True, but there is a need for good scientific communication. Yes, you can't construct an air tight argument in eighth grader terminology, but you SHOULD be able to communicate the basics of your work to an eighth grader.
The GP is absolutely correct - the best way to have someone not trust you, and generally not trust your field, is to tell them that you can't even start to explain your point because they don't have the necessary background/experience/education/IQ.
In my experience that mistrust is well placed: if someone can't explain at least the basics of their point simply, there is an excellent chance that they don't really understand it themselves. There's a famous scientist (I want to say Pauli, but I'm not sure) who said essentially the same thing. Einstein himself wrote one of the clearest, simplest descriptions of relativity, for the layman, and Feynman was famous for his ability to communicate complicated scientific concepts simply and clearly.
"The processes of science have changed in the last century, and not for the better."
Careful with your generalizations. Most of science actually works this way, whenever possible, and when it's not possible (for example, building two LHCs), you do the next best thing (have two competing teams building two competing detectors).
Astronomical datasets are famously open, to the point where Joe Average can generally get access to them by typing an address into his web browser. Other fields are similar. I have been asked by reviewers on more than one occasion to include some extra detail in a paper so that an experiment can be more easily replicated.
Don't conflate highly politicized areas like climate science with the greater body of science. I have rarely ever heard of someone claiming their data was "secret" or their algorithms were "proprietary" outside of climate science.
There is no way. Peer review is the best method we've ever discovered. Now, the mechanics of how peer review actually happens are almost certainly not ideal.
An important first step would be to make reviews for all papers, accepted and rejected, part of of the public record, including the names of reviewers. That way both the reviewers and the authors are responsible for what they write, and that record can be examined retrospectively.
That's actually a pretty serious issue. If your measurements don't agree with the gold standard you can't just graft the gold standard measurements in where you have them. You must figure out why your measurements are biased and fix that bias before you can use them.
If they actually did the former then it's at best extremely sloppy work.
"Which scientists do they believe when it comes to Autism and vaccines?"
Well, if the "scientist" has appeared in a movie or on TV and doesn't actually have any academic credentials or published papers you might want to treat him or her more skeptically than someone who actually went to school to get an MD or PhD.
Of course, you could take the safe route and just look at the evidence instead.
I'm not sure where the idea that science is "accorded automatic stature and respect" comes from.
It seems people are likely to either actually know something about science and so apply scientific skepticism to it, or not know much about science and be far more likely to just doubt it on general principles and believe in herbal remedies, chiropractic, the little people and angels.
Climatology is a science. You've artificially restricted the set of "science" to experimental science.
Climatology is one of the sciences that does suffer a general inability to do experiments. There are some experiments that can fall under the heading of climatology, but far fewer than other sciences. Also in this category are things like epidemiology, parts of psychology, astronomy, etc.
That doesn't make them non-sciences. Instead their practitioners have to use tools like simulations and more subtle statistical tools. You can still develop climatological theories, make hypotheses, and test them scientifically.
As with any science, results and conclusions in climatology need to be judged by the evidence that supports them. Often, because of the frequent inability to do experiments, that evidence is poorer than, say, in physics. That means you need to treat climatological results more cautiously, NOT that climatology is not a science.
"was probably caused by a failed missile launch from the White Sea, several Norwegian space and defense experts believe."
"an anonymous Russian military source says"
"the Norwegian Defense does not know for sure what the light was, but that it probably was a Russian missile"
It's certainly the leading theory, but your link also doesn't contain any evidence that would justify the Wikipedia statement. It's just speculation and an anonymous source.
The spiral doesn't rotate. It behaved exactly as you'd expect something being spewed out of a spinning source to behave. Just like one of those spinning lawn sprinklers. The blue "beam" is actually a smaller diameter spiral, which is also consistent with a spinning source venting something.
"While I consider myself a skeptic, the "it's a rocket" explanation sounds really dubious to me - it's like hearing loud creaking noises and banging and saying "oh, it's just wind" - disregarding the fact that wind isn't capable of producing such noise."
As you point out, you're not a rocket scientist. Actual rocket scientists and others who have seen a lot of rocket launches have seen similar things before. If that's not enough for you, the Bad Astronomer has posted a simulation of the exhaust from a rocket tumbling out of control - the simulation looks just like the pictures.
"And, this is different from ISP traffic and users how exactly?"
If it were a wired ISP they'd just cut off those 3% for "going over the cap" but refuse to tell you what exactly the cap is.
Paying for what you use is good. Cell providers AND ISPs should got to a strictly metered setup (no tiers) and bring everything out in the open. That way they'd compete on price and service instead of who is most creative at arranging their tiers or advertising capped service as unlimited.
The current system is based on forcing everyone to buy something ("unlimited" access) that you have no intentional of delivering, then penalizing your customers who take you at your word.
"So two theories remain: either the gas is created as a by-product of reactions between volcanic rock and water, or it is a by-product of a lifeform's metabolism."
I presume option 1, "reactions between volcanic rock and water" is the olivine-water reaction.
Option 1 is interesting because it means there's enough water on Mars in a convenient form (likely liquid) to produce the observed methane.
Option 2 is of course interesting because it means there's life.
The article says it's a dictionary attack. It's possible they supplement that a bit, but their whole point (excuse) is that they check your key to see if it's "secure," i.e. not in their dictionary.
Riiight. It does a dictionary attack on the password. Want to know if your wifi is secure against this? Does it have a dictionary word in it? Then no. Is it a random string? Then yes.
Read more carefully. The key sentence in his post is: "If it actually does suck in certain fields but is publishing papers in those fields, then it isn't a great journal, is it?"
JAMA does not publish articles about mechanical engineering. If it did, and if those articles sucked, JAMA would not be a great journal.
Government intervention is the only way it's going to happen here. The Netherlands is a very densely populated so you can support many networks and the barrier for entry to the market is much lower. Canada has about twice the population and yet we only have two nation-wide networks. The cell companies know they've got a good thing going, and they're not going to let something like competition take it away. The last time someone managed to get the funding to set up a competing network (a small one that just covered a few of the biggest cities) they were bought by one of the big guys as soon as they started offering lower than standard prices
Unfortunately the government has the strange idea that "there is sufficient competition in the mobile communications market" and they refuse to regulate cell providers on that basis. Of course, they're also backing away from regulating wired telecommunications as well - someone came up with the brilliant idea that monopoly wired telecom providers shouldn't have to sell access to their networks to resellers anymore.
"love some more european and canadian cell phone companies to invade the US"
European maybe, but you don't want to be subject to Canadian cell phone companies. We look at what you guys have with envy. Until the introduction of the iPhone it was cheaper to get a phone with a US carrier and then pay roaming charges in Canada than it was to just get a data plan here. Nation wide long distance? Sure, for $20 a month, and if you go outside our service area it doesn't count.
Canadian cell phone companies are so bad that they've all started up (or bought) alias companies so they can do business under a name that's not quite so reviled.
I'm not American, but the situation is similar (if smaller) in Canada.
This is where contracts and subsidies come in. You CAN buy a phone from Asia, Europe, or even North America, completely unlocked and good to go. You can even convince a carrier to let you use it on their network (sometimes with some insistence). But almost nobody does (I did once).
Why not? Because a) you have to pay the full price of the phone up front instead of getting all or 90% of it "free," b) if you don't sign a contract with the carrier they restrict you to crappy plans that are much more expensive than their contract plans and c) they still do their best to restrict things like tethering (and probably watch you more carefully as well) anyway.
Either way, you end up paying for the phone at least twice. An unlocked phone is probably more expensive in the long run and definitely more expensive up front, but you can feel like you're getting one over on the phone company.
No, I said what I meant. Make no mistake - if government regulation, public opinion or actual competition weren't stopping them, Asian and European carriers would LOVE to play the game that Canadian and American (not sure about Mexico) wireless carriers play.
Truly free markets very much favour the biggest organization possible. Corporations are the only way of getting organizations that big under a free market.
The industrial revolution, which was the only time we really had massive, very free markets, was also when corporations really took off. It's no coincidence that even the freest markets in the world at least have antitrust regulations that attempt to control the biggest corporations.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but there is a need for good scientific communication. Yes, you can't construct an air tight argument in eighth grader terminology, but you SHOULD be able to communicate the basics of your work to an eighth grader.
The GP is absolutely correct - the best way to have someone not trust you, and generally not trust your field, is to tell them that you can't even start to explain your point because they don't have the necessary background/experience/education/IQ.
In my experience that mistrust is well placed: if someone can't explain at least the basics of their point simply, there is an excellent chance that they don't really understand it themselves. There's a famous scientist (I want to say Pauli, but I'm not sure) who said essentially the same thing. Einstein himself wrote one of the clearest, simplest descriptions of relativity, for the layman, and Feynman was famous for his ability to communicate complicated scientific concepts simply and clearly.
"The processes of science have changed in the last century, and not for the better."
Careful with your generalizations. Most of science actually works this way, whenever possible, and when it's not possible (for example, building two LHCs), you do the next best thing (have two competing teams building two competing detectors).
Astronomical datasets are famously open, to the point where Joe Average can generally get access to them by typing an address into his web browser. Other fields are similar. I have been asked by reviewers on more than one occasion to include some extra detail in a paper so that an experiment can be more easily replicated.
Don't conflate highly politicized areas like climate science with the greater body of science. I have rarely ever heard of someone claiming their data was "secret" or their algorithms were "proprietary" outside of climate science.
There is no way. Peer review is the best method we've ever discovered. Now, the mechanics of how peer review actually happens are almost certainly not ideal.
An important first step would be to make reviews for all papers, accepted and rejected, part of of the public record, including the names of reviewers. That way both the reviewers and the authors are responsible for what they write, and that record can be examined retrospectively.
That's actually a pretty serious issue. If your measurements don't agree with the gold standard you can't just graft the gold standard measurements in where you have them. You must figure out why your measurements are biased and fix that bias before you can use them.
If they actually did the former then it's at best extremely sloppy work.
"Which scientists do they believe when it comes to Autism and vaccines?"
Well, if the "scientist" has appeared in a movie or on TV and doesn't actually have any academic credentials or published papers you might want to treat him or her more skeptically than someone who actually went to school to get an MD or PhD.
Of course, you could take the safe route and just look at the evidence instead.
I'm not sure where the idea that science is "accorded automatic stature and respect" comes from.
It seems people are likely to either actually know something about science and so apply scientific skepticism to it, or not know much about science and be far more likely to just doubt it on general principles and believe in herbal remedies, chiropractic, the little people and angels.
Climatology is a science. You've artificially restricted the set of "science" to experimental science.
Climatology is one of the sciences that does suffer a general inability to do experiments. There are some experiments that can fall under the heading of climatology, but far fewer than other sciences. Also in this category are things like epidemiology, parts of psychology, astronomy, etc.
That doesn't make them non-sciences. Instead their practitioners have to use tools like simulations and more subtle statistical tools. You can still develop climatological theories, make hypotheses, and test them scientifically.
As with any science, results and conclusions in climatology need to be judged by the evidence that supports them. Often, because of the frequent inability to do experiments, that evidence is poorer than, say, in physics. That means you need to treat climatological results more cautiously, NOT that climatology is not a science.
Poor?
Bad?
Modern?
"was probably caused by a failed missile launch from the White Sea, several Norwegian space and defense experts believe."
"an anonymous Russian military source says"
"the Norwegian Defense does not know for sure what the light was, but that it probably was a Russian missile"
It's certainly the leading theory, but your link also doesn't contain any evidence that would justify the Wikipedia statement. It's just speculation and an anonymous source.
Take a look at the video, or even the pictures. The blue "beam" is just a smaller diameter spiral. Definitely not a laser beam.
While I suspect this is actually the case, a link to a recently written paragraph with no citation on Wikipedia is hardly evidence.
Did you write that third paragraph yourself?
The spiral doesn't rotate. It behaved exactly as you'd expect something being spewed out of a spinning source to behave. Just like one of those spinning lawn sprinklers. The blue "beam" is actually a smaller diameter spiral, which is also consistent with a spinning source venting something.
"While I consider myself a skeptic, the "it's a rocket" explanation sounds really dubious to me - it's like hearing loud creaking noises and banging and saying "oh, it's just wind" - disregarding the fact that wind isn't capable of producing such noise."
As you point out, you're not a rocket scientist. Actual rocket scientists and others who have seen a lot of rocket launches have seen similar things before. If that's not enough for you, the Bad Astronomer has posted a simulation of the exhaust from a rocket tumbling out of control - the simulation looks just like the pictures.
"And, this is different from ISP traffic and users how exactly?"
If it were a wired ISP they'd just cut off those 3% for "going over the cap" but refuse to tell you what exactly the cap is.
Paying for what you use is good. Cell providers AND ISPs should got to a strictly metered setup (no tiers) and bring everything out in the open. That way they'd compete on price and service instead of who is most creative at arranging their tiers or advertising capped service as unlimited.
The current system is based on forcing everyone to buy something ("unlimited" access) that you have no intentional of delivering, then penalizing your customers who take you at your word.
From the summary:
"So two theories remain: either the gas is created as a by-product of reactions between volcanic rock and water, or it is a by-product of a lifeform's metabolism."
I presume option 1, "reactions between volcanic rock and water" is the olivine-water reaction.
Option 1 is interesting because it means there's enough water on Mars in a convenient form (likely liquid) to produce the observed methane.
Option 2 is of course interesting because it means there's life.
The article says it's a dictionary attack. It's possible they supplement that a bit, but their whole point (excuse) is that they check your key to see if it's "secure," i.e. not in their dictionary.
Riiight. It does a dictionary attack on the password. Want to know if your wifi is secure against this? Does it have a dictionary word in it? Then no. Is it a random string? Then yes.
You can pay me now.
Read more carefully. The key sentence in his post is: "If it actually does suck in certain fields but is publishing papers in those fields, then it isn't a great journal, is it?"
JAMA does not publish articles about mechanical engineering. If it did, and if those articles sucked, JAMA would not be a great journal.
Take a look on the pirate bay and download the PDF.
Too lazy? Okay, here you go: it's "change your lifestyle."
There, saved you $80.
Government intervention is the only way it's going to happen here. The Netherlands is a very densely populated so you can support many networks and the barrier for entry to the market is much lower. Canada has about twice the population and yet we only have two nation-wide networks. The cell companies know they've got a good thing going, and they're not going to let something like competition take it away. The last time someone managed to get the funding to set up a competing network (a small one that just covered a few of the biggest cities) they were bought by one of the big guys as soon as they started offering lower than standard prices
Unfortunately the government has the strange idea that "there is sufficient competition in the mobile communications market" and they refuse to regulate cell providers on that basis. Of course, they're also backing away from regulating wired telecommunications as well - someone came up with the brilliant idea that monopoly wired telecom providers shouldn't have to sell access to their networks to resellers anymore.
"love some more european and canadian cell phone companies to invade the US"
European maybe, but you don't want to be subject to Canadian cell phone companies. We look at what you guys have with envy. Until the introduction of the iPhone it was cheaper to get a phone with a US carrier and then pay roaming charges in Canada than it was to just get a data plan here. Nation wide long distance? Sure, for $20 a month, and if you go outside our service area it doesn't count.
Canadian cell phone companies are so bad that they've all started up (or bought) alias companies so they can do business under a name that's not quite so reviled.
I'm not American, but the situation is similar (if smaller) in Canada.
This is where contracts and subsidies come in. You CAN buy a phone from Asia, Europe, or even North America, completely unlocked and good to go. You can even convince a carrier to let you use it on their network (sometimes with some insistence). But almost nobody does (I did once).
Why not? Because a) you have to pay the full price of the phone up front instead of getting all or 90% of it "free," b) if you don't sign a contract with the carrier they restrict you to crappy plans that are much more expensive than their contract plans and c) they still do their best to restrict things like tethering (and probably watch you more carefully as well) anyway.
Either way, you end up paying for the phone at least twice. An unlocked phone is probably more expensive in the long run and definitely more expensive up front, but you can feel like you're getting one over on the phone company.
It's not #1.
After that I'm afraid I can't help.
They don't get to play that game.
No, I said what I meant. Make no mistake - if government regulation, public opinion or actual competition weren't stopping them, Asian and European carriers would LOVE to play the game that Canadian and American (not sure about Mexico) wireless carriers play.
Truly free markets very much favour the biggest organization possible. Corporations are the only way of getting organizations that big under a free market.
The industrial revolution, which was the only time we really had massive, very free markets, was also when corporations really took off. It's no coincidence that even the freest markets in the world at least have antitrust regulations that attempt to control the biggest corporations.