Going on SNL is a great way to make the people
think you are "hip" and "cool" and not as bad
as everybody thought you were.
Someone tell Trent Lott. He thinks he can improve his image by making an ass of himself on BET.
Re:Really bright... but really close to the sun
on
A Comet To Watch
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· Score: 2
I just have to nit-pick. I've seen Mercury during the middle of the day on at least three occasions. Of course, having the Moon blot out the Sun helped somewhat.
For those of us who don't have a convenient solar eclipse handy, Mercury is bloody difficult to see in the middle of the day. Happy?
If you're willing to supply one sometime in early January, that would be delightful. I live near Detroit, so if you could aim the shadow there that would be best. Many thanks.
Re:Science is open to everyone
on
Who Owns Science?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
But for those that do, it is important that they receive some sort of carrot to keep them motivated. If this means charging for academic journals, then perhaps that's the way to go about it.
Those that would steal their hard work because "Science is for everyone" doesn't quite grasp the concept of the reward system
Who's stealing from whom? Journals don't do scientific work; scientists do. They've already been compensated for their work. They only publish because they want to contribute to the sum of human knowledge, because they want the prestige, and because their tenure-track job depends on it.
If Nature or Science or Cell can make a buck by printing a researcher's work and selling copies to other people, good for them. By putting together a selection of good papers they're saving me time and providing a useful service. After six months or a year, they've really squeezed all the money they're going to get out of the papers. (Very few reprints are purchased after this point.) The manuscripts should be released to a public repository. If anything, it may stimulate more research and lead to more fodder for the printing presses. And it ensures that older papers are not lost--trapped, mouldering, in musty old library collections--if a publishing house goes out of business.
How are we going to get around the fact that being away from Earth for approx three years would mean that every cell of your body would be transversed by a galactic ray?
I'm going to assume that you're making a statistical argument about cosmic rays, and not talking about some novel weapon developed by Martians for the war of the worlds.
Estimates of radiation exposure for interplanetary travel (that I've seen) are typically around 50 to 100 rem per year of exposure. Delivered over a brief period, this dose would indeed cause serious effects. Spread out evenly over the course of a pair of six month trips (say) this dose is much more manageable. Radiation workers in Canada and the United States are already permitted up to 5 rem per year. I know a few people (doctors who have been involved in clinical radiation therapy) who have received lifetime work related doses of more than 50 rem, and they seem pretty healthy still. There would be a continuous low level of cellular damage, but not above the rate that the body can easily repair. There would also be an increase in lifetime cancer risk of anywhere from 0.1 to 10% depending on who you ask. I'd certainly be willing to take that chance for the opportunity to go to Mars. Even a dose of 150 rem associated with a three-year journey is not intolerable, since it is delivered over an extended period of time. I have to die of something; it might as well be cancer. The health data associated with my demise could also be quite valuable.
Incidentally, even if every cell in your body was exposed to a cosmic ray, that's not particularly alarming. Damage would have to be done to genetic matter in the cell nucleus to kill or mutate the cell--and the nucleus isn't that big a target. Cells can also repair some types of radiation-induced damage to DNA.
Yes, spam costs you money - but so does looking through all the junk mail you get at home - that filtering can take a minute or too - the same amount of time as clicking delete on your computer.
How many times must it be said? It does not cost me the same amount of money to look through the junk mail I receive at home. The sender pays to send the junk mail. In fact, bulk commercial mail subsidizes other postal services in the United States and Canada--presumably in many other nations as well. For spam, I pay for the internet connection, my ISP's servers, and the metered/capped bandwidth that these leeches suck up.
Free speech is an important and very nearly unimpeachable right. I will defend most strongly a person's right to say almost anything. Nevertheless, I should not be compelled to spend my own money to spread someone else's opinion or advertising.
Legalese is a necessary evil. English is a pretty slippery language, and to produce a binding contract, the terms must be clear and precise.
On Slashdot and elsewhere, people frequently bandy about terms like theft and copyright infringement as if they were equivalent; in a strictly legal sense they most certainly are not. (I will leave aside the moral issues.) Similarly, people will often use theft, burglary, and robbery interchangeably. Again, beyond sharing the basic idea of taking something that isn't yours, these crimes are very different in nature.
Try going before a court with a well-intentioned but poorly-written contract or license. See how far you get. You should only need to get bitten once before you gain an appreciation of legalese.
Analogy for/.ers: if you feed gcc a text file explaining in plain English the program that you want, will it work? Or do you have to follow rules of syntax, vocabulary, and grammar, understanding that the system only works if you are explicit and precise in your use of language?
Although VRAPS does emphasize Vision, Rhythm, Anticipation, Partnering, and Simplification, the whole book is about Criteria, Antipatterns, and Patterns.
Doesn't "Google" use as a verb dilute its trademark value? (Something like that happened to Xerox).
And it's pretty much happened to Kleenex, Band-Aid, and maybe Cuisinart in practice if not in law. The key difference in this case is that when using the verb "to google", people are actually talking about using the Google service. Nobody uses Google as a generic term for a search engine--they are speaking about the specific, undiluted, trademarked product.
If people started using "to google" as a generic term meaning "to search for exhaustively" then there could be trouble. ("I'm going to google Altavista for info" would be a harbinger of doom, for example.)
I do this on the phone; I don't have a wireless web device. In other words, I have to genuinely know everything when I want to impress people in person.;)
They provide an information service to the public. They edit that information based upon thier personal beliefs.
Well, no. Google does pull sites from its database that have deliberately manipulated rankings. They may also pull sites when compelled to do so by law. Under those circumstances, they have been known to submit information to chillingeffects.org. I haven't noticed them editing or censoring information based on their beliefs.
They have chosen not to accept advertising money from certain groups. If you search Google, I'm quite sure that you will find all the uncensored information that you could possibly want about tobacco, alcohol, and firearms. (And pornography, for that matter.) Traditional media outlets regularly make decisions about the advertising that they will or will not accept, as do other web sites. (You don't think CNN monitors its banner providers' content?) Why shouldn't Google be allowed to do the same, according to their own particular moral lights?
Absolutely. It is generally accepted at my university that the physicists are the worst singers in the Faculty of Science. In my experience, biochemists generally are the most talented by far.
The ridiculous and sensationalist New Scientist piece suggests that because there are errors in some footnotes, authors must (obviously) not be reading the papers that they cite.
Yes, that is the tinfoil hat explanation.
Now try this one: authors are human beings who make typos. They cut and paste erroneous references because they don't want to waste time retyping the reference. They read articles from the online versions of journals, and sometimes the citation info provided online is incorrect or altogether absent.
One thing that does disgust me is the explosion in the number of footnotes associated with a typical academic paper these days. I recently submitted a paper with a not-particularly-important result to a not-very-important journal, and the paper had forty-one footnotes. (Most were added by my coauthor.) If you visit an mature university library, pull out a copy of an older periodical. Copies of Philosophical Transactions from the nineteenth century are a delight to read. I read a paper by Kelvin from (IIRC) 1807, and it had seven references. Seven!
The growth of massive, searchable databases of papers (eg Medline) has led to many more footnotes per paper, and many more potential typos. For the record, the paper I mentioned above contained at least three errors in the footnotes that were noted and corrected by the journal publisher. Perhaps New Scientist should be writing a scathing expose on the decline of proofreading and rise of profligate namedropping in footnotes.
No, we shouldn't. They can be honored and even paid for out of "science budgets", but they're not doing science anymore than altar boys are performing marriages.
The scientific method has many steps, the first of which is to formulate hypotheses based on available information. Confirmation of hypotheses through experimentation (leading to refined theories; lather, rinse, repeat) is a critical part of the process, but why can't the work be divided up--in time, in space, and among different people? Should experimentalists who spend their time testing other people's theories be considered mere technicians, unworthy of the title of "scientist"?
Theoreticians are just scientists who have to work with very incomplete information. Hawking obviously isn't working in a vacuum--he knows about general relativity, the likely existence of black holes, quantum theory, thermodynamics. Combining those ideas into more comprehensive theories that are subject to experimental disproof is an important first step.
Does that mean that my hypothesis of an extant god who wishes to test our faith makes me a scientist? I'm more than willing to test my belief when the opportunity arises, but science isn't quite at the point where we can speak to departed souls...
First, you're presupposing the existence of an immortal soul. I don't think it's appropriate to beg that question. In fact, I think it would be an excellent starting point for you as a scientist. Propose to me an experiment that would demonstrate the existence of an immortal soul. Describe your hypothetical soul. One possible outcome of your experiment must serve to disprove your hypothesis.
If your hypothesis cannot be disproved by experiment, then it's not a legitimate hypothesis in the scientific sense. Taking again the example of black hole evaporation, Hawking has described the process. He predicts its outcome. Though not yet available in the lab, small black holes will likely soon be created. The experiment has already been sketched out, and its results may conclusively confirm or refute Hawking's work. An experiment can be conceived, it will support or contradict clearly the hypothesis.
I agree wholeheartedly with your disdain for "knowledge by decree", but I think that your definition of the term "scientist" is too narrow.
But the point is, even if it WORKED... and then suddenly didn't, and there were notes, how do you believe it?
The point is that if there are accurate and detailed notes, you have a much better starting point to try and repeat the result. You know what reagents the chemist used. You can check for contamination at all the steps. You can run the experiment again late at night and see if the cleaner power helps. For that matter, you can evaluate the work in the cold light of day and look for gross errors of technique that were inadvertantly missed late at night.
Scientists are usually willing to spend a significant amount of time working on a needle-in-a-haystack type of problem. They hate to be sent on a wild goose chase. Good notes make all the difference.
The best way to get colleagues to believe you? Build a reputation for good technique and recordkeeping over years of scientific effort. Show them the steps you followed in your work. Respect their criticisms and listen to their advice. Other scientists will be falling all over themselves for a chance to get a piece of a new discovery.
What kind of SCIENCE does a theoretical physicist do? If they're discussing things that are never tested, then they're simply engaging in conjecture, not science.
Ultimately, it is science if the hypotheses (or conjectures, if you prefer) they develop can in principle be experimentally disproven, and can be used to make predictions.
If you aren't testing your hypothesis with real experiments, you're not doing science!
I suppose the question becomes, "Is Stephen Hawking a scientist?" The evaporation of black holes is something that we are not currently able to simulate in the lab. Nevertheless, the idea is a natural (brilliant, elegant, and inspired, but natural) extension of concepts of entropy and quantum mechanics. (I grossly oversimplify, but there's lots more about it on the web for those that are interested.) Furthermore, it makes predictions about what should happen to a black hole, which meets my second criterion. These predictions cannot be tested at this time, but will in principle be testable in the next generation of supercolliders. Until such time, Hawking's ideas still can spark lively debate--which is exactly as it should be.
Does this mean that we should not be allowed to consider theoretical physicists and cosmologists real scientists until technology matures to the point where their hypotheses can be tested? I submit that scientists are people who put forth rational hypotheses based on whatever incomplete information is available, and are prepared to test their hypotheses--or allow others to do so--when technology and funding allow. Real scientists should be able to recognize the difference between a hypothesis and an accepted theory and trust the two accordingly.
It's usually a good rule of thumb. And if someone does have a genuinely remarkable result, he or she will usually be believed eventually. At which point, the project will be turned over to a coworker who is capable of keeping a detailed lab notebook.
Science aphorism #2: If you don't write it down, it never happened.
Obviously, this only works for positive results. Negative results unfortunately still seem to happen even if you don't write them down. Records are an essential part of the scientific method. If you believe the fellow who cures AIDS and develops cold fusion while pulling an all-nighter in the lab--but, shucks, didn't get it down on paper--I've got some magic beans for you. No, I misplaced the certificate of authenticity the giant gave me, but you can take my word for it, right?
On the one hand you had people typified by older zoologists, who were gentlemanly academic putterers, studying animals and publishing papers.
I will paraphrase Ernest Rutherford, since I can't find a definitive version of his quotation on the Web right now. He said something to the effect of, "All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
More generally, research can be lumped into two broad (and overlapping) camps: phenomenology and investigation. Phenomenology involves making more and more detailed reports of the world, but does not require one to perform experiments or formulate hypotheses. Investigation includes attampts to gain a "deeper" sort of understanding of problems--it is not merely stamp collecting.
Unfortunately, much of biology was trapped in phenomenological models until relatively recently. Until the development of tools to pursue the study of molecular biology and genetics, we were limited to a basic acceptance that heredity existed, and some handwaving about evolution and so forth--and we could label all of our stuffed specimens, because taxonomy just takes a sharp eye and some good guesswork. (Even so, many species are now being reclassified as genetics tools are brought to bear on them. The taxonomic kingdoms I learned in school are not the ones being taught now.)
In physics, you can look at a system and in principle describe all of the interactions at work. If it is a simple system, you can perform calculations that predict how it will evolve over time.
In biology, take a single cell. We still can't describe everything that goes on in that little cubic-micron space, though we're getting closer. We're finally starting to understand the way many of the more important chemical pathways within cells operate. We can fold simple proteins in simulation. Some of the genetic tinkering we can do actually has predicatable effects.
So of course biology is changing as a field--it is graduating from stamp collecting to science. That will attract new attitudes, new people--and new funding.
"Scientist" should probably be a subset of "engineer", as it's always easier to apply knowledge than to improve upon it.
Yikes. What kind of engineering does a theoretical physicist do? I mean the sort that develops models of the universe, not the sort that builds supercolliders.
I think that the distinction between application of existing known principles and the development of new ideas is sufficient to keep scientists and engineers in separate categories. Engineers may be called upon to apply the knowledge they have in extremely creative ways, but that's not the same thing as developing that knowledge from scratch. Similarly, many scientists (the experimentalists, at least) often have to perform various sorts of engineering in the course of their work--but I wouldn't want them trying to build bridges. (Q: You just woke up in a lecture hall. There appears to be a demo in progress and you've forgotten what class you're supposed to be in--how do you tell? A: Demo is slimy: Biology. Demo woke you when it blew up: Chemistry (if it smells bad, Organic Chemistry). Instructor appears puzzled because demo does not work: Physics.)
Of course, Fermat could just have been a very good guesser. Perhaps he had in mind one of the many elegant but flawed proofs that have surfaced over the years. It's possible that all he actually demonstrated with many of the 'theorems' he left behind after his death was chutzpah and intuition. Without leaving proofs, Fermat's legacy was a collection of conjectures, not theorems.
Granted, since his conjectures have now been proven, he should be applauded for his tremendous intuition.
Enterprise can't keep its story consistant with the events of the Kirk era that happen 100 years later.
You mean the Kirk era timeline that places the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s? How about the Picard timeline that informs us that mathematicians in the twenty-fourth century haven't been able to prove Fermat's Last Theorem?
It's just a story, people. Allow them some artistic license--this is entertainment, not history. I'm content if each series is self-consistent and doesn't clash too badly with the preexisting Star Trek tapestry.
Hmmm. Who really wants more mechanically reclaimed meat in their food?
They're not looking at putting it into our food, but rather into animal feedstock. The tornado-pulverized chicken bits will be at least one animal removed (er, distant) from anything that you eat.
every last chicken molecule
Did any of the other chemists reading this suddenly try to picture a chicken molecule? Are you all giggling madly, too?
Slashdot Mirror
Someone tell Trent Lott. He thinks he can improve his image by making an ass of himself on BET.
For those of us who don't have a convenient solar eclipse handy, Mercury is bloody difficult to see in the middle of the day. Happy?
If you're willing to supply one sometime in early January, that would be delightful. I live near Detroit, so if you could aim the shadow there that would be best. Many thanks.
Need more coffee.
Those that would steal their hard work because "Science is for everyone" doesn't quite grasp the concept of the reward system
Who's stealing from whom? Journals don't do scientific work; scientists do. They've already been compensated for their work. They only publish because they want to contribute to the sum of human knowledge, because they want the prestige, and because their tenure-track job depends on it.
If Nature or Science or Cell can make a buck by printing a researcher's work and selling copies to other people, good for them. By putting together a selection of good papers they're saving me time and providing a useful service. After six months or a year, they've really squeezed all the money they're going to get out of the papers. (Very few reprints are purchased after this point.) The manuscripts should be released to a public repository. If anything, it may stimulate more research and lead to more fodder for the printing presses. And it ensures that older papers are not lost--trapped, mouldering, in musty old library collections--if a publishing house goes out of business.
I'm going to assume that you're making a statistical argument about cosmic rays, and not talking about some novel weapon developed by Martians for the war of the worlds.
Estimates of radiation exposure for interplanetary travel (that I've seen) are typically around 50 to 100 rem per year of exposure. Delivered over a brief period, this dose would indeed cause serious effects. Spread out evenly over the course of a pair of six month trips (say) this dose is much more manageable. Radiation workers in Canada and the United States are already permitted up to 5 rem per year. I know a few people (doctors who have been involved in clinical radiation therapy) who have received lifetime work related doses of more than 50 rem, and they seem pretty healthy still. There would be a continuous low level of cellular damage, but not above the rate that the body can easily repair. There would also be an increase in lifetime cancer risk of anywhere from 0.1 to 10% depending on who you ask. I'd certainly be willing to take that chance for the opportunity to go to Mars. Even a dose of 150 rem associated with a three-year journey is not intolerable, since it is delivered over an extended period of time. I have to die of something; it might as well be cancer. The health data associated with my demise could also be quite valuable.
Incidentally, even if every cell in your body was exposed to a cosmic ray, that's not particularly alarming. Damage would have to be done to genetic matter in the cell nucleus to kill or mutate the cell--and the nucleus isn't that big a target. Cells can also repair some types of radiation-induced damage to DNA.
How many times must it be said? It does not cost me the same amount of money to look through the junk mail I receive at home. The sender pays to send the junk mail. In fact, bulk commercial mail subsidizes other postal services in the United States and Canada--presumably in many other nations as well. For spam, I pay for the internet connection, my ISP's servers, and the metered/capped bandwidth that these leeches suck up.
Free speech is an important and very nearly unimpeachable right. I will defend most strongly a person's right to say almost anything. Nevertheless, I should not be compelled to spend my own money to spread someone else's opinion or advertising.
Do the math--you need six months.
Still, it's a pretty good wage. Maybe it would be worthwhile to have the university's legal department look into this...
On Slashdot and elsewhere, people frequently bandy about terms like theft and copyright infringement as if they were equivalent; in a strictly legal sense they most certainly are not. (I will leave aside the moral issues.) Similarly, people will often use theft, burglary, and robbery interchangeably. Again, beyond sharing the basic idea of taking something that isn't yours, these crimes are very different in nature.
Try going before a court with a well-intentioned but poorly-written contract or license. See how far you get. You should only need to get bitten once before you gain an appreciation of legalese.
Analogy for /.ers: if you feed gcc a text file explaining in plain English the program that you want, will it work? Or do you have to follow rules of syntax, vocabulary, and grammar, understanding that the system only works if you are explicit and precise in your use of language?
Consequently, I propose the following acronym.
Criteria
Rhythm
Antipatterns
Patterns
And it's pretty much happened to Kleenex, Band-Aid, and maybe Cuisinart in practice if not in law. The key difference in this case is that when using the verb "to google", people are actually talking about using the Google service. Nobody uses Google as a generic term for a search engine--they are speaking about the specific, undiluted, trademarked product.
If people started using "to google" as a generic term meaning "to search for exhaustively" then there could be trouble. ("I'm going to google Altavista for info" would be a harbinger of doom, for example.)
I do this on the phone; I don't have a wireless web device. In other words, I have to genuinely know everything when I want to impress people in person. ;)
Well, no. Google does pull sites from its database that have deliberately manipulated rankings. They may also pull sites when compelled to do so by law. Under those circumstances, they have been known to submit information to chillingeffects.org. I haven't noticed them editing or censoring information based on their beliefs.
They have chosen not to accept advertising money from certain groups. If you search Google, I'm quite sure that you will find all the uncensored information that you could possibly want about tobacco, alcohol, and firearms. (And pornography, for that matter.) Traditional media outlets regularly make decisions about the advertising that they will or will not accept, as do other web sites. (You don't think CNN monitors its banner providers' content?) Why shouldn't Google be allowed to do the same, according to their own particular moral lights?
Absolutely. It is generally accepted at my university that the physicists are the worst singers in the Faculty of Science. In my experience, biochemists generally are the most talented by far.
Yes, that is the tinfoil hat explanation.
Now try this one: authors are human beings who make typos. They cut and paste erroneous references because they don't want to waste time retyping the reference. They read articles from the online versions of journals, and sometimes the citation info provided online is incorrect or altogether absent.
One thing that does disgust me is the explosion in the number of footnotes associated with a typical academic paper these days. I recently submitted a paper with a not-particularly-important result to a not-very-important journal, and the paper had forty-one footnotes. (Most were added by my coauthor.) If you visit an mature university library, pull out a copy of an older periodical. Copies of Philosophical Transactions from the nineteenth century are a delight to read. I read a paper by Kelvin from (IIRC) 1807, and it had seven references. Seven!
The growth of massive, searchable databases of papers (eg Medline) has led to many more footnotes per paper, and many more potential typos. For the record, the paper I mentioned above contained at least three errors in the footnotes that were noted and corrected by the journal publisher. Perhaps New Scientist should be writing a scathing expose on the decline of proofreading and rise of profligate namedropping in footnotes.
The scientific method has many steps, the first of which is to formulate hypotheses based on available information. Confirmation of hypotheses through experimentation (leading to refined theories; lather, rinse, repeat) is a critical part of the process, but why can't the work be divided up--in time, in space, and among different people? Should experimentalists who spend their time testing other people's theories be considered mere technicians, unworthy of the title of "scientist"?
Theoreticians are just scientists who have to work with very incomplete information. Hawking obviously isn't working in a vacuum--he knows about general relativity, the likely existence of black holes, quantum theory, thermodynamics. Combining those ideas into more comprehensive theories that are subject to experimental disproof is an important first step.
Does that mean that my hypothesis of an extant god who wishes to test our faith makes me a scientist? I'm more than willing to test my belief when the opportunity arises, but science isn't quite at the point where we can speak to departed souls...
First, you're presupposing the existence of an immortal soul. I don't think it's appropriate to beg that question. In fact, I think it would be an excellent starting point for you as a scientist. Propose to me an experiment that would demonstrate the existence of an immortal soul. Describe your hypothetical soul. One possible outcome of your experiment must serve to disprove your hypothesis.
If your hypothesis cannot be disproved by experiment, then it's not a legitimate hypothesis in the scientific sense. Taking again the example of black hole evaporation, Hawking has described the process. He predicts its outcome. Though not yet available in the lab, small black holes will likely soon be created. The experiment has already been sketched out, and its results may conclusively confirm or refute Hawking's work. An experiment can be conceived, it will support or contradict clearly the hypothesis.
I agree wholeheartedly with your disdain for "knowledge by decree", but I think that your definition of the term "scientist" is too narrow.
The point is that if there are accurate and detailed notes, you have a much better starting point to try and repeat the result. You know what reagents the chemist used. You can check for contamination at all the steps. You can run the experiment again late at night and see if the cleaner power helps. For that matter, you can evaluate the work in the cold light of day and look for gross errors of technique that were inadvertantly missed late at night.
Scientists are usually willing to spend a significant amount of time working on a needle-in-a-haystack type of problem. They hate to be sent on a wild goose chase. Good notes make all the difference.
The best way to get colleagues to believe you? Build a reputation for good technique and recordkeeping over years of scientific effort. Show them the steps you followed in your work. Respect their criticisms and listen to their advice. Other scientists will be falling all over themselves for a chance to get a piece of a new discovery.
Ultimately, it is science if the hypotheses (or conjectures, if you prefer) they develop can in principle be experimentally disproven, and can be used to make predictions.
If you aren't testing your hypothesis with real experiments, you're not doing science!
I suppose the question becomes, "Is Stephen Hawking a scientist?" The evaporation of black holes is something that we are not currently able to simulate in the lab. Nevertheless, the idea is a natural (brilliant, elegant, and inspired, but natural) extension of concepts of entropy and quantum mechanics. (I grossly oversimplify, but there's lots more about it on the web for those that are interested.) Furthermore, it makes predictions about what should happen to a black hole, which meets my second criterion. These predictions cannot be tested at this time, but will in principle be testable in the next generation of supercolliders. Until such time, Hawking's ideas still can spark lively debate--which is exactly as it should be.
Does this mean that we should not be allowed to consider theoretical physicists and cosmologists real scientists until technology matures to the point where their hypotheses can be tested? I submit that scientists are people who put forth rational hypotheses based on whatever incomplete information is available, and are prepared to test their hypotheses--or allow others to do so--when technology and funding allow. Real scientists should be able to recognize the difference between a hypothesis and an accepted theory and trust the two accordingly.
It's usually a good rule of thumb. And if someone does have a genuinely remarkable result, he or she will usually be believed eventually. At which point, the project will be turned over to a coworker who is capable of keeping a detailed lab notebook.
Science aphorism #2: If you don't write it down, it never happened.
Obviously, this only works for positive results. Negative results unfortunately still seem to happen even if you don't write them down. Records are an essential part of the scientific method. If you believe the fellow who cures AIDS and develops cold fusion while pulling an all-nighter in the lab--but, shucks, didn't get it down on paper--I've got some magic beans for you. No, I misplaced the certificate of authenticity the giant gave me, but you can take my word for it, right?
I will paraphrase Ernest Rutherford, since I can't find a definitive version of his quotation on the Web right now. He said something to the effect of, "All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
More generally, research can be lumped into two broad (and overlapping) camps: phenomenology and investigation. Phenomenology involves making more and more detailed reports of the world, but does not require one to perform experiments or formulate hypotheses. Investigation includes attampts to gain a "deeper" sort of understanding of problems--it is not merely stamp collecting.
Unfortunately, much of biology was trapped in phenomenological models until relatively recently. Until the development of tools to pursue the study of molecular biology and genetics, we were limited to a basic acceptance that heredity existed, and some handwaving about evolution and so forth--and we could label all of our stuffed specimens, because taxonomy just takes a sharp eye and some good guesswork. (Even so, many species are now being reclassified as genetics tools are brought to bear on them. The taxonomic kingdoms I learned in school are not the ones being taught now.)
In physics, you can look at a system and in principle describe all of the interactions at work. If it is a simple system, you can perform calculations that predict how it will evolve over time.
In biology, take a single cell. We still can't describe everything that goes on in that little cubic-micron space, though we're getting closer. We're finally starting to understand the way many of the more important chemical pathways within cells operate. We can fold simple proteins in simulation. Some of the genetic tinkering we can do actually has predicatable effects.
So of course biology is changing as a field--it is graduating from stamp collecting to science. That will attract new attitudes, new people--and new funding.
Yikes. What kind of engineering does a theoretical physicist do? I mean the sort that develops models of the universe, not the sort that builds supercolliders.
I think that the distinction between application of existing known principles and the development of new ideas is sufficient to keep scientists and engineers in separate categories. Engineers may be called upon to apply the knowledge they have in extremely creative ways, but that's not the same thing as developing that knowledge from scratch. Similarly, many scientists (the experimentalists, at least) often have to perform various sorts of engineering in the course of their work--but I wouldn't want them trying to build bridges. (Q: You just woke up in a lecture hall. There appears to be a demo in progress and you've forgotten what class you're supposed to be in--how do you tell? A: Demo is slimy: Biology. Demo woke you when it blew up: Chemistry (if it smells bad, Organic Chemistry). Instructor appears puzzled because demo does not work: Physics.)
Yeah, but I bet you used the keyboard and/or mouse to turn on your webcam...
Granted, since his conjectures have now been proven, he should be applauded for his tremendous intuition.
You mean the Kirk era timeline that places the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s? How about the Picard timeline that informs us that mathematicians in the twenty-fourth century haven't been able to prove Fermat's Last Theorem?
It's just a story, people. Allow them some artistic license--this is entertainment, not history. I'm content if each series is self-consistent and doesn't clash too badly with the preexisting Star Trek tapestry.
Oh. Wait.
What I meant to say was, Hitler liked LPs, so you're full of it.
They're not looking at putting it into our food, but rather into animal feedstock. The tornado-pulverized chicken bits will be at least one animal removed (er, distant) from anything that you eat.
every last chicken molecule
Did any of the other chemists reading this suddenly try to picture a chicken molecule? Are you all giggling madly, too?