[ Long ] A Philosophy of Science v. Pseudo-Science

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eric76
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22 Mar 2015, 4:31 pm

Fnord wrote:
the concept of the self-taught researcher toiling away in complete social isolation arriving at a discovery that redefines every aspect of science is nothing more than a myth.
One thing that makes self-learning a difficult way to learn science deeply is that there is little direction to the study. It is very easy to go down paths that aren't likely to lead anywhere. Also, if the student finds something difficult, he is probably more likely to skip over it and thus have a less than complete understanding of what may be some of the most vitally important parts. Also, a misunderstanding of the material is more likely to not be corrected. The result is less than desirable expertise.

And if the student chooses to learn the material from a poorly chosen source, he is more likely to end up woefully inexpert.

In other words, it's not that it can't happen, but it isn't likely to happen. The most likely exception is for someone who already has a great deal of expertise in a closely related field.



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23 Mar 2015, 8:24 am

DentArthurDent wrote:
More to the point those who feel threatened by E=mc2 (how did you get the 2 in the correct position) do not bother searching for the answer to "how do photons have energy when they have no mass?" instead they rather stupidly assume that they have found a flaw in such an almost universally accepted eqaution, and that all the worlds physicists have either missed what their brilliance can see, or have simply ignored.it in the vain hope that a cattle farmer in Western Australia won't notice it.


This applies in all fields of bunkum: A certain type of mental illness leads a person who has no formal education to believe with absolute certainty that he has discovered that all the real experts are wrong. He finds support from other people like himself. You cannot reason with him because he rejects all evidence, and most often will cite one other crackpot like himself who has self-published a massively-flawed (and never peer-reviewed) study, or who has a web page that cites non-existent studies, or even that blatantly lies about what real researchers have published. He turns science upside down by insisting that the one outlying study is more valid than the hundred well-conducted studies. He doesn't do real research because he does not understand the real explanations.

Often he has plans for a free-energy machine which he is convinced the government has conspired to deny to the world. Never mind that real free-energy machines (solar panels, wind chargers, etc.) are often subsidized by the government.

Other times he is less focused, merely insisting that the whole world is wrong, but with no practical value to his "discovery." Sometimes he can be found in a homeless shelter telling his theories to anyone who will listen. I worked in a homeless shelter for five years and met people like this. They were very disturbed. I found that just listening to them and nodding from time to time seemed to give them a little temporary peace. (I'm not a shrink, but sometimes just listening is helpful.) I kind of liked these guys. The ones that make me angry are the ones who are functional enough to actually build a contraption and sell it to gullible folks, scamming them out of hard-earned money. The internet is full of such charlatans selling perpetual-motion machines and the like.

A good general rule is never buy anything from someone who claims the government doesn't want you to know about their invention. And never believe anyone who claims that all peer-reviewed journals are conspiring to prevent their own brilliance from being recognized.



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23 Mar 2015, 8:35 am

This ^^^ FTW.

Very well said, Daniel; and very accurate, as well.

Had I seen this before submitting a revision to to first post of this thread, I would have included some of what you've stated so plainly (after getting your permission, of course).

May I include what you said in future revisions?

Eric and Dent ... same question?



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23 Mar 2015, 11:05 am

Fnord wrote:
This ^^^ FTW.

Very well said, Daniel; and very accurate, as well.

Had I seen this before submitting a revision to to first post of this thread, I would have included some of what you've stated so plainly (after getting your permission, of course).

May I include what you said in future revisions?

Eric and Dent ... same question?


It's fine with me.



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23 Mar 2015, 5:55 pm

If you are asking me, can you can include some of what I have said, to be quite honest I would be honoured. I have a great deal of respect for what you have to say.

@Daniel, same as Fnord well said


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23 Mar 2015, 6:07 pm

And I thank you eric76 for illuminating me on the concept of geometrical units, showing that I still have a pretty rigid, sophomoric grasp of math as applied to physics.


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23 Mar 2015, 11:33 pm

General heads-up that the OP has since updated and revised his OP and has allowed me to post it. When replying, please consider this version in place of the original from 2013.

Fnord wrote:
Here is something that I've been working on for a while - indicators that an extraordinary claim may be delusional, irrational, or otherwise refutable. I may have posted this previously, in whole or in part, but recent pseudo-scientific claims have inspired me to post it again.

This is a work in progress.

1) The claim is first made through the popular media, (i.e., blogs, tabloids, social websites, et cetera), word-of-mouth, and rarely - if ever - through an established scientific institution.

• Peer-group review is foundational to the integrity of scientific research. If a claimant is unwilling to expose his or her theories and experiments to the scrutiny of other scientists, then the claim itself is unlikely to stand up to any serious level of scientific scrutiny, and the claim is very likely to be invalid.

• Presenting a claim in such a way as to embellish on its economic aspects ("Investors could make millions!") and that lack specific details of how the discovery was made may indicate that the research itself is incomplete, and that the researcher in only looking for more funding.

• Presenting a claim in such a way that the alleged poverty of the claimant is revealed implies that the true focus of the claim is on the acquisition of money, and not on any aspects of the claim itself.

2) The person making the claim may also claim that a powerful group (i.e., "Big Pharma", "Big Science", "Military-Industrial Complex", "New World Order", et cetera) is trying to discredit or suppress evidence for the claim.

• They may claim that influential people fear that the discovery itself may change the balance of political power and wealth, and thus overturn society.

• They may claim that they have taken the ethical/moral high ground, and further claim that it is their critics that are spreading the lies and deceptions.

• They may claim that the scientific establishment dupes ordinary people into thinking they are doing something for greater good, and that these ordinary people they have been lied to and deceived.

• They may claim that scientists engaged in another line of research are in direct competition, and do not want their own funding jeopardized.

• They may claim that the "failure" of the scientific establishment to adequately explain an anomalous effect or event that is key to the claimant's own claim is taken as proof for the truth of some unsupported fantastical claim.

• They may claim that powerful politicians that are heavily invested in the current Military-Industrial complex want to maintain the status-quo, at least until they can get their hands on the discovery.

• They may claim that a conspiracy, which has the stated purpose of suppressing "Forbidden Knowledge" (i.e. "Things Man Was Not Meant To Know"), is also trying to suppress any knowledge of the claimant's alleged discovery.

3) The person making the claim provides unclear evidence (vague or incomplete "proof") that is open to widely subjective interpretation.

• Blurred photographs are a stock-in-trade of people making para-normal claims, and for those claiming the existence of mythical creatures. If the objects depicted in the photograph have no distinct or definable form, then the more likely cause is poor photography or a broken camera.

• Previously discredited documentation from pseudo-scientists is presented as "proof" of the new claim.

• "Expert Sources" are cited that can not be verified - either because they don't exist, they are conflated from several unrelated sources, or they simply don't have the proper credentials to qualify them as experts in the field under discussion.

4) The person making the claim provides evidence that is purely anecdotal, circumstantial, or that involves convoluted arguments.

• The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. Just because 'everybody' reports the same effects, it does not make the claim any more valid.

• Anecdotes are used to elicit and inspire an emotional reaction to, and thus an emotional connection with, the claims being made - such claims include the existence of astral projection, ghosts, precognition, telepathy, and other 'paranormal' activities.

• The claimant may redefine specialized words and terms to suit his claim, and then use these redefined words in a vain attempt to 'validate" his claim.

• Circumstantial evidence, while able to bring a murder conviction in a court of law, is useless when the preponderance of factual material evidence is more certain than any convoluted set of purely coincidental circumstances.

• Effects that are indistinguishable from random events can be 'revealed' only by the application of tortuous and questionable statistical methods.

5) The person making the original claim may also claim that the claim is valid because many people, both past and present, believe that the claim is valid.

Example: The myth persists that tens of thousands of years ago, before the last ice age, and before history was written down, humanity (or what passed for humanity at the time) produced remedies of miraculous power for every ailment, unmatched by anything modern science has ever produced, and that modern science can not even begin to fathom. Part of the myth includes what merchants of quackery call "Alternative Medicine" and "Unknown Forces". Since there is no written record of any medical discovery or method older than a couple of thousand years, there can be no verification that any "alternative medicine" existed before that time, or that it even worked.

• If there are no surviving records, then it is safe to assume that those records never existed in the first place, no matter how strong or popular the belief in them may be.

• Mere belief proves nothing.

• Even when the population of "believers" is exponentiated by several factors, the shear magnitude of the believing population still proves nothing.

6) The person making the claim has performed his or her 'research' in isolation, and without support from the scientific establishment. Another myth persists that the only real science taking place is in hidden laboratories where misunderstood and uneducated geniuses toil 'round the clock unlocking the secrets of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.

• The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood's science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life.

• Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists, past and present, collaborating and communicating from many locations.

7) The person making the claim may also propose that only previously unknown laws of nature or supernatural forces can explain his or her experimental results.

• These 'hidden laws' and 'supernatural forces' work only to support the claim.

• These 'hidden laws' and 'supernatural forces' can only be assumed, but not measured.

• These 'hidden laws' and 'supernatural forces' can not be expressed in mathematical terms, because (to the claimant) maths are used by the scientific establishment to obscure its data and make the data more difficult for "real" scientists to understand and use.

• The failure of accept science to explain an effect or event adequately is taken as proof for the truth of some unsupported fantastical claim (e.g., "Argument from Ignorance" or "Elenchi Ignoratum").

• The claimant presents as 'evidence' events that are indistinguishable from random events, and that can not be reliably predicted or reproduced by others.

• If the effects of the theoretical existence of a previously unknown natural law are indistinguishable from the effects of the non-existence of a previously unknown natural law, then the law in question itself is invalid.

8 ) The claimant has an emotional tie to the claim, such that valid material evidence - or the people that present it - that contradicts or negates the claim in whole or in part are denounced in some way.

• The claimant declares or implies that only someone intimately familiar with the research could possibly understand its significance.

• The claimant declares or implies that no one else understands science as much as he to begin with.

• The claimant declares or implies that he is being 'bullied' by all of the people who disagree with him.

• The claimant's defense may seem to take on all the religious fervor of a revival meeting.

• The claimant declares or implies that anyone who expresses skepticism is either ignorant of 'real' science, or is a shill for those who would keep news of the discovery suppressed.

• The claimant declares or implies that anyone who expresses skepticism is directed to look up the data for themselves. "I have done my homework" is a mantra for this form of passive-aggressive attack.

• When presented with overwhelming opposition to his claims, the claimant will resort to ad hoc "reasoning" to explain why he believes that the skeptics are out to get him (e.g. he expresses paranoiac opinions).

• The claimant will attack the credibility of anyone who exposes the fallacious nature of his claims. These attacks will usually include out-of-context quotes, insults, personal attacks, and assorted other unfounded claims (unrelated to the original claim) that bring into question the education, ethics, knowledge, intelligence, and moral character of his critics.

• Friends of the claimant will often chime in with their own reasons why critics 'should' believe the claimant. These reasons often have little - if anything - to do with the claim itself.

• The randomized double-blind test is the most important means by which we learn what works and what doesn't, because it eliminates any emotional preference for one outcome over another.

9) The person making the extraordinary claim will seem to place greater importance on being believed than in presenting any valid or verifiable evidence to support the claim.

• He will present all manner of excuses why he can not provide mathematical proof or a material demonstration of his claim.

• He may claim that demonstrations and maths will not convince those do not wish to believe.

• He may claim that no one else would understand the significance of a demonstration or a mathematical description.

• He may claim that the world is not yet ready for the full impact of his discovery.

• He may claim that the only valid evidence for his discovery is arrived at intuitively, and only after viewing a ranting video or reading a rambling document.

• He may claim that an obvious conspiracy theory is not a conspircacy theory, and that he is not

10) Finally, the claimant may directly or indirectly attack those who successfully refute the claim.

• The claimant will declare that he is not attacking anyone, but only defending himself from the hostile intentions of others.

• The claimant dismisses the refutation solely on the basis of some irrelevant fact or supposition about the refuting party.

• The claimant points out (rightly or wrongly) that the refuting party is in circumstances such that they are disposed to take a particular position (i.e., they are on a competitor's payroll, they are voluntary shills, they have a personal or intimate relationship with a member of the opposition, et cetera).

• The claimant may offer a link to an on-line document or video that "explains everything", but which really has an embedded "Trojan Horse" or other malware program that that will damage your computer or make it completely inoperable.

...

Well, that's about all that I have so far. As I said, this is a work in progress, and you are all free to believe it, ignore it, or challenge it, each as you see fit.

Believing in false science allows the comfort of having something to believe in without the discomfort of actually having to learn something.


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eric76
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24 Mar 2015, 1:00 am

beneficii wrote:
And I thank you eric76 for illuminating me on the concept of geometrical units, showing that I still have a pretty rigid, sophomoric grasp of math as applied to physics.


It's not that you have a sophomoric grasp of the math but because it is a concept that doesn't come up in most contexts.

Regarding math and physics, I've often thought that the best approach to physics would likely be to learn the math and then the physics. Too much of the time, students learn both the math and the physics at the same time and it is a lot tougher then. I think that it is usually the math that trips people up -- if you know the math, the physics is much easier.

I knew one grad student in math in the 1970s who had a bachelor's in physics and wanted to earn his doctorate in physics. He had realized that he didn't know the math as well as he wanted, so he was working on his master's degree in mathematics -- we shared an office. Unfortunately, after a brilliant first two semesters as a grad student in math, he celebrated by getting drunk and then, about two or three am, threw up in his sleep and choked to death.

When I took the physics course in classical mechanics, I already had nearly all of the math (except for Calculus of Variations which I took the next year) that I could possibly need for the course. Without having to worry about the math, the course was pretty straight forward and I could concentrate on the physics. Most of the class didn't have the math and they really struggled with the course.



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24 Mar 2015, 1:01 am

Kiprobalhato wrote:
General heads-up that the OP has since updated and revised his OP and has allowed me to post it. When replying, please consider this version in place of the original from 2013.
Good! I hope that will attract all the purveyors of nonscience into this crèche where they can slap each other on the back and congratulate themselves for not knowing what they're talking about.



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24 Mar 2015, 9:04 am

eric76 wrote:
beneficii wrote:
And I thank you eric76 for illuminating me on the concept of geometrical units, showing that I still have a pretty rigid, sophomoric grasp of math as applied to physics.


It's not that you have a sophomoric grasp of the math but because it is a concept that doesn't come up in most contexts.

Regarding math and physics, I've often thought that the best approach to physics would likely be to learn the math and then the physics. Too much of the time, students learn both the math and the physics at the same time and it is a lot tougher then. I think that it is usually the math that trips people up -- if you know the math, the physics is much easier.

I knew one grad student in math in the 1970s who had a bachelor's in physics and wanted to earn his doctorate in physics. He had realized that he didn't know the math as well as he wanted, so he was working on his master's degree in mathematics -- we shared an office. Unfortunately, after a brilliant first two semesters as a grad student in math, he celebrated by getting drunk and then, about two or three am, threw up in his sleep and choked to death.

When I took the physics course in classical mechanics, I already had nearly all of the math (except for Calculus of Variations which I took the next year) that I could possibly need for the course. Without having to worry about the math, the course was pretty straight forward and I could concentrate on the physics. Most of the class didn't have the math and they really struggled with the course.


I freely admit I have a sophomoric understanding of math. This is why you only see me posting about biology, not physics. You can get by in biology without going past statistics (unless you get into the specialty of biomathematics).



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24 Mar 2015, 10:45 am

OH GOD, thanks for clarifying that THIS is a necro-thread, and the list up there is a current one now.

I would say it is too long, and I did not read it but nah, nothing is too long for me, WHEN IT COMES TO READING..;)

Some illustrations or HUMOR OR EVEN SARCASM to break the monotony of words would be extra nice though, for those folks WHO do NOT nearly have the focus and OR reading speed of I.


Just a suggestion..


I write the way I do...


for good reason.

IT MIGHT MAKE some folks uncomfortable but I never get TL;DR's, anymore.

I suck folks in until


THE END..;)

WITH A CREATIVE STYLE OF WRITING IN JUST MAKING THAT HAPPEN..:)


Hard to scroll past, huh..


FOR good reason TOO..:)

Honestly, THE ABOVE, reads just like a legal document.
And not everyone provides legal counsel, in real life, to read stuff like that, like me, and some others here.

And yes, when I work for the government, I write just that like that IN TECHNICAL SPEAK, in writing technical documents for the GPO (Government Printing Office) in my many hats worn, during a quarter of a century in FEDERAL GOVERNMENT RED TAPE WORKING AND WRITING LAND.

Creative land is much more fun that dead word land.

AND ON TOP of that people actually read IT, other than me.

At LEAST, approximately 1.1 MILLION Hits, in the LAST 2 YEARS, on my google PLUS page for blog posts, suggests that per science talk..:)

With evidence of course, FNORD, If you need to see the 'SCIENTIFIC PROOF' OF WHAT I AM SAYING here too..;)

And TO BE CLEAR this is In Karma of your dismissive response to other dude, in the other thread, with a much shorter list of what YOU DESCRIBED AS TL;DR.

Patience friend, patience, AND FOCUS; the words of CHAMPIONS, AND THE so-called scientific method has little to NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT.

AND FULLER HUMAN Physical intelligence

DRIVING JUST THAT ALONG WITH EMOTIONAL REGULATION AND SENSORY INTEGRATION,

AND INNATE INSTINCTUAL, INTUITIVE IMAGINATION IN CREATING HUMAN CONDITION LIFE, AS IS, HAS EVERYTHING TO DO, WITH JUST THAT..:)

https://plus.google.com/+KateMia/posts

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Last edited by aghogday on 24 Mar 2015, 11:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

eric76
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24 Mar 2015, 10:49 am

Janissy wrote:
I freely admit I have a sophomoric understanding of math. This is why you only see me posting about biology, not physics. You can get by in biology without going past statistics (unless you get into the specialty of biomathematics).


My high school biology teacher killed my interest in anything biological for years. It wasn't until 15 or so years after high school that I started becoming interested in biology again. I regret not having a better background in biology.



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24 Mar 2015, 6:05 pm

My first algebra teacher nearly killed my interest in maths. I retook the same class from another teacher in my sophomore year and aced it. Trig was a little difficult, until we studied the Unit Circle, then I aced that, too! Calculus is still something I have to slog through, but it's key to proper engineering principles.

Science has gotten me further in than any of my efforts as a seminarian, a church elder, and even as a storefront 'psychic'!



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25 Mar 2015, 8:48 am

Fnord wrote:
...May I include what you said in future revisions?... /quote]

Certainly.

Fnord wrote:
My first algebra teacher nearly killed my interest in maths. ...


A good or a bad teacher can make all the difference. In science education, too many teachers lack the ability to communicate the material, and some are weak on the material itself.

When I decided, at age about 45, to learn Spanish, I enrolled in a Spanish class at my local university. I had a fabulous teacher for two semesters. The third semester teacher had more technical knowledge about the language, but entirely lacked the ability to teach. I'd have quit, and ended up with only a very rudimentary knowledge of Spanish had an opportunity not opened up in the exchange program. That was just luck. I jumped on it and became fluent over the course of several more years.

Teachers are not paid enough to attract the best people. A few, truly dedicated, accept the poor pay and low status out of dedication. But we will never achieve our potential as a nation unless we place teachers on the same status and pay level as professionals in the fields they teach. I.e., a physics teacher should be paid and respected equal to a physicist, etc. And of course held to the same standards of competence.



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25 Mar 2015, 11:51 am

daniel1948 wrote:
Teachers are not paid enough to attract the best people. A few, truly dedicated, accept the poor pay and low status out of dedication. But we will never achieve our potential as a nation unless we place teachers on the same status and pay level as professionals in the fields they teach. I.e., a physics teacher should be paid and respected equal to a physicist, etc. And of course held to the same standards of competence.


My high school biology teacher was one of the best paid in the local school system. As one of the high school coaches, he was paid significantly more than a regular teacher. The only reason he was teaching biology was that he had to teach classes in addition to his coaching duties and they needed a biology teacher.

With one exception, all of the teachers I had in high school who were also coaches were pretty worthless as teachers. The one exception was the driver's ed teacher. Drivers ed was easy enough that he could do a good job at it.

But it could have been worse. When I taught math at a local university one year, one of the students said that all they did in his high school math class was play cards. I mentioned it to my younger brother's wife and she told me more of the story.

She was a substitute teacher and regularly taught classes at some of the local schools when the regular teachers were gone. When she was called in to take over the math classes at one high school when the teacher who was also a coach was gone for a couple of weeks, she quickly found out that the coach wasn't doing anything but letting the students play cards in class every day. She raised a big stink and got that coach fired. The students were woefully prepared for math classes -- they should have been required to repeat the courses they had taken but I guess the school thought that it wasn't their fault they had such a crappy teacher.



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26 Mar 2015, 10:14 am

eric76 wrote:
daniel1948 wrote:
... But it could have been worse. When I taught math at a local university one year, one of the students said that all they did in his high school math class was play cards. I mentioned it to my younger brother's wife and she told me more of the story.

She was a substitute teacher and regularly taught classes at some of the local schools when the regular teachers were gone. When she was called in to take over the math classes at one high school when the teacher who was also a coach was gone for a couple of weeks, she quickly found out that the coach wasn't doing anything but letting the students play cards in class every day. She raised a big stink and got that coach fired. The students were woefully prepared for math classes -- they should have been required to repeat the courses they had taken but I guess the school thought that it wasn't their fault they had such a crappy teacher.


WOW!! ! It "wouldn't have been fair" to actually provide the kids with an education. It "wouldn't have been fair" to send them off to college with the skills necessary to succeed there. This shows that for many school administrators, as well as for many kids, the purpose of school is to provide a prescribed amount of punishment to kids by making them take classes. Repeating a class is seen as an additional punishment for failure to do the work. And that punishment is only fair if the kid slacked in his duties, not if the teacher chose not to teach.

This shows why our educational system is such a disaster.

BTW, when I was in high school, in the 1960's, the coaches were mostly ignorant jerks. This resulted in my disdain for P.E. class and exercise in general. It wasn't until I was 35 that a friend of my step-father's inspired me to begin exercising for my health. A good P.E. teacher could have given me a much earlier start to good health, just as a good math teacher gave me a good start to math and critical thinking, and the Spanish teacher I mentioned in an earlier post made me eager to become fluent in Spanish. The job of a P.E. teacher should not be to single out the best athletes to build a winning team. It should be to inspire the non-athletic kids to a love of physical activity, exercise, and health even if they lack the coordination and skills to win at competitive games.