If you really want to understand about Einstein's acceptance by the scientific community, and the reasons why the Nobel Prize committee went against him.
> the author should be told to improve his experiments until he gets a stronger result.
No, the author should publish his results but not claim to have disproven the original theory. If you read the link that you gave, it's about _claims_ not about publishing results.
> Einstein would have received the Nobel prize for it in 1923. Instead, he received the Nobel prize for the photoelectric effect.
The photoelectric effect is easily "proven", since you can do it. However we/still/ cannot test most of the predictions of GR. For example, we still have no observed gravitational waves. For this reason, I can fully understand why they gave him the nobel prize for the photoelectric effect.
> You really shouldn't get your history of science from web pages meant for high school students.
Haha, attack the source rather than my statements. Real professional.
> There are many other errors and misconceptions in your post, but it's pointless to try to correct them all
> The history of science shows you that there are a lot of the former.
This is what I'm disputing.
> Just look at how long it took for QM and GR to become widely accepted.
I do know about QM. It took many years to get the theory ironed out - there was what we now call "old QM" which wasn't quite correct. Of course this older, and incorrect, idea wasn't promoted to the status of Quantum Mechanics.
As for GR, it started in about 1910, and it took Einstein about 5 years to write down and was published in 1916, and then it took another 3 years until it could be tested by looking at the deflection of light. And this is all going on during World War 1.
The Nazis actually got 100 German scientists, including Nobel Prize Winners, to come out and say that Einstein was wrong, because they disliked "Jewish science".
What is your version of events to claim that scientists rejected the theory out of dogma?
> Extraordinary ideas require extraordinary evidence to be accepted, but they shouldn't require extraordinary evidence to be published or funded for further study.
And they don't - both of your examples, GR and QM, were published before there was evidence. They only need to be logically sound and hopefully fit existing data.
I read the URL, and I agree with the editors. Claims MUST require strong evidence. If there is not evidence for your idea, then instead you should state that and not make a claim otherwise.
If there are mistakes in your paper, and they caught, then the paper should be rejected, revised, and resubmitted. I can't see why you would think otherwise.
> And read Kuhn's work (and other works on the history of science) showing how much resistance there is even to contemplating new ideas
Uh, no, Kuhn's work is resisted because he was just plain wrong. He seriously proposed the ancient of idea that mental health was due to humors in the body. Without a single piece of evidence. And claimed that all ideas were equally valid. And dismissed science as just 'puzzle solving'. If he does not come up with a falsifiable model with better predictions than what we have now, then of course he deserves to be dismissed.
> what makes it "extraordinary" is just that current theory simply can't deal with such a possibility at all.
Right. Disagreeing with the current theories, which have tons of evidence for them, requires extraordinary evidence. Glad we agree.:)
Oh what nonsense. All you are describing is that extraordinary ideas require extraordinary evidence. That has nothing to do with dogma.
So far the evidence for the decay rate changing isn't strong enough to be "extraordinary". It's typical to require 6 9's (99.9999% sure). This is the standard required when finding a new particle, for example.
If you're going to make a claim that scientists do have dogma - a belief unchanged by evidence - then please provide evidence yourself of that. It's a huge claim to make.
Why are people modding this up? This quote is 30 years old. And carbon dating has almost nothing to do with evolution. For anything longer than 100,000 year or so, you use radioactive dating.
Quite a few people have talked about believe or not believing in dark matter and dark energy.
But it's the same as the problem with the word "evolution". There's the fact of evolution (we see it happening) and then the theory (evolution through natural selection).
In the same way, dark matter and dark energy are FACTS. We know that without them, theory does not match observations. So we name that different dark matter and dark energy. That's a fact and cannot be disproven (unless, I suppose, the actual experiments were all wrong)
There are many ideas about what they are (MACHOS, WIMPS, a new physics law etc ) but those are the hypotheses, and those are what can be wrong.
This whole debate reminds me so much of the old days where it was considered unethically and illegal to cut up a dead person. Just to study the human body, people had to go grave digging and steal corpses..
> Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from
How on earth is/was this dogma, if scientists immediate reaction to this is "hmm, that's interesting. Let's study this further" ? It's not even as if scientists were not looking for changes - as others pointed out, we have done similar experiments on cassinni etc to see if decay rates were affected by distance from the Sun.
Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive, but I'm annoyed at the use of the word 'dogma' to refer to what scientists do.
My university spent $2 million on a clean-room for the engineers. But then they had no budget to run it. It was not used for 3 years and then demolished and replaced with classrooms for pyschology students.
I'm living in Japan, and the swastika is everywhere. But it means 'temple', and has nothing to do with the Nazis. But it still makes me look twice everytime:)
> My dad didn't need a SINGLE DRIVER, those that Windows 7 HP didn't have it got from windows Update at first boot,
Yay, anecdotal evidence! There are plenty of people for whom Ubuntu installs perfectly too. That is why you are being a troll.
I've always had problems installing Windows - I think I'm unlucky.
I recently bought a usb WIFI device from Japan to get on the internet. Windows did not have the drivers and the drivers that came with it only worked on the Japanese version of windows. I had to spend several days doing registry hacks to force it to install.
> Yes, it is called "Believing shit that isn't real." Our minds can have powerful effects on our bodies and in particular on how we feel, since ultimately the mind is what does the feeling
While true, this should always be the very last resort argument, after everything else has been tested for.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes, paying for healthcare is stealing, but spending money on military is fine. You guys are really weird sometimes.
Read this:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/sep/einstein-nobel-prize/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=
If you really want to understand about Einstein's acceptance by the scientific community, and the reasons why the Nobel Prize committee went against him.
> the author should be told to improve his experiments until he gets a stronger result.
No, the author should publish his results but not claim to have disproven the original theory. If you read the link that you gave, it's about _claims_ not about publishing results.
> Einstein would have received the Nobel prize for it in 1923. Instead, he received the Nobel prize for the photoelectric effect.
The photoelectric effect is easily "proven", since you can do it. However we /still/ cannot test most of the predictions of GR. For example, we still have no observed gravitational waves. For this reason, I can fully understand why they gave him the nobel prize for the photoelectric effect.
> You really shouldn't get your history of science from web pages meant for high school students.
Haha, attack the source rather than my statements. Real professional.
> There are many other errors and misconceptions in your post, but it's pointless to try to correct them all
Because I'll show you to be wrong about them too?
> The history of science shows you that there are a lot of the former.
This is what I'm disputing.
> Just look at how long it took for QM and GR to become widely accepted.
I do know about QM. It took many years to get the theory ironed out - there was what we now call "old QM" which wasn't quite correct. Of course this older, and incorrect, idea wasn't promoted to the status of Quantum Mechanics.
As for GR, it started in about 1910, and it took Einstein about 5 years to write down and was published in 1916, and then it took another 3 years until it could be tested by looking at the deflection of light. And this is all going on during World War 1.
The Nazis actually got 100 German scientists, including Nobel Prize Winners, to come out and say that Einstein was wrong, because they disliked "Jewish science".
Yet despite of all of this, according to http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/gravitation_relativity.htm it was almost universally accepted as soon as there was evidence for it.
What is your version of events to claim that scientists rejected the theory out of dogma?
> Extraordinary ideas require extraordinary evidence to be accepted, but they shouldn't require extraordinary evidence to be published or funded for further study.
And they don't - both of your examples, GR and QM, were published before there was evidence. They only need to be logically sound and hopefully fit existing data.
I read the URL, and I agree with the editors. Claims MUST require strong evidence. If there is not evidence for your idea, then instead you should state that and not make a claim otherwise.
If there are mistakes in your paper, and they caught, then the paper should be rejected, revised, and resubmitted. I can't see why you would think otherwise.
> And read Kuhn's work (and other works on the history of science) showing how much resistance there is even to contemplating new ideas
Uh, no, Kuhn's work is resisted because he was just plain wrong. He seriously proposed the ancient of idea that mental health was due to humors in the body. Without a single piece of evidence. And claimed that all ideas were equally valid. And dismissed science as just 'puzzle solving'. If he does not come up with a falsifiable model with better predictions than what we have now, then of course he deserves to be dismissed.
> what makes it "extraordinary" is just that current theory simply can't deal with such a possibility at all.
Right. Disagreeing with the current theories, which have tons of evidence for them, requires extraordinary evidence. Glad we agree. :)
Oh what nonsense. All you are describing is that extraordinary ideas require extraordinary evidence. That has nothing to do with dogma.
So far the evidence for the decay rate changing isn't strong enough to be "extraordinary". It's typical to require 6 9's (99.9999% sure). This is the standard required when finding a new particle, for example.
If you're going to make a claim that scientists do have dogma - a belief unchanged by evidence - then please provide evidence yourself of that. It's a huge claim to make.
Why are people modding this up? This quote is 30 years old. And carbon dating has almost nothing to do with evolution. For anything longer than 100,000 year or so, you use radioactive dating.
Quite a few people have talked about believe or not believing in dark matter and dark energy.
But it's the same as the problem with the word "evolution". There's the fact of evolution (we see it happening) and then the theory (evolution through natural selection).
In the same way, dark matter and dark energy are FACTS. We know that without them, theory does not match observations. So we name that different dark matter and dark energy. That's a fact and cannot be disproven (unless, I suppose, the actual experiments were all wrong)
There are many ideas about what they are (MACHOS, WIMPS, a new physics law etc ) but those are the hypotheses, and those are what can be wrong.
I think you use the word "believe" differently.
When a religious person believes something, it's a dogma - i.e. an unquestionable tenant of their faith.
When a scientist "believes" something, then they will say that they are just guessing that it's true, but would change their mind with no information.
I don't think you should use the word "believe" to mean the same in both cases.
This whole debate reminds me so much of the old days where it was considered unethically and illegal to cut up a dead person. Just to study the human body, people had to go grave digging and steal corpses..
From wikipedia:
> Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from
How on earth is/was this dogma, if scientists immediate reaction to this is "hmm, that's interesting. Let's study this further" ? It's not even as if scientists were not looking for changes - as others pointed out, we have done similar experiments on cassinni etc to see if decay rates were affected by distance from the Sun.
Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive, but I'm annoyed at the use of the word 'dogma' to refer to what scientists do.
I can very well believe it.
My university spent $2 million on a clean-room for the engineers. But then they had no budget to run it. It was not used for 3 years and then demolished and replaced with classrooms for pyschology students.
It's sweeden you get charged for "rape" for, say, touching someone boobies when they don't want you to.
Sexual harrassment? Sure. But how is it useful to classify that as rape?
Hmm, how does that joke go? You can tell the difference between brown bears from grizzly bears because a grizzly bear's poo has whistles in it..
Wait, you want to put together a bunch of ADHD kids _in the same classroom_ ? Are you nuts?
I don't agree that it's "nothing to see here" - something has gone wrong if it took 6 years for this to happen.
"Put them in a better environment and they could function"
That's not really feasible though. ADHD kids do do better with one-on-one tutoring, but that's too expensive to do for all such kids.
Indeed. ADHD is real, and it's a shame to see such a strong backlash in here.
There are misdiagnosed cases, and there are people who are diagnosed when they are not ADHD.
But there are also kids who have a severe problem, and then never get treatment due to the whole social stigma surrounding the issue.
> I'm being a troll and Ubuntu works perfectly, really?
Uh no, I'm saying that Windows doesn't work perfectly, which is something that you're claiming.
> Oh and your big anecdote is you bought something built for the Asian market and it didn't work in the USA?
Uh, I live in Japan. And I'm English.
I'm living in Japan, and the swastika is everywhere. But it means 'temple', and has nothing to do with the Nazis. But it still makes me look twice everytime :)
I'm married to a Japanese woman and my grandmother in law lost friends during the war. Her house was bombed and she lost all her material possessions.
Yeah. I was objecting to the first half of the GP's rant about "taking personal responsibility".
> My dad didn't need a SINGLE DRIVER, those that Windows 7 HP didn't have it got from windows Update at first boot,
Yay, anecdotal evidence! There are plenty of people for whom Ubuntu installs perfectly too. That is why you are being a troll.
I've always had problems installing Windows - I think I'm unlucky.
I recently bought a usb WIFI device from Japan to get on the internet. Windows did not have the drivers and the drivers that came with it only worked on the Japanese version of windows. I had to spend several days doing registry hacks to force it to install.
On Linux I plugged it in and it worked.
Don't forget air quality. There's a cool TED talk on this
http://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_grow_your_own_fresh_air.html
They measured a 20% (or something - watch the video) increase in productivity after using plants to clean the air.
There's a cool TED talk on this
http://www.ted.com/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_grow_your_own_fresh_air.html
They measured a 20% (or something - watch the video) increase in productivity after using plants to clean the air.
> Yes, it is called "Believing shit that isn't real." Our minds can have powerful effects on our bodies and in particular on how we feel, since ultimately the mind is what does the feeling
While true, this should always be the very last resort argument, after everything else has been tested for.
What is the air quality like? Is there mold etc?