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Author Topic:   What you see with your own eyes vs what scientists claim
macaroniandcheese 
Suspended Member (Idle past 3928 days)
Posts: 4258
Joined: 05-24-2004


Message 16 of 165 (446951)
01-07-2008 4:30 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by sinequanon
01-07-2008 4:08 PM


Are scientists not responsible for ensuring that their findings are reported fairly
scientists are in no way responsible for lies and misinformation provided by reporters.
or are "other considerations" (read funding) deemed more expedient?
what does funding have to do with reporters and scientists? do you think reporters pay scientists to be able to print inaccurate stories about scientific research?

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Cold Foreign Object 
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Posts: 3417
Joined: 11-21-2003


Message 17 of 165 (446955)
01-07-2008 4:43 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by sinequanon
01-07-2008 7:53 AM


If what you saw with your own eyes (or observed directly in any other way) conflicted with a vicarious account from a "highly respected" scientist in a "highly respected" scientific journal, which would you believe? Yourself, or the scientist?
What if you were someone with no scientific background whatsoever. Which should you believe?
Sinequanon: this is simply a super clear thinking point!
Evolutionary scientists would postulate that the obvious intricate design seen in every organism and the organized complexity of nature as a whole is not real - indicative of the work of invisible Designer.
This is how we know evolution is atheistic nonsense defiantly insulting our intelligence and reality. This explains why over half of all adults in the U.S. are creationists; evolutionary scientists are liars.
Ray

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 735 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 18 of 165 (446963)
01-07-2008 4:53 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by Cold Foreign Object
01-07-2008 4:43 PM


This explains why over half of all adults in the U.S. are creationists; evolutionary scientists are liars.
And why almost a third of all adults in the U.S. think the Sun orbits the Earth: astronomers are atheistic scalawags that tell children the fossils at La Brea are all dinosaurs.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/append/c7/at07-10.pdf

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NosyNed
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Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 19 of 165 (446988)
01-07-2008 5:46 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by Cold Foreign Object
01-07-2008 4:43 PM


A reminder
the obvious intricate design
The obviously WRONG kind of design which you can't seem to remember for very long.

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Lithodid-Man
Member (Idle past 2931 days)
Posts: 504
From: Juneau, Alaska, USA
Joined: 03-22-2004


Message 20 of 165 (447185)
01-08-2008 1:13 PM
Reply to: Message 14 by sinequanon
01-07-2008 4:08 PM


Good topic: A few points
sinequanon writes:
It is quite possible that scientific findings are spiced up for public consumption.
This is very often the case and a source of frustration for scientists. There is a need in pop science to add a 'hook' to the article. So the discovery of a new planetesimal is described as "Changing all accepted theories of cosmology" (hyperbole to make point). It is not the scientist making the claim. I always when reading these picture an editor reading a good pop sci article then adding such a line at the bottom for pizazz. It is exactly this kind of sloppy journalism that fuels negative public perception of scientists and scientific methodologies.
Are scientists not responsible for ensuring that their findings are reported fairly, or are "other considerations" (read funding) deemed more expedient?
Scientists unfortunately have little control over how their research is presented in pop-sci articles. As above the scientist may report exact accuracy but the writer may misunderstand something (this is common) and therefore misrepresent the findings or infer detail that does not exist to make the story sound exciting.
The peer-reviewed scientific literature may be more exacting.
Believe me, the peer review process is exacting. There is no relationship between a pop-sci article (even a decent one) and a journal article. It is quality and quantity of peer-reviewed articles that determine funding. The beauty of the process is that your article is reviewed by a jury of your peers (anonymously) who are asked to tear it apart. Every stat is supposed to be checked, every equation, etc. Too many errors and it is outright rejected. With a few errors it is then shot back to you to revise then re-submit and start the process over (in part). It is this process (not perfect, but works really well) that keeps science honest. Remember, especially in 'sexy' fields, science is very often extremely competitive. You are allowing potential (and actual) rivals in your field to examine your work and make a decision that could affect your career. That is why after a paper is accepted but before review you give up things like a good nights sleep, fingernails, sobriety .
I wanted to address a point you made in an earlier post about observations not matching what science claims. First of all, I want to stress that in many fields amateur observations can be an extremely important component. When a bird species extends its range it is more often birdwatchers who report it before professional ornithologists. The point is, if you make an observation, take notes. Record it. Chances are that it will be of interest in your scientific community at the very least.
However, I want to issue a caution. I am in one of those jobs people contact when they think they have something unusual or new from the marine realm. My curiosity forces me to go look no matter how ridiculous the claim. The issue is that non-scientists often do not know why what they think they see is not the case.
For example, every year for one full moon a giant worm (Nereis brandti) swarms at the surface to breed in coastal Alaska. In the morning there are usually a few stragglers. I can wait by the phone that day and am guaranteed that I will get a call telling me that El Nino or (now) global warming has brought sea snakes to Sitka. If they caught it and I can examine the specimen I am able to show them that this is just a giant version of the common bait worms. When they don't have the specimen I have had people insisting that what they saw was a real sea snake. They see eyes, scales, even a forked tongue that simply is not present. Now I would never say it is impossible for a sea snake to make it to Sitka, Alaska. But it is highly improbable that it would happen, and that it would happen only on the morning after the giant worms swarm.
In a similar situation, I all but lost one of my friends years ago because she told me that her father during the war was in this remote region in Vietnam and they were constantly under attack by these deadly flying spiders. I had to mention that if actually flying had to be an insect of some kind, as no spiders have wings. From there it went to a blow-out where since I do not know every spider in the world and was not there I have no business saying it is untrue. I attempted to explain that arthropod body plans are actually, despite the diversity of form, very conservative. And arachnids simply do not have any structure that would easily lend itself to flight. In the end it came down to either her father was a lier or I was wrong. She would not accept the likely scenario which was a misidentification.
Sorry for the rant!

Doctor Bashir: "Of all the stories you told me, which were true and which weren't?"
Elim Garak: "My dear Doctor, they're all true"
Doctor Bashir: "Even the lies?"
Elim Garak: "Especially the lies"

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by sinequanon, posted 01-07-2008 4:08 PM sinequanon has replied

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sinequanon
Member (Idle past 2865 days)
Posts: 331
Joined: 12-17-2007


Message 21 of 165 (447198)
01-08-2008 1:56 PM
Reply to: Message 20 by Lithodid-Man
01-08-2008 1:13 PM


Re: Good topic: A few points
It is exactly this kind of sloppy journalism that fuels negative public perception of scientists and scientific methodologies.
But I don't see many scientists jumping up and down to try and rectify this.
It is quality and quantity of peer-reviewed articles that determine funding.
Things may have changed since my research days, but I do remember some very 'creative' budget management techniques and submissions for funding.
The issue is that non-scientists often do not know why what they think they see is not the case.
Some (and I tend to agree that much) of it is indeed a result of confusion. At best it may come down to terminology. When I read your example, I wondered what was meant by 'flying'. If the creature had wings then it would not be classified as a spider. But spiders can hang-glide on silk threads. In the end, I think the scientific classification 'spider' has to be taken loosely if used by Joe Blow. If he had said the creature had eight legs, wings and built webs, that would be another thing.
In some cases, all that can be said is that scientists hold a different view.

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sinequanon
Member (Idle past 2865 days)
Posts: 331
Joined: 12-17-2007


Message 22 of 165 (447201)
01-08-2008 2:11 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Modulous
01-07-2008 9:51 AM


I'm not sure that this is as big a problem as you think in the sciences but I'm willing to be convinced. Do you have any examples of scientists doing this that we should look out for?
I did a bit of searching, following Dr. Adequates post, and found this.
Avian prey-dropping behavior. II. American crows and walnuts
The conclusion says
quote:
This suggests that these crows have evolved or learned to maximize the energy obtained from each dropped walnut.
But the paper is nothing to do with how the crows know. It just tests whether they know. Conclusion should instead say This suggests that these crows know how to maximize the energy obtained from each dropped walnut. It is very strange that they have slipped in evolution and learning as an explanation. You wouldn't do that for a human. A human may have "worked it out", eh?
Edited by sinequanon, : No reason given.

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Replies to this message:
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 Message 29 by Modulous, posted 01-08-2008 4:22 PM sinequanon has replied

Taz
Member (Idle past 3292 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 23 of 165 (447207)
01-08-2008 2:47 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by sinequanon
01-08-2008 2:11 PM


Sine, I understand the frustrations of biologists very well even though I'm not one. Being a physicist, I regularly run into common people that try to disprove what they've read about physics in popular magazines. Here is an example. Suppose you are in an elevator going upward at a constant speed. You decide to jump up and then fall back down to the elevator floor. The question is will you hit the elevator floor at a faster speed than if you were standing on solid ground?
Want to take a guess? Any first year physics student should be able to get this right in 2 seconds. But people's common sense tell them otherwise. I've run into crowds where everyone agreed with each other on the wrong answer and would not believe me at all when I told them otherwise.
Another frustration I often encounter is the way a projectile moves. Say you have a gun shooting a bullet at an angle parallel to the ground at exactly the same time you decide to drop an object from the same height as the gun. Which will hit the ground first? The bullet or the object? Again, people's common sense tell them that the object will hit the ground first and that the bullet will keep going until it runs out of energy or mana or whatever the hell people want to call it. This is something that I have seen many people believing in because of their common sense despite how much I tried to explain to them that horizontal motion and vertical motion don't affect each other.
You're trying to sell to me that what people can see and interpret based on their common sense should have more value than what scientists say. I'm sorry, but my personal experience as well as the personal experiences of countless other physicists, biologists, geologists, engineers, etc. say otherwise.
If common people are so trustworthy about these subjects, why is it that we very regularly see bogus arguments for creationism that go something like "if people came from monkeys how come there are still monkeys around?" This is as equally frustrating as my experience with people who tried to disprove what physicists say by something like "if gravity is real how come rocks don't orbit mountains?"

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Taz
Member (Idle past 3292 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 24 of 165 (447208)
01-08-2008 2:51 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by sinequanon
01-08-2008 1:56 PM


Re: Good topic: A few points
sinequanon writes:
But I don't see many scientists jumping up and down to try and rectify this.
They don't jump up and down trying to rectify this for the same reason that politicians don't jump up and down trying to rectify soundbites portrayed by the media. What exactly can we do? The media really doesn't care about truth and whatnot. They only care whether their articles are catchy enough for ordinary people to care to read. I highly doubt they'd pay much attention to the mad scientist that was misquoted.
PS - Wanna give us your perspective in this thread?
Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

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sinequanon
Member (Idle past 2865 days)
Posts: 331
Joined: 12-17-2007


Message 25 of 165 (447222)
01-08-2008 3:32 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Taz
01-08-2008 2:47 PM


Want to take a guess? Any first year physics student should be able to get this right in 2 seconds. But people's common sense tell them otherwise. I've run into crowds where everyone agreed with each other on the wrong answer and would not believe me at all when I told them otherwise.
Assuming that the elevator speed didn't change the theory says that, taking only constant gravitational forces into account, you will land at the same speed as you jumped (similarly with solid ground).
For the case of a bullet however, it is not so simple. A bullet flies and initially the most important factors are fluid dynamics. For example, in the same way a pitched baseball can dip suddenly, so can a bullet.
Now, you can wear your physicist hat and do mind experiments in a vacuum. Joe Blow, on the other hand, works only from experience. A football (as in soccer ) can hang in the air and does often indeed take longer to drop. But if asked passengers in a train what would happen if they dropped a coin out of a train window, more people would say the speed of the train is irrelevant.

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 Message 26 by Percy, posted 01-08-2008 3:46 PM sinequanon has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22394
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 26 of 165 (447228)
01-08-2008 3:46 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by sinequanon
01-08-2008 3:32 PM


sinequanon writes:
Assuming that the elevator speed didn't change the theory says that, taking only constant gravitational forces into account, you will land at the same speed as you jumped (similarly with solid ground).
The point wasn't about whether or not you know the correct answer. The point was that Joe Average's common sense usually gets it wrong.
For the case of a bullet however, it is not so simple. A bullet flies and initially the most important factors are fluid dynamics. For example, in the same way a pitched baseball can dip suddenly, so can a bullet.
Again, the point isn't what you yourself know, but that Joe Average's common sense usually gets this wrong. And it isn't because he's thinking about fluid dynamics. Even when the question is phrased properly, "Ignoring air resistance and horizon effects, if a bullet is dropped at the same time and from the same height as one fired horizontally from a gun, which hits the ground first," Joe Average will almost always give the wrong answer.
If the common sense of Joe Average were so wonderfully accurate everybody would be a scientist.
--Percy

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Matt P
Member (Idle past 4775 days)
Posts: 106
From: Tampa FL
Joined: 03-18-2005


Message 27 of 165 (447231)
01-08-2008 3:52 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by sinequanon
01-07-2008 7:53 AM


Meteorites and the general public
Hi sinequanon- excellent topic!
One of the most common cases where we see a public vs. scientist argument is in meteorite sciences. Several times per year, newspapers print an article that goes something like, "Person X saw a shooting star and later collected the meteorite from his yard. Person X observed that the meteorite was hot to the touch and had to be handled with gloves. Person X was afraid that the rock was radioactive."
See, for instance (a piece of slag):
The Star Banner
or (slag again)
Oceola Township man claims finding meteorite
There are also some cases of fraud, including those perpetrated by Christian YECs (an erratic boulder definitely not from Mars):
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~mpasek/fraud.pdf
Between 10-20 rocks are sent each month to my own department with the claim that the rocks are meteorites. Very few are (0.1% odds at best). Many of the rocks are accompanied by stories where the collector supposedly observed the rock fall from space. The stories are usually full of factual errors, the most common of which is that the rock is hot to the touch (meteorites are freezing when they reach the ground). Most of the meteor-wrongs turn out to be slag, industrial waste, hematite, terrestrial basalt, or magnetite. None of the meteor-wrongs have fusion crust, chondrules, or other diagnostic features.
So how can we (scientists) disbelieve a person's claim when it comes to observing a rock from space fall and collecting it soon thereafter? Why do these rocks almost inevitably turn out to be junk? Are people who think they have a meteorite when science says they don't 1) deluded, 2) con-men, or 3) are the scientists wrong?
An argument for 1) is that some people's perspective is clearly wrong, and memory is imperfect. Seeing a shooting star usually means that the shooting star could not land nearby- Shooting stars usually burn up in space, or if they land, do so kilometers away. However, these events can be fairly unusual, and it's not uncommon to invoke a sense of wonder and specialness at these rare events. This is probably similar to Lithodid-man's sea-snake story. Something weird has happened, and people's memory and perspective can get screwy.
An argument for 2) includes both intentional fraud (the martian meteorite ebay case above), and self-fraud (the kids collecting the hot rock from their yard, story 1). In some cases, people will say what they think they should say, like that a meteorite was hot when they found it, even when they don't remember that being the case. Again, this is because memory can be wrong, or can be re-programmed.
At least as far as meteorites are concerned, many people are motivated by a desire to have found something unusual and groundbreaking. Their observations may be colored by these desires. Additionally, meteorites are often very valuable, fetching a few thousand dollars for a nice, moderate-sized sample. People like finding treasure, and this can also turn off their skeptic impulses.
Finally, case 3) deserves a bit of discussion. Historically, the general public has been extremely important in helping move along science in the face of "scientific" opposition. Meteorites were never believed to come from space until the 1492 Ensisheim fall, which pepper peasant farms with meteorites in France. Prior to that event, and through the next few centuries of research, natural philosophers at the time did not believe rocks could come from space. However, public accounts contradicted this scholarly knowledge and by 1800, meteorites were confirmed to come from space. The discovery was eventually proved by scientists, but without a doubt benefited from public observation.
So the line between the two extremes should not be so extreme. Scientists are skeptical of public claims unless good evidence accompanies the claim (like a sample of an actual meteorite). Perspective and sub-conscious desires to be revolutionary (and rich!)can color a person's claim.

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sinequanon
Member (Idle past 2865 days)
Posts: 331
Joined: 12-17-2007


Message 28 of 165 (447235)
01-08-2008 3:57 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by Percy
01-08-2008 3:46 PM


Firstly, Taz asked if I care to take a guess, so I did.
My other point is that Joe Blow does not do hypothetical mind experiments. He tends to work from experience. He does not usually see bullets flying through a vacuum unless he's been lighting up the dodgy stuff.

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 Message 26 by Percy, posted 01-08-2008 3:46 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by Percy, posted 01-08-2008 8:42 PM sinequanon has replied
 Message 39 by Taz, posted 01-08-2008 9:51 PM sinequanon has replied

Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 29 of 165 (447241)
01-08-2008 4:22 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by sinequanon
01-08-2008 2:11 PM


But the paper is nothing to do with how the crows know. It just tests whether they know. Conclusion should instead say This suggests that these crows know how to maximize the energy obtained from each dropped walnut. It is very strange that they have slipped in evolution and learning as an explanation. You wouldn't do that for a human. A human may have "worked it out", eh?
How is a paper that does not anthropomorphise crows by suggesting they 'worked it out', constitute an implied anthrocentric gaffe.
The paper is evidence of how humans learned what heights were optimum: First they did trial and error on walnuts, they observed the relationship between theft and height and they came up with a model for what they considered optimum height in any given circumstance.
A combination of gaining knowledge through trial and error and observation would be classified as 'learning'. It is possible the crows learned their behaviour by also constructing a model (via some kind of combination of trial and error and observation), though the model would not be communicated in the Crow's scientific literature. Or, they might come ready built with a sequence of rules of thumb building an overall model of optimum behaviour. Either evolved or learned. In our case we can be confident that it is at least a partially learned skill, but the people that wrote the paper did not take a position over whether it was a learned or a natural skill with regards to crows.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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sinequanon
Member (Idle past 2865 days)
Posts: 331
Joined: 12-17-2007


Message 30 of 165 (447250)
01-08-2008 4:39 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by Modulous
01-08-2008 4:22 PM


How is a paper that does not anthropomorphise crows by suggesting they 'worked it out', subtly imply anthropomorphic assumptions?
I find this question self-contradictory.
You seem to imply 'worked it out' would be to anthropomorphise crows. Do you mean to imply this?

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 Message 29 by Modulous, posted 01-08-2008 4:22 PM Modulous has replied

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