Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Why Scientific 'Truth' So Often Turns Out Wrong.

This post is motivated with John Allen Paulos's article The Decline Effect and Why Scientific 'Truth' So Often Turns Out Wrong.

In AWT this phenomena can be of real emergent nature and it manifests itself with switching of intersubjectively accepted opinion into dual perspective, whenever the density of facts increases up to certain level. It's analogous to dispersive spreading of waves at the water surface, which is switching its character with distance from longitudinal into transverse waves and back into longitudinal waves again. It corresponds the layered fractally nested character of Universe and observable reality.

For example, from terrestrial perspective the epicycle model of solar system appears relevant. With increasing scope this model has been replaced with heliocentric model but now the evolution of galactic arms can be described with epicycle model again. It's just the number of observable objects, which makes epicycle or heliocentric model more relevant.

After all, the acceptation/refusal of aether model is of the same emergent evolution. Before some time old Greeks believed in Aether, later (Newton) this concept has been replaced with concept of absolute space. In 19th century the aether based models were quite popular again, but they're were replaced later with relativity model of space-time. Now the aether model is returning into physics again with model of Higgs field, which is responsible for particle mass.

The emergent character of observable reality can be understood by example of compression of gas, which is changing into fluid or even solid during this. The  density fluctuations of newly formed phase are behaving like another generation of gas particles and when the compression continues, they're condensing and changing into nested fluid phase and solid again. The newly formed phase is embedded into previous generation of matter and this process can be repeated many times.


I presume, the same evolution occurs during pilling and condensation of facts into theories in hyperdimensional causal space. I Czech we have a proverb: "Stokrát nic umořilo osla" which roughly means "A hundred times nothing killed the donkey". The meaning of this proverb is, even the smallest chores are tiresome (if there is too many).

135 comments:

Zephir said...

The Truth Wears Off: Testing the decline effect

Zephir said...

Nabokov Theory on Polyommatus Blue Butterflies Is Vindicated - well, just another example of peer-review process failure.

Zephir said...

Are physicists wasting their time hunting for a theory that unites the forces of nature? Nope, as they're making money with it. The would lost their safe jobs like alchemists of medieval era looking for [lapis philosophorum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher's_stone), after then - as Robert Wilson, the former president of APS recognized already. He was a bright, farseeing man, indeed.

Zephir said...

Parody of Supersymmetry/Superspace/Theoretical Physics Papers

Zephir said...

From this graph is evident, SUSY has been well dead before twenty years already, yet theorists are still investing huge amount of public money into its confirmation. SUSY failure is just one of many recent examples. So far no gravitational waves have been found. Existence of Higgs boson is highly uncertain, too. No extradimensions were found. String theory/LQG are both left unconfirmed for thirty years.. And so on - it's evident, the whole physics of the last thirty years is on the dead track. Its experts are best payed scientists in the human history - and they were all wrong.

The funny part is, most of phenomena predicted with these theories still exists and they're living well - just at another places, when their founders are expecting. We know about many forces, violating inverse square law - yet theorists are struggling with finding of extradimensions. Gravitational waves are known for years - as a cosmic background noise. Higgs fields manifests with Yukawa coupling, which is known for decades. The well known dilepton channel of top quarks decay is just the example of Higgs field symmetry, which the physicists are looking for during Higgs boson searches.

Zephir said...

Can We Trust Scientists?

Brandon said...

I can't do this anymore, it's too much! Here, go to this link, i'm not doing this anymore, and Zephir, I'm blaming this alll on you, and, now I don't care about grammar correcting because it's TOO MUCH! to ask of a 12 year old to do this. :(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(. And stop ARGUING with each other and just meet each other and work with each other and actuallyRESEARCH with each other instead of yapping off and maybe, just maybe you could be able to find out if this teory is true, instead of WASTING YOUR TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. too much. :(. And become SCIENTISTS. Please for yours and mines sake, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR BICKERING, AND YOUR OWN CURIOUSITY, STOP THAT GOD DANGM BICKERING.

Zephir said...

/*..PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR BICKERING .. STOP THAT GOD DANGM BICKERING...*/

Umm, well - isn't it a sorta circular reasoning?

Zephir said...

Inability to detect sarcasm, lies may be early sign of dementia. If it's true, then the inability to detect serious meaning (of AWT, for example) could serve as a late sign of infantility, instead. It's not surprising, the finding of TOE is not the job for both quite young, both quite old persons.

Oscar Wilde: "The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything"

Zephir said...

Search for dark matter moves one step closer to detecting elusive particle
Actually this result was negative, so it cannot bring us closer, but farther. But mainstream propaganda wants the public support for science, so it inverts the meaning for every episode, which could be confronted with belief of public in mistakable power of science.
Another example of such bias (event the usage of word connection "God particle" can be considered propagandistic)
'God particle' may be discovered soon
What Dr Myers actually said was:
"The performance of the detectors and of the machine means that even at a lower energy we could discover the Higgs or disprove its existence"

Zephir said...

Why so many people choose not to believe what scientists say, The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science, Is Science Just a Matter of Faith?

Zephir said...

Evidence on peer review—scientific quality control or smokescreen?

Zephir said...

Coburn report: NSF wastes millions of dollars on wasteful projects. Response.

Zephir said...

It's depressing to see that 1) whether something is publishable in high impact journals is such an important criterion for what we do, 2) skeptical science that replicates and refutes is considered a waste of effort, and 3) students are discouraged from carrying out such work, because there is some strange bias that will hurt their chances of employment.

Zephir said...

Why We Have So Much 'Duh' Science: "Eryn Brown writes in the LA Times that accounts of "duh" research abound as studies show that driving ability worsens in people with early Alzheimer's disease, that women who get epidurals experience less pain during childbirth than women who don't, that young men who are obese have lower odds of getting married than thinner peers, and that making exercise more fun might improve fitness among teens. But there's more to duh research than meets the eye writes Brown as experts say they have to prove the obvious again and again to influence perceptions and policy. "Think about the number of studies that had to be published for people to realize smoking is bad for you," says Ronald J. Iannotti, a psychologist at the National Institutes of Health. "There are some subjects where it seems you can never publish enough." Kyle Stanford, a professor of the philosophy of science at UC Irvine, thinks the professionalization of science has led researchers — who must win grants to pay their bills — to ask timid questions and research that hews to established theories is more likely to be funded, even if it contributes little to knowledge. Perhaps most important, sometimesa study that seems poised to affirm the conventional wisdom produces a surprise. "Many have taken the value of popular programs like DARE — in which police warn kids about the dangers of drug use — as an article of faith," writes Brown. "But Dennis Rosenbaum of the University of Illinois at Chicago and other researchers have shown that the program has been ineffective and may even increase drug use in some cases.

El Cid said...

It's trash, so I hope that you don't praise it.

Zephir said...

Hello, El Cid, I'm glad to hear you! Your link is perfect, I'll read about it definitely. The connection of aether model to the general relativity follows clearly from this homomorphism.

Zephir said...

Is modern physics rotting?

Zephir said...

Crazy Research The U.S. Government Is Funding

Zephir said...

An essay by Freeman Dyson on the missed opportunities in science: "The progress of both mathematics and physics has in the past been seriously retarded by our unwillingness to listen to one another."

This unwillingness is a consequence of many psychosocial factors of modern era: the increasing number of information and web twaddlers, the increasing level of competition between research groups and the fact, the physicists are motivated in continuity of research and their safe salaries, rather than in actual finding - as Bob Wilson recognized and named pregnantly. And I definitely missed many other potential reasons...

"The wise man speaks because he has something to say, the fool because he has to say something"

Zephir said...

Scientists about scientists: a sociological research paper on the mindsets of cosmologists

Zephir said...

Studies of studies show that we get things wrong. Of 51 reports, 16 found that a practice currently believed to be effective was, in fact, ineffective.

Zephir said...

It’s Science, but Not Necessarily Right - Why Science Struggles to Correct Its Mistakes

Zephir said...

Gustave Le Bon, 1895: "The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” "

El Cid said...

Lubos Motl wrote:

The 1500-page manifesto“ (by Anders Behring Breivik) “says many things and if I were given this text before the murder and had the freedom to say what I thought about it, of course that I would agree with a significant part of it. Well, as you can see, I just indirectly said that I agree with many things in it. There are also many things I disagree with.

El Cid said...

Zephir,

Do you think Lubos Motl is a psychopath?

El Cid said...

And they may even be more efficient while killing - and the probable reason is that Breivik (or his potential counterparts) may have a higher IQ than your garden variety left-wing or Islamic terrorist.

By Lubos Motl :-D

Zephir said...

Do you think Lubos Motl is a psychopath?

He's extreme nerd, who can recognize only black & white (as many formally thinking people do). So his thinking is always biased by its very nature. IMO he suffers with Asperger's syndrome. Even the graphic design of blogs and websites speaks for it...;-)

Zephir said...

We all think that science is about objectivity and “just the facts, ma’am.” Not so fast, philosophers, historians and sociologists of science have been arguing now for a number of decades.

Zephir said...

The Wall Street Journal reports that retractions of scientific papers have surged in recent years, with the top 3 journals issuing retractions being PNAS, Science and Nature.  The graph above shows the increase in the rate of retracted papers
img w=640&h=485

Druv said...

Nice post, keep up the good work.

Zephir said...

People are biased against creative ideas, studies find

Zephir said...

Misconduct in science - An array of errors: Investigations into a case of alleged scientific misconduct have revealed numerous holes in the oversight of science and scientific publishing

Zephir said...

Pressure for positive results puts science under threat

Zephir said...

Albert Einstein: "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality".
Has the Einstein Revolution Gone Too Far?

Zephir said...

The Weak Evidence Effect: People who receive weak but supportive evidence are less optimistic about the outcome than people who receive no evidence.

Confirmed at the case of aether theory, antigravity, cold fusion, etc. (weak evidence) with compare to Higgs, gravity waves, superstrings (no evidence). Most of redditrolls (including highly qualified PhD students) tend to believe complex but solely unsupported theories rather than unverified experiments and apparent, but qualitative analogies.
One of the consequences of this seeming paradox is, the unsupported theories are examined until people are exhausted and all money sources are depleted and, while no one bothers to repeat the simple cold fusion experiments, once they were impeached first.

Zephir said...

"You are the only person with whom I am actually willing to come to terms. Almost all the other fellows do not look from the facts to the theory but from the theory to the facts; they cannot extricate themselves from a once accepted conceptual net, but only flop about in it in a grotesque way."

-Albert Einstein, (in a letter to Erwin Schrödinger )

Zephir said...

Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)

Zephir said...

Weathering Fights – Science – What’s It Up To?

Zephir said...

Scientists spend two-thirds of their time re-inventing Willis. If we combine it with the fact, scientists are spending 40% of research time with collection of money for additional research, we could fire 87% of them immediately.

Zephir said...

The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment,
the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research. Aether theory and cold fusion can be added to the list w/out problem.

El Cid said...

Peter Woit

:-D

Zephir said...

Albert Einstein: "The greatest obstacle to understanding reality is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." (Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit, 1901). Then he rejected the quantum mechanics.

Zephir said...

"Every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever."
- Karl Raimund Popper -

Zephir said...

Graham offers the following Disagreement Heirarchy:
DH0. Name-Calling.
DH1. Ad Hominem.
DH2. Responding to Tone.
DH3. Contradiction.
DH4. Counterargument.
DH5. Refutation.
DH6. Refuting the Central Point.
DH7. Make the Argument Better, and then Refute Its Central Point.

Zephir said...

The Biggest Problem in Physics Theoretical physics as ivory tower is described there. Journals won't even bother to read papers that challenge generally accepted assumptions.

Zephir said...

What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Zephir said...

Graham offers the following Disagreement Heirarchy:
DH0. Name-Calling.
DH1. Ad Hominem.
DH2. Responding to Tone.
DH3. Contradiction.
DH4. Counterargument.
DH5. Refutation.
DH6. Refuting the Central Point.
DH7. Make the Argument Better, and then Refute Its Central Point.

Zephir said...

U.S. State Science Standards Are "Mediocre to Awful"

Zephir said...

Researchers feel pressure to cite superfluous papers

Zephir said...

As that work reports, nobody really cared about peer review prior to WWII. We have peer review now because the academic world went from teaching to publish or perish. And as that same work reports, we now have pygmies standing in judgment of giants www.iscid.org/papers/Tipler_PeerReview_070103.pdf, http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/three-myths-about-scientific-peer-review, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6959/full/425645a.html Juan Miguel Campanario has compiled a list of more than 20 Nobel laureates' rejections by many journals http://www2.uah.es/jmc

Zephir said...

How much damage could be caused by a peer reviewer having a bad day?

Zephir said...

Challenging dominant physics paradigms

Zephir said...

Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong (TED lecture)

Zephir said...

"Overall risk of extinction prior to 2100 is 19%"

Zephir said...

Now you can generate a "random academic paper.

Zephir said...

New research hypothesizes that up to 90% of peer reviewed studies in medical journals is misleading or flat out wrong. Can scientists be trusted, the article wonders?

Zephir said...

Review of Roger Schlafly’s "How Einstein Ruined Physics"

Zephir said...

The British astrophysicist Arthur S. Eddington once wrote, "No experiment should be believed until it has been confirmed by theory."

Albert Einstein: "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."

Zephir said...

Too many sloppy mistakes are creeping into scientific papers. Lab heads must look more rigorously
at the data — and at themselves. Nature Journal itself leads the record in the sloppy rejections of important findings, often leading into Nobel prices later.

Zephir said...

More and more that careers in physics are hard to come by, grant very little freedom, and can be quite stressful. This article is particularly concerning: link. It's because the contemporary science, physics in particular is extremely infective, if not useless for human civilization. The physicists are ignoring cold fusion, being partially responsible for energetic and environmental crisis, whereas they're spending billions in useless hot fusion and accelerator research. They're effectively a parasites of human society by now, which is the consequence of their relative prestige during Cold war era: it were indeed just the physicists, who constructed rockets and nuclear bombs. But these times are ower. So far we have no usage for any particle revealed at collider, not to say about theories developed during last forty years, which cannot be even falsified Michio Kaku: How Physics Got Fat (And Why We Need to Sing For Our Supper)

Zephir said...

The editors of Infection and Immunity are sending a warning signal about modern science. Two editorials (1 and 2) published in the journal have given other biomedical researchers pause to ask if modern science is dysfunctional. Readers familiar with the state of academia may not be surprised but the claims have been presented today to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that level the following allegations: "Incentives have evolved over the decades to encourage some behaviors that are detrimental to good science" and "The surest ticket to getting a grant or job is getting published in a high profile journal, this is an unhealthy belief that can lead a scientist to engage in sensationalism and sometimes even dishonest behavior to salvage their career." The data to back up such slanderous claims? "In the past decade the number of retraction notices for scientific journals has increased more than 10-fold while the number of journals articles published has only increased by 44%." At least a few of such retractions have been covered here.

Zephir said...

New Ways to Measure Science

Zephir said...

[url=http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/06/01/1937220/why-we-have-so-much-duh-science]Why We Have So Much "Duh" Science[/url]. Symmetrically, the research of really fundamental, but controversial phenomena, like the "chi" energy and other psychic phenomena is avoided obstinately (the same tendency is observed in mainstream physics, which avoids cold fusion research, etc..). The reason is simple: the community of social scientists is overgrown, so it tends to superficial journalisms and it avoids every risk of carrier. The contemporary scientists are product of long-term evolution in this extent.

Zephir said...

Father of String Theory and noted physics scientist Holger Bech Neilsen of Denmark has said that contributions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN are over-rated and that there is no need for spending so much on the experiment. Is the LHC throwing away too much data? I wouldn't further comment it, because my stance regarding the LHC research is quite known over the web (you know, all these foggy landscapes and water surface stuffs).

Zephir said...

HOW scientific are the social sciences? The mainstream physics is indeed as rigorous as possible - but does it really matter, when it comes to the underlying logics of mainstream theories?

Zephir said...

If QFT is ENRON, who are physicists?

Zephir said...

Is Physics Among the Dysfunctional Sciences?

Zephir said...

Daniele Fanelli: Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries

Zephir said...

Positive bias could erode public trust in science

Zephir said...

Society: How is it possible so many scientist be wrong Roland Benabou of Princeton have made many papers using a model of "self delusion" that can became "collective"... he studied many variation and application of his theory to explain illogical facts..
Psychologists over the past 50 years have demonstrated the sheer genius people have at convincing themselves of congenial conclusions while denying the truth of inconvenient ones. You can call it self-deception, but it also goes by the names rationalization, wishful thinking, defensive processing, self-delusion, and motivated reasoning. There is a robust catalogue of strategies people follow to believe what they want to, and we research psychologists are hardly done describing the shape or the size of that catalogue. All this rationalization can lead people toward false beliefs, or perhaps more commonly, to tenaciously hang on to false beliefs they should really reconsider. Psychologists over the past 50 years have demonstrated the sheer genius people have at convincing themselves of congenial conclusions while denying the truth of inconvenient ones. You can call it self-deception, but it also goes by the names rationalization, wishful thinking, defensive processing, self-delusion, and motivated reasoning. There is a robust catalogue of strategies people follow to believe what they want to, and we research psychologists are hardly done describing the shape or the size of that catalogue. All this rationalization can lead people toward false beliefs, or perhaps more commonly, to tenaciously hang on to false beliefs.

Zephir said...

Science has a PR Problem

Zephir said...

Find it or not, science wins. That's the great thing about science..
Everything wins at the very end by trial and error approach. Construction of cars converges to the optimal value, when all possible designs were tested and found unsuccessful. Is it what the scientific approach means? Even Holy Church accepted the heliocentric model of solar system at the very end. Should we call it a victory of Holy Church? Should we call the victory of Science, if it will admit the Steady state Universe, cold fusion or dense aether model at the very end (while failing in all attempts to deny/ignore it during it)? What actually wins here is the truth only - not the community of scientists, which can be as biased, as the community of religious laymans. What we are paying the physicists for is more insightful approach, than just failure in denial of all opposite ideas.

Zephir said...

The Physicists' Bill of Rights

Zephir said...

Guerilla enlightenment: Defending science online

Zephir said...

The New Yorker: That the Smarter People Are, the More Susceptible They Are to Cognitive Bias (PDF

Zephir said...

Quantum gravitist Carlo Rovelli: Science is not about certainty. Science is about finding the most reliable way of thinking.

Unfortunately, the more reliable theory is, the more fuzzy it becomes in its predictions. Such a theory is right at 99% situation, but only to 55%. Whereas the very exact theories are of narrow validity scope.

Zephir said...

Steven Weinberg: The Crisis of Big Science

Zephir said...

Overproduction of Ph.D.s, caused by universities’ recruitment of graduate students and postdocs to staff labs, without regard to the career opportunities that await them, has glutted the market with scientists hoping for academic research careers.

Zephir said...

Province cartoonist Dan Murphy wrote a column questioning the value of hunting for the Higgs boson, when humankind has so many other pressing problems to solve. Response of  Tim Meyer, a physicist at TRIUMF.
Pointless research is maybe good, but non-pointless research is always better. I'm not worrying the money spend into extreme research in physics (particle collisions) or biology (GMO viruses), my problem rather is with dangerous aspects of this research. We should do it outside in cosmic space at the safe distance from Earth. If we cannot do it safely from financial reasons, then it's an indicia, this research is pointless as well, because we have no money for its utilization, not to say about handling of its accidental consequences.
But what I cannot tolerate at all is the ignorance if not hostile approach of physicists toward really useful findings like the cold fusion. It just illustrates the well known fact, if you give some group of people too much power and money, this group will separate from the interests of people and it will become hostile toward the rest of society, which is feeding it. The contemporary physics is overgrown remnant of Cold war era, when physicists got controversial credit, money and respect for construction of nuclear weapons. But these times are over and now we're facing a huge community of people, who would have no other occupation and they're become a parasites of human society. The fact, these parasites are quite agile makes the things even worse.

Zephir said...

Deniers, skeptics, and mavericks

Zephir said...

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

Zephir said...

"Science today is a new type of religion," Miles said. "New discoveries or concepts that don’t agree with the scientific scriptures are to be banished without a fair hearing."

Zephir said...

Positive results from published hypothesis testing is up 22%! Are researchers becoming clairvoyant, less pioneering or is it an indication of increased publication bias?

Zephir said...

Science writers: Jonah Lehrer’s scientific errors worse than fabricated quotes

Zephir said...

Nikola Tesla: "Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality."

Zephir said...

False positives: fraud and misconduct are threatening scientific research Scientific research is threatened with false negatives too: for example the twenty years standing ignorance if not open boycott of cold fusion research has lead into fossil fuel, oil wars and subsequent financial crisis. As the result, the physicists itself and their research is threatend with their ignorance.

Zephir said...

More than half of biomedical findings cannot be reproduced.

Zephir said...

A 20-year campaign of scientific fraud says as much about the research community as it does about the perpetrator. The system that allowed such deception to continue must be reformed.

Zephir said...

The Crisis in Physics is due to following factors: 1) Mainstream science suppresses all competing theories. 2) The university teaching is wrong; 3) Absence of criticism. 4) Perhaps the crisis in physics is caused by "evolution in reverse" of human race.

Zephir said...

Q: So what's up with science? A: It's complicated.

Zephir said...

Nepotism and sexism in peer-review (PDF)

Zephir said...

A Sharp Rise in Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform (editorial)

Zephir said...

Journalistic deficit disorder: What newspapers don’t say matters as much as what they do...

Zephir said...

There's a write-up, which proposes seven reasons, why scientists are basically cheating. Some of them are: the successful grant applications are increasingly being treated by universities as outputs - academic journals prioritize the publication of novel results, and they're resistant to the publication of null results or replication studies. Time constrains on getting papers out may result in questionable "data-fishing" techniques, too. Of course, these long term factors don't explain, why the retraction peaks in recent years so rapidly..

Zephir said...

The Biggest Problem in Physics Is Institutional: in fact the system is designed to summarily reject ideas that question existing physics

Zephir said...

Scientific papers that get rejected on first submission go on to get more citations when eventually published

Zephir said...

Kerry Cue, Canberra Times, 5 October 2011: ”Science today is about getting some results, framing
those results in an attention-grabbing media release and basking in the glory.

Zephir said...

A 'ripple effect' means retractions stigmatize entire scientific fields. After a retraction, the rate at which related papers were cited dropped by 5.7% relative to a selection of control papers that were not related to a retraction.

Zephir said...

A lost generation? M. Shifman provides an "impressionistic portrait" of the current state of particle theory. I wouldn't call the contemporary physicists a "lost generation" - rather the generation which completely misunderstood the practical meaning of its own insights.

Zephir said...

Trends in Pharmacological Sciences: Something rotten at the core of science?

Zephir said...

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn

Zephir said...

The Myth of Self-Correcting Science - Sarah Estes - The Atlantic

Zephir said...

GUO research group of University of Michigan is composed of Asians completely

Zephir said...

Why kids have an inflated sense of their science skills. "A massive analysis of some 350,000 students in 53 countries has uncovered a paradox: Students in many countries that are mediocre at science have an inflated sense of good they are." IMO it's evolutionary trait. The young people are optimized into learnings of many facts in shortest time - so that their thinking is very selective and schematic - in the same way, like the contemporary education system of science, which presents only very schematic facts as a picture of the whole branch of science. It's not accidental in this point, that the dense aether theory based on nonformal thinking is unpalatable for many redditors here, who are mostly youngsters. Every new more general theory deals just with exceptions from established theories preferably - and these young kids don't know about any - the teachers at schools didn't told it to them. For these kids such a theory has therefore no tangible motivation.
With compare to it, the older people already know, that every rule has its own exceptions, so that they're more trustful and willing to accept the informations outside of the established schemes, often non-critically. It's not accidental, the cold fusion conferences are attended mostly with elderly scientists.

Zephir said...

The absolute limits of scientific arrogance

Zephir said...

Retraction Watch: Paper by author whose attorneys sent cease-and-desist letter to Science Fraud retracted

Zephir said...

Yep, exactly. If the scientists don't value the logic, only the math equations (which were itself derived with using of this logics too, btw) - how one could convince them into using of logic with logical arguments? For example, the equations describing the motion of planets in heliocentric and geocentric models are very different, yet they provide the same results. How to convince the people, that one kind of equations is better than the another, when they don't consider anything, which cannot be computed in many orders of precision?

Zephir said...

Poll Reveals Quantum Physicists' Disagreement About the Nature of Reality

Zephir said...

John P. A. Ioannidis "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False", Why Current Publication Practices May Distort Science, Research grants: Conform and be funded.

Zephir said...

MIT leaders vindictively persecuted whistle-blower Aaron Swartz until he committed suicide. Disgusting, disgraceful betrayal of academic virtues in craven service to
authoritarian power.

Zephir said...

Percy Bridgman: The Logic of Modern Physics (1927)

Zephir said...

Tyson is a sorta priest of modern version of religion

Zephir said...

Male scientists more likely than females to commit scientific fraud

Zephir said...

Is it even possible too have too many science PhDs? Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time Is Graduate School a Ponzi Scheme?

Zephir said...

Scientific American censors discussion of cold fusion, including statements by its own editors

Zephir said...

Scientific American censors discussion of cold fusion, including statements by its own editors

Zephir said...

Data released suggest that, given the choice, even researchers who publish in open-access journals want to place restrictions on how their papers can be re-used — for example, sold by others for commercial profit.

Zephir said...

Are We Doing Science the Right Way? Is the push to publish ruining scientific discovery? Is science really self-correcting? Does peer review work? Are labs the right size? Does the quest for grants create a climate that encourages misconduct?

Zephir said...


Has the communication of scientific research reached a crisis point
? (PDF)

Zephir said...

The A@#hole Scientist: Can a vexing sense of entitlement actually aid in the pursuit of knowledge?

Zephir said...

The Folly of Scientism: Though physicists might once have been dismissive of metaphysics as mere speculation, they would also have characterized such questions as inherently speculative and so beyond their own realm of expertise. The claims of Hawking and Mlodinow, and many other writers, thus represent a striking departure from the traditional view.

Zephir said...

The journal Nature explains why science is, like religion, based on faith. Are American scientists getting more religious? In basic science the percentage of ‘authoritative’ references decreases as bibliographies become shorter. The dictionary is wrong – science can be a religion too.

Zephir said...

Transforming physics education By using the tools of physics in their teaching, instructors can move students
from mindless memorization to understanding and appreciation..

Zephir said...

Are Physics Conferences A Waste ? An Ethical Issue

Zephir said...

Most influential journals (Nature, Science) doesn't accept experimental articles without theories at all - they've policy for it (DOC, PDF)

Zephir said...

Hindsight Devalues Science

Zephir said...

Pluralistic ignorance

Zephir said...

Groupthink and colective delusion as explained in Roland Beanabou model of "mutual assured delusion" :

Illusion of invulnerability – Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.
Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions.
Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.
Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary.
Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.
Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.
Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.
Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions.

Zephir said...

Which principles are good and which are bad? We can limit ourself to four main different types of principles: 1) dogmatic, 2) empirical, 3) simplifying (or conventional), and 4) epistemological

Zephir said...

Rupert Sheldrake: The Science Desilusion (TEDx lecture)

Zephir said...

What Do Scientific Studies Show?

Zephir said...

Number Of Published Cancer Studies That Can't Be Reproduced Is Shockingly High

Zephir said...

Only 0.004% of medical research (animal experimentation) is useful. (comment, polemics)

Zephir said...

Pathological Science' is not Scientific Misconduct (nor is it pathological) by Henry H. Bauer (original)
The Pseudoscientists of the APS by Eugene Mallove and Jed Rothwell