I would say that is true of many people, regardless of their religion (or lack of it). Take a small minded person, teach them the scientific method, and they will become just as dogmatic and narrow minded about the "correct" way to conduct an experiment as any religious fanatic.
It is about the person, not the philosophy they espouse.
A statistical discrepency can have multiple causes.
1) There was something fishy about the election results -- this seems to be the assumption behind the investigation, the researchers wanted to find something and they found it.
2) The statistical model is invalid -- There may be other factors that weren't considered, this is where peer review would help.
3) The data is poor -- The data in this case being previous election results and results from non-electonic voting precincts. So it is possible (though probably not likely) that it could be the other counties where something isn't quite right.
The argument seems to be that Yucca won't keep it contained for 100,000 years, so it is useless. So instead, we should put it someplace that won't contain it more than 100 years.
Why not just stick it in Yucca for 100 years, then instead of sealing the mountain look at the available technology for reprocessing, better storage, or relocating. It is exactly the same plan but using the facility that's already being built! And it seems to me that temporary storage inside a mountain is more secure than temporary storage on the surface.
boy robot meets girl robot...
on
Segway vs. Roomba
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· Score: 1, Funny
This could be the beginning of the first soap opera for the artificially intelligent.
I don't doubt that there are scientists who are primarily knowledge seekers, just as there are businessmen who primarily want to produce quality products at a fair price, and there are journalists who write fair, balanced, accurate articles, and there are lawyers who want to help people. I'm just cynical enough to think that in all these cases the ones with pure motives are the minority.
Of course you're free to believe otherwise, depending on your level of cynicism. But the tendency on/. is to believe scientists and researchers as a group have more noble motivations than anyone else. I say they are human and have the same moral failings as the rest of us.
But who's going to waste their time reviewing evidence collected by a right-wing, bible-thumping, wacko with ties to the oil industry?
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.
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.
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I would say that is true of many people, regardless of their religion (or lack of it). Take a small minded person, teach them the scientific method, and they will become just as dogmatic and narrow minded about the "correct" way to conduct an experiment as any religious fanatic. It is about the person, not the philosophy they espouse.
A statistical discrepency can have multiple causes.
1) There was something fishy about the election results -- this seems to be the assumption behind the investigation, the researchers wanted to find something and they found it.
2) The statistical model is invalid -- There may be other factors that weren't considered, this is where peer review would help.
3) The data is poor -- The data in this case being previous election results and results from non-electonic voting precincts. So it is possible (though probably not likely) that it could be the other counties where something isn't quite right.
The argument seems to be that Yucca won't keep it contained for 100,000 years, so it is useless. So instead, we should put it someplace that won't contain it more than 100 years.
Why not just stick it in Yucca for 100 years, then instead of sealing the mountain look at the available technology for reprocessing, better storage, or relocating. It is exactly the same plan but using the facility that's already being built! And it seems to me that temporary storage inside a mountain is more secure than temporary storage on the surface.
This could be the beginning of the first soap opera for the artificially intelligent.
I don't doubt that there are scientists who are primarily knowledge seekers, just as there are businessmen who primarily want to produce quality products at a fair price, and there are journalists who write fair, balanced, accurate articles, and there are lawyers who want to help people. I'm just cynical enough to think that in all these cases the ones with pure motives are the minority.
/. is to believe scientists and researchers as a group have more noble motivations than anyone else. I say they are human and have the same moral failings as the rest of us.
Of course you're free to believe otherwise, depending on your level of cynicism. But the tendency on
Isn't the scientific community a self-selecting group? If you agree with them you're "in", otherwise your on the lunatic fringe.
But who's going to waste their time reviewing evidence collected by a right-wing, bible-thumping, wacko with ties to the oil industry? 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. 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.