, don't you think? How is this different from me attributing the color of grass to a leprachaun that you can't see, hear, feel, smell or taste? What gives the argument for a god more merit than the argument for a leprachaun? My main problem with this type of reasoning is it gives no incentive whatsoever to do any further investigation. And the whole faith concept, in fact, discourages any further investigation.
Call this reasoning by induction.
It's really not. You can induce that the organisms did have a common origin based on their similarities, but nothing in the argument suggests that the origin in question must be a god. It is simply one explanation chosen arbitrarily out of any number of different explanations with no indication why this explanation is any better than any other.
My assertion, and I hope that of the already discredited reporter of our discussion, is that both sides must be considered by any reasonable mind. Thus both parties should be reported.
If we are not going to distinguish between which ideas about our world have merit and which don't, then why bother reporting them at all? In fact, why investigate them at all? Why not attribute it to "god did it" and be done with it. Our gardening shows could just tell us "god doesn't want you to have green gra
Sciencee may be so limited, but facts are not. I think we may irreconcilably differ on this point. I prefer to think that the whole point of science is to better the condition of mankind.
.003% turns up, then we revise the theories, conduct new experiments, and it grows. It can, however, absolutely disprove quite a bit.
The whole point of science is to learn in a way which assures, to the best of our ability, that how we think things work is how they actually work. Whether we use that knowledge to better mankind or kill it is entirely up to us. This is where the values of religion can play a beneficial part, but not as long as they are arguing whether or not the science is correct.
These seem to me to be pretty good evidence that more than one approach to the nature of our world should be explored.
There have been many different disciplines which explore our world, all using different techniques. Science has been the most successful discipline to allow us to manipulate our environment and make predictions that can help us. Quite simply, it works very well. That we are able to even have this conversation is a direct result of science.
You seem pretty fond of the biblical arguments though, so tell me what kind of fact you would accept as supporting an intelligent design theory?
No assumptions based on faith and doesn't rely on trying to disprove one theory as proof of another.
Now that I think about it, why the resistance to facts which tend to discredit certain parts of a given theory?
Because, even if they can invalidate the one theory, it does not prove theirs. I can spend all day proving that grass isn't green because a leprachaun painted it. It doesn't prove that chlorophyl makes it green. It only proves that a leprachaun didn't paint it.
Isn't science all about finding that one fact that wipes out or revises an existing theory - requiring us to develop a new one?
Science is about gaining knowledge by collecting evidence to support or refute a theory. You are partly right: disproving invalid theories is a valuable part of science. The problem is that's where most creationists stop. They engage in a false dichotomy: it must either be evolution or creationism. They completely ignore the third, or more, unknown choices. There is no revision of creationism to fit known evidence. It is as it always was forever and ever, amen. The other side of that is their "science" is usually faulty and doesn't really refute the theory at all. Their only aim is to attempt to discredit evolution so they can feel better about believing what they want to. Let me ask you this: what's the difference between creationism and, say, the Flat Earth Society? Here's a group of people, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that continue to believe that the earth is flat and, in fact, shaped like a pentagon. What makes them wrong and creationism right? What in general makes one religious belief more valid than another? How do you choose?
When it comes down to it, the scientific method cannot prove anything, only suggest probable connections that allow us to make predictions.
And manipulate our environment. It cannot absolutely prove anything (except mathematics, but that's a different subject entirely). But the volume of evidence collected through science allows us to be 99.997% sure this is the way it is. And if the
So one needs only a little bit of the funding they can't get.
From where I'm sitting, right now, for little more than the cost of my internet connection, I can conduct a number of preliminary studies including the one in my example. It just isn't that hard.
On the other hand, neither is assuming that any idea worth researching must be based entirely on physical evidencee & facts external humanity.
How else are you going to support your claim? If your "research" isn't going to turn up anything concrete and verifiable, then of what value is it?
Why is the research that starts with the premise, "These fossils have traits similar to modern mammals, therefore one must have drived from the other," better than research which starts with the premise, "many people belive in a divine power, and similarity between these fossils and modern mammals suggest a common designer."
Because the second is based on an unsupported assumption. That many people believe a thing to be true does not, in any way, shape or form, make it true. To beat Galileo up a little more, most people believed that the earth was the center of the universe. They were wrong. If you want to show that two species are similar because an intelligent being designed them that way, you first have to show that the intelligent being, in fact, exists.
The reason I do think both camps' research is subject to debate regarding the truth, is that it seems to me that the former limits is ability to speculate to that which it can research directly while the latter, while able to speculate beyond its ability to research tends to get limited by established faiths.
Science is completely limited by what it can research directly. That's sort of the point. Why research it at all if you have no chance of learning anything? Are you suggesting we give funding to people who know they can't prove what they are setting out to prove? What's the point? Faith, by definition, is the belief in something despite a complete lack of evidence, or the availability of evidence to the contrary. If you are going to believe despite the evidence, why look for any? If science can't prove what you want it to prove, why claim it does?
But seriously if I'm to do any research like this for you, without funding, first tell me what kind of facts you would demand to support a creationist approach?"
It's very telling that you can't suggest one now. After all, you did direct me to "any creationist textbook" But, here are a few guidelines:
1) Doesn't rely on "evolution can't explain this" to claim creationism is right. That evolution can't explain every single detail does not invalidate the entire theory. And even if evolution is entirely wrong, it doesn't make creationism right. There could a third unknown possibility.
2) Uses scientific research based on good scientific practices, and references to actual scientific studies.
3) Doesn't misrepresent the theory of evolution.
4) Can be corroborated with everything else we know about the known universe, including the accepted age of the planet[1] and the universe.
5) Doesn't rely on statements like "can you believe they actually believe this". That has no scientific merit. As stated before, whether a person finds it credible has no bearing on it's truthfulness.
6) Doesn't rely on passages from the bible as "proof".
7) Doesn't say "it can't be explained any other way" because usually it can, and even if it can't it doesn't prove this is the correct explanation.
This isn't an all inclusive list, but it should get you started. Keep in mind "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Note that I haven't made any claims of this text that I wouldn't make of any other scientific paper.
[1] I'm sorry. I cannot accept the idea that hundreds of different studies in dozens of different disciplines all arrive at roughly the same answer through entirely independent methods and they're all wrong because the government wants it that way.
This is circular reasoning. If an idea needs evidence to support it before it gets funding, and needs funding before it can get evidence, the idea can never be explored.
No it isn't, because there's things called preliminary studies. A preliminary study is research done to see if the idea has any merit. It is usually a small scale version of the study which would provide the real evidence. For example, a scientist wishing to see if radio waves cause cancer would need to conduct a massive study involving many groups of people, both near radio antennas and not near them, and examine the statistics of those with cancer near antennas, those without cancer near antennas, those with cancer not near antennas and those without cancer not near antennas. A preliminary study would examine a much smaller segment of the population looking for correllation, but not necessarily causation. If there is no correllation, it's safe to say there's no causation and therefore no reason to look for one. Preliminary studies usually require comparatively very little funding and only sound reasoning to get it. "We believe it because we believe it" is not sound reasoning.
Again, the circular reasoning above removes the credibility of this assertion.
No circular reasoning. See above.
In addition, there really is quite a collection of evidence to support the young-world folks. I direct you to any creationist textbook.
Show me one creationist textbook that has scientific evidence supporting it the idea.
(Which of course you may choose to discount because of bias and being outside the mainstream of science.)
I'm discounting them because they are bad science, not because I don't believe in their views. There is no evidence to support the idea that man was placed on this earth in his current form by an intelligent being and a mountain of evidence supporting the theory of evolution. This is not because there has been no funding for creationism. It's because there's no evidence.
The first was supported by all available evidence. The sun and stars clearly spun around the world. They saw this every day. Therefore the reasonable inferrence drawn by scientists was that the earth was in the middle and everything spun around it.
Aristarchus first proposed the idea that the earth revolved around the sun about 300 BC. Astronomy came to a standstill during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire so the view that the earth was the center of the universe remained. The precious little evidence that suggested the earth was the center of the universe didn't explain the motions of the planets (Mars, Jupiter and Saturn appear to move backwards sometimes from our point of view). When Copernicus and Galileo suggested that the earth revolved around the sun instead and had evidence to back it up, the church, which held the view that the earth was the center of the universe, had no evidence yet suppressed the findings anyway because it conflicted with what they wanted to be true.
What I would have is a system where every idea was evaluated on its merit without regard to how well it fits in with other established ideas.
The point your missing is that the established ideas already have tremendous merit. They aren't believed for the sake of believing as your comparison with Galileo keeps trying to imply. The evidence is already there. Any idea trying to supplant these established ideas without sufficient evidence doesn't have any merit. That's the bloody point. Any idea that does have merit will get funding and researched.
My main point, and the central problem that draws reporters to fringe science is that the conflicts in the system do not allow for multiple, even conflicting ideas to be pursued with the same zeal at the same time.
This is a crock. What draws reporters to fringe science is that a) it is exciting and b) they don't understand science.
For example, at no time have I endorsed either the 6000 year old earth or the 4.8 billion year old earth theory. From what I personally have observed both ideas have potential to be correct.
This is the main problem with your idea of merit. You are assuming that both views are equally valid while one has all the evidence supporting it and the other has none. They are not equally valid. Assuming that they are is exactly the problem with journalists looking for balance. There is no suppression of evidence that the earth is only 6000 years old. There just is no evidence that the earth is 6000 years old. Period. When all of science agrees the earth is somewhere around 4-5 billion years old, why should the idea, with no evidence to support it, that it is only 6000 years old get any attention at all?
Would that our funding machine, and newspaper reporters, could both do the same without fear of reprisal.
What reprisals? There aren't any. The ideas that aren't getting funding are the ones that have no merit. End of story. There is no conspiracy. There is no suppression of unpopular views. You're trying to fix a problem that just doesn't exist.
We accept for example as scientific fact that an object falls at 32 feet per second, squared because we can reproduce it. Does this mean we should also accept as fact the notion that objects always fall at this rate?
"Always" is a loaded word. Science never says "always". To follow your example, the evidence supports the notion that the force of gravity will accelerate objects, with no other forces acting on them, towards the earth at a rate of 32 ft/sec/sec. There is a ton of evidence supporting this and none disproving it. We can be reasonably certain that this is so. And unless someone can show some evidence that this is not so, it will be continued to be accepted as fact.
The distinction I'm trying to illustrate is that science suffers from the assertion that commonly used inferrences can become so entrenched that they get accepted as "fact."
Not without sufficient evidence they can't.
Then when the next galieo comes along and starts talking elements that our inferrence fails to consider, he gets excommunicated.
Your confusing that which is accepted as scientific fact because of the evidence with that which is believed on faith. Galileo's findings were suppressed because they disagreed with the church's teachings, not because they were unsound. The current scientific facts these days have evidence to support them. In short, there is very good reason to accept the scientific facts. The only reason to suppress Galileo's findings was a desire to have it not be true. See my sig.
Back in the day, too many people had too much invested in the world being the center of the universe. That's what the church taught. That's what the schools taught. That was the accepted inferrence.
Today, too many people have too much invested in ideas like about the organic origin of oil, electron shells, or the distance between stars.
The first was a religious belief with no supporting evidence. The second is based on scientific research with supporting evidence. There is no comparison between the two.
If someone were to offer to disprove these ideas, or even pursue an unrelated theory, it would hamper the funding of pretty much EVERYONE Else.
If anyone was to publish findings that bucked the existing evidence, of course it's going to be met with resistance. It's called skepticism and it's how science is supposed to work. What would you have us do, believe every yahoo with a notion of how things work? If the idea has merit, it will get researched. The idea that an unpopular view will be ignored is simply unsupported. It happens all the time. That it happens a little slower than you would like is because they are taking the time to validate the idea rather than hastily accepting it. That's how it is supposed to work. If the results are validated and the ideas accepted, then the people who continue to ignore the evidence are going to lose funding. That's also how it should work.
He said it, didn't he? His research was eventually accepted, wasn't it? It didn't take that long either.
You find all the stuff about him being a crackpot and that he should be fired, thoses are from other scientists.
You'll have to point that out. From what I have read, it looks like his methods were, at best, unconventional and at worst, reckless. That he happened to be right doesn't make his science good.
Regarding government funding of research, take a look at:
k s/ rd.html
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/boo
Government is not spending their money wisely. Big surprise. None of this supports the idea that the government is deliberately suppressing research of religious ideas.
If your idea is that natural phenomena A is most easily explained by Divine origin. You don't get government funding.
Probably because "divine origin" is just a synonym for "we don't know how it happened". It's a catch-all. We can't explain it, therefore it must be god's doing. It's a logical fallacy and has no evidence to support it.
Either everything you see happend by chance, or it go there through a divine origin of your choice.
This is flat out false. In evolution, for example, the only random element is genetic mutations. Natural selection, however, is a very deliberate process: either the mutation helps, hurts or doesn't affect the species survival. If it helps, it gets passed on. There's nothing random about that. It's a common argument the religious use to prove god's existence based on a severe misrepresentation of the findings.
The problem is not with the scientific method, but with the fact that track records matter in funding. Researchers that are "right" more often get more funding.
As it should be. A scientist who is wrong a lot is probably not a very good scientist.
This has the effect of turning scientists into lawyers. They are pressured to gather evidence that supports their premise, and find ways to discount contradictory facts.
Your entire premise is based on the idea that scientific fact is just a matter of opinion open for debate. It's not. With the exception of the few using junk science to sway public opinion, there are very few scientists looking to prove some preconceived idea. They want to know the truth. They find out through experimentation and if the process doesn't support their original theory, they revise the theory. This is the essential difference between science and religion. Science: 1) I believe X is caused by Y. 2) See if I'm right. Religion: 1) I believe X is caused by Y. 2) go back to 1.
As for the few, well, that's entirely what the article is about: journalists giving too much attention to junk science in the guise of balance. Junk science gets discredited very quickly. Not because the view is "unpopular", but because it is bad science.
Trust me, if there were any good reason to believe a religious claim was right, the scientists would have no trouble finding funds to research it. The churches and the vast majority of people in this country who do believe in god would love nothing more than to have it scientifically proven.
Here comes the New Dark Age...
Most research funding comes from government sources.
This is an awfully broad statement with nothing to corroborate it. But even if it is true, most is not all. And nothing is stopping the religious powers from funding their own research. That they choose to use junk science to further their agenda is not the fault of science or the government.
Government sources in most nations cannot fund research that involves a religion-affiliated theory no matter how sound.
This is just plain wrong. That the government cannot fund religion does not prevent them from funding research just because it happens to agree with religious beliefs.
Contrary to what you would have me believe, science is not in direct conflict with religion. Science doesn't care if you believe in a god. The scientists aren't out to prove religion wrong. Only find the truth. It isn't until religion attempts to use junk science to either discredit accepted scientific claims or promote their own beliefs that science steps in and says, "no, this is wrong." If good scientific evidence was presented that supported a religious belief, it would receive the same scrutiny as any other claim. As it should.
That's true, but it takes more digging to discover that later experiments do not support earlier conclusions. That's way beyond what journalists are doing today.
That's not really the journalist's job. The real problem is journalists give way to much credit to preliminary, or even junk, studies without evaluating their merit. I'm not asking them to do independent experimentation, simply realize that a single study is not conclusive proof, and an opposing viewpoint does not always equally valid.
Not really. Millikan asked an important question and created a great experiment to find it. But his numeric value for e/m_e was too low. Possibly because he cherry-picked the data, possibly because his value for the viscosity of air was off, etc. For whatever reason, his answer was off. What you don't hear about as often is how subsequent experiments slowly diverged from his:
Like I said, I'm not that familiar with it. But it looks like science did work, if a little slowly. I never claimed it was perfect...
You feel that science is infallible
I never said any such thing. I just didn't fall into your trap trying to equate a belief in science with a belief in religion.
even though there is considerable evidence to suggest otherwise.
What evidence? You've presented none. All you've done is claim that the lack of scientific proof of religious beliefs is due to some conspiracy theory that science is somehow being funded to suppress religion. That you believe you have presented evidence really shows how little about science you do understand.
You thump your government funded textbook, they'll thump their bibles, and if you get into a rhythm maybe it'll drown you both out.
Your tinfoil hat is way too tight.
This could go on all night... But I really don't think you're thinking clearly.
Oh, that's rich.
I did suggest, by analogy, that secular funding for research influences the results.
You said that scientists were directly being influenced to disagree with the church, completely ignoring the fact that the church does not have to support its claims and science does.
Government cannot fund religion
They cannot suppress religion either.
Democratic government will not fund people who disagree with the majority.
The majority of people in this country believe in god in one form or another.
Therefore anyone who wants funding is encouraged at the very least to produce results that meet the expected norms.
Government is not the only source of funding, and most sources of funding are interested in the truth, not support for presupposed conclusions. The few that are are quickly debunked by real science. Research loses funding if it fails to be useful, not because it agrees with the church.
If you believe that even though this funding regime is in place research still proceeds in a perfectly neutral and unspoiled eden, are you not demonstrating a faith in something unprovable and contrary to observable fact?
No.
I'm terribly sorry. Please forgive my overestimations.
Okay. Fine.
Your very subject implies that it is the scientists who are biased, and then proceed to claim that science is biased because of some conspiracy theory suppressing religion analogous to the suppression of science by the church, claim my argument is the result of "some well meaning but over zealous christian [that] did something to you in the past to really make you mad", and then backpedal into some weasly claim that what you really meant is journalists are just betting the long shots hoping to get lucky, and yet I am the one who misunderstood.
Go back to whatever bridge you crawled out from under, troll.
That you believe any of these groups is doing any real science is very telling indeed...
But there are places that will only continue to provide funding if they like the conclusions.
Obviously. It's called business. But commercial research is usually motivated by truth as much as independent research. It does a manufacturer no good to have forged scientific results if they can't apply them. But even if they do forge their findings, they won't stand up to scrutiny. That's where science works.
And there are ways findings can be publicized without peer review.
Any findings that have not stood up to peer review should be discredited as such. That's the whole point of the article: that journalists are giving undue attention to bad science.
And there are cases where scientists have been deceived by their expectations or even falsified their data.
These results won't be repeatable in independent experimentation. That's also where science works.
Consider the controversy surrounding the Millikan oil drop experiment
I had to do some research to find out about this, but it is a little different. Millikan turned out to be right. That it took 14 years for the scientific community to accept his results is not a failure in science. Science cannot prove that something is conclusively true. It can, however, prove that something is conclusively false. That they took some time to verify his results is infinitely more desirable than believing him without verification and have it turn out to be wrong.
Of course. But I'm not sure about your specific example - I heard somewhere that he made that bet as sort of a consolation prize. "Well, at least if I turn out to be wrong, I'll get this money." I'm not sure that he ever changed his mind. (I don't care enough to find out for sure.)
Not that it matters, but evidently he has. He had a conference in July where he admitted he was wrong.
is entirely different from this:
Try saying what you mean instead of accusing me of not understanding you.
The reason why people don't like to acknowledge that some opinions have merit and others don't is because that means that someone is wrong, and heaven forbid that anyone is wrong! It might damage their self esteem! *gasp*
It's got more to do with that we have taken "tolerance" to such a level that you can't tell someone he's full of shit, even if he is demonstrably full of shit, without being accused of dismissing his viewpoint out of hand. "Why don't you present both sides?" is the battle-cry of the nutjob whose opinion has no basis in fact yet wants to be treated as equally valid. Ignore the nutjob and you're accused of bias. Well, guess what. It is bias. But it's bias based on the evidence. That kind of bias is good and, in fact, necessary. Would anybody seriously give arguments from the Flat Earth Society equal weight as an argument that the world is round? No. So why do we have to give equal weight to claims that are just as junky?
I often like to joke with people that "All men are created equal" doesn't mean "for all purposes".
The line I like (and I'll be damned if I can remember where I heard it) is "All men are created equal. After that, it's up to them."
But who's going to waste their time reviewing evidence collected by a right-wing, bible-thumping, wacko with ties to the oil industry?
It happens all the time. The problem is that, more often than not, the "evidence" "collected" has been done so in an unscientific manner. When the results can't be independently verified, and there is a ton of scientific evidence showing him to be wrong, why should they bother?
Peer review is fine and all that, but what happens when the peers have a vested interest in maintaining a certain point-of-view. Scientists are motivated more by prestiage than money -- funding is only a useful tool in developing prestige. Prestige, as measured by academic titles and citations, is based on challenging details of the currently accepted model in order to get attention, but without discrediting the majority of peers by attacking the models foundation.
It doesn't work that way. Science isn't just a bunch of people with dubious credentials agreeing with each other based on their whims. The claims must be supported by evidence and that evidence must be verifiable by independent experimentation. Any one person can show a claim to be false simply by conducting the experiment. No real scientist is going to ignore that kind of evidence. It's the entire basis of science that there is no ultimate authority and that the claims must be born out by experimentation.
Sure everyone wants scientists to be completely objective, but scientists are people too and an un-biased scientist is about as common as an un-greedy entrepreneur.
Every single scientist does not need to be completely objective in order for science to work. If the most biased researcher submits results that don't stand up to peer review and independent verification, they are not accepted. Whether or not people are objective, the process is.