Curse

Winterclaw · Apr 19, 2008, 09:16 PM // 21:16

I was just watching something about science and it got me to wondering. Exactly how important to science is it that there is the freedom to research what the facts are, to find where the facts lead you, and have open debate on what your findings are? I mean can you really have science if you are told you can't research X, Y, or Z?

Now I know for some things, common sense would dictate the need for research to be nil. For example, if someone told me that norwhales are evolved from unicorns and wanted money to research it, I'd probably slap him with a random fish.

So how would you establish a set of criteron that would allow scientific inquiry and debate in to areas that the establishment isn't comfortable with at the same time as not wasting money. Specifically, how would you make sure that a scienfitic theory doesn't become a cascade and if it does, that is it collapsed ASAP?

Shai Lee · Apr 20, 2008, 12:43 AM // 00:43

This sounds more like homework to me...

It is, isn't it? :P

**Marty Silverblade** · Apr 20, 2008, 12:50 AM // 00:50

The thing with science is that when you try to explain some new fancy discovery/thing, no one has any idea what you're talking about but somehow it must be true.

That has nothing to do with your post but I don't really understand what your asking

.

Celestial_Kitsune · Apr 20, 2008, 12:59 AM // 00:59

The way it works is somewhat simple - it all depends on money. Many scientists can't do any research unless they get funding. To get funding, you need to write a grant. The projects are reviewed by experts in the field and if a project is promising (or you have a friend in the committee :P) you'll be funded. Also special committees assess quality of the protocol your project will use. For example, Animal Investigation Committee ensures that all research and teaching protocols using live vertebrate animals are designed and carried out in a humane manner that complies with all applicable laws, policies, and guidelines.

Sleeper Service · Apr 20, 2008, 01:22 AM // 01:22

who needs science when you can just use religion.

Winterclaw · Apr 20, 2008, 01:39 AM // 01:39

Marty, what I'm talking about is dogma infiltrating science such that it is impossible to go against the current theories are, even if they are wrong. Let's say I have this hypothesis about global warming that with present technologies man can only have an effect on global temperatures by about two or three degrees in either way, without some massively funded and extremely focused project to do otherwise. Now liberals aren't going to like it because 3 degrees isn't going to set the world on fire. Conservatives aren't going to like it because man is having an effect. In short, I'm not going to get a lot of funding oppertunities. Taking what Kitsune said:

Quote:

The projects are reviewed by experts in the field and if a project is promising (or you have a friend in the committee :P) you'll be funded.

This is where the part about the cascade comes in. Conservatives won't fund me, nor will liberals. In other words, I'm going to have difficulty getting funding no matter how right the theory may be.

Plus there's the problem with peer review. In order for your work to get published and be accredited and have any chance for success, you have to undertake a process of peer review once your research is done. Now while it does help weed out the junk science, it has some flaws. Namely it is very possible to shoot down a valid article by selecting the right peers. Going back to my enviromental hypothesis if the guy at the journal selects an avid Al Gore fan as one reviewer and a big Rush fan as another, both of them would have cause to reject my work because if it is found true, they are going to be out of the jobs.

Using a real case, at one time "big science" thought the world was flat. Anyone trying to prove world roundness probably wouldn't get much funding or positive peer reviews under those circumstances.

FlamingMetroid · Apr 20, 2008, 02:03 AM // 02:03

do I win? ;3

Celestial_Kitsune · Apr 20, 2008, 05:26 AM // 05:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

Plus there's the problem with peer review. In order for your work to get published and be accredited and have any chance for success, you have to undertake a process of peer review once your research is done. Now while it does help weed out the junk science, it has some flaws. Namely it is very possible to shoot down a valid article by selecting the right peers. Going back to my enviromental hypothesis if the guy at the journal selects an avid Al Gore fan as one reviewer and a big Rush fan as another, both of them would have cause to reject my work because if it is found true, they are going to be out of the jobs.

Or you can just publish yourself on the internet :P

http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exce..._of_Everything
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Garrett_Lisi

Serafita Kayin · Apr 20, 2008, 05:28 AM // 05:28

Occam's Razor.

Onarik Amrak · Apr 20, 2008, 07:17 AM // 07:17

Redfeather1975 · Apr 20, 2008, 09:28 AM // 09:28

Winter, you are wondering about how to make scientific research more efficient at defining truths?
I think the answer could be more about keeping the educational system up to date, so that everyone is brought up to date when they enter their particular field of research.

If this is about someone stumbling across something that is either true or very damn close to the truth and seems to contradict what is thought by the majority, all you can really do is communicate it as effectively as possible in a way that preserves it's meaning. The more that becomes known, the more it's worth will be realized.

We are always learning new things and many people in an attempt to explain relationships necessary to move forward, go back to early theories.

poobert · Apr 20, 2008, 10:47 AM // 10:47

Winterclaw is right in that it is difficult to get funding to research something that goes against current thought. I think what people do is rather than saying what they are hoping to gain from the research, they just tell people what they are going to research. Say the narwhal's and unicorn thing. Rather than telling people about the unicorns, they would just say that they are going to research in to narwhal evolution.

You also need to get funding from the right places. The government will likely not give you money to disprove climate change, but an oil company would.

Richardt · Apr 20, 2008, 05:00 PM // 17:00

You're putting to much politics into the world of science. Sure it happens-but nowadays most reviewers are objective.

Most scientists are really openminded about new ideas compared to 80 years ago. When it goes to peer review, they don't look at whether or not the theory contradicts current thought. What they look at is does the article in question conform to writting style of the journal? Does the article give sufficient evidence to support what the article is saying? Are all the methods used in the article good enough to get the quality data used to draw the conlcusions? Is the data analysis good enough to be dependable? And finally (and this is the biggy), are the results reproducable?

Right now I'm doing research to disprove how people have been making models to study interactions between carbon nanotubes and water. And this is fairly drastic-goes against almost 30 years worth of thought. But not only do I have funding, but I'm expecting to get it all published within the next couple of months. And when I go to conferences and talk about my work, I'm treated just like everyone else doing something "mainstream".

Science isn't science without objectivity.

Winterclaw · Apr 20, 2008, 10:07 PM // 22:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redfeather

Winter, you are wondering about how to make scientific research more efficient at defining truths?
I think the answer could be more about keeping the educational system up to date, so that everyone is brought up to date when they enter their particular field of research.

In part defending truthes, in part removing prevailing falsehoods, in part making sure the truthes we think we know are true. Part of what I'm talking about is if the establishment embraces a falsehood, for whatever reason, there is a certain inertia that has to be overcome to remove it.

Another point I have to make is there are a lot of "veils" in science. There is a lot of information out there and if you want to speak about it to laymen you are either going to talk over their heads or simply things so much that a lot of important details have to be ignored. I'm also thinking that there can also be a number of veils that someone like Hawkins knows about but would have trouble explaining to a typical college science teacher. Thus bringing someone up to speed is an ardorous process, even before politics enter the picture.

Quote:

Originally Posted by poobert

Say the narwhal's and unicorn thing. Rather than telling people about the unicorns, they would just say that they are going to research in to narwhal evolution.

You also need to get funding from the right places. The government will likely not give you money to disprove climate change, but an oil company would.

Two points. The first is that what you are talking about is a little deceptive and depending on who you are talking to at the time, someone might press you for more details... They would ask you what about narwhale evolution you are studying and the particulars. However, that could be something that people have to do to stay funded. About the funding, if you took money from an oil company, if it did anything but slam big oil and say fossil fuels are going to wreck the earth, you can imagine that your research will quickly be discredited.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard

You're putting to much politics into the world of science. Sure it happens-but nowadays most reviewers are objective.

Most scientists are really openminded about new ideas compared to 80 years ago. When it goes to peer review, they don't look at whether or not the theory contradicts current thought. What they look at is does the article in question conform to writting style of the journal? Does the article give sufficient evidence to support what the article is saying? Are all the methods used in the article good enough to get the quality data used to draw the conlcusions? Is the data analysis good enough to be dependable? And finally (and this is the biggy), are the results reproducable?

I'm not going to disagree with you here generally. For the most part, science behaves itself. However there are times when politics gets involved and that's when trouble begins. That's what scares me a little. That there are a few areas of science where objectivity is being ignored by one or possibly both sides, or where progress on some issues stop because one philosophy is fasionable (instead of provable to rigid scientific standards) or that those in power stall the issue to retain power.

Richardt · Apr 21, 2008, 12:33 AM // 00:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

Another point I have to make is there are a lot of "veils" in science. There is a lot of information out there and if you want to speak about it to laymen you are either going to talk over their heads or simply things so much that a lot of important details have to be ignored. I'm also thinking that there can also be a number of veils that someone like Hawkins knows about but would have trouble explaining to a typical college science teacher. Thus bringing someone up to speed is an ardorous process, even before politics enter the picture.

This is something I encounter on an almost daily basis. It's the so called "If my tax money is paying for this research I demand to know what it is even if I can't understand it and will fall asleep halfway through the explanation!" mentality. There is a certain level of scientific comprehension that is missing within the general public. The basic idea is that everyone wants to know what we scientists are up to, but very few would understand it.

So alot of times what ends up happening is the person gets the "Big Picture" which isn't 100% accurate-in fact I would venture the majority of "Big Picture"s involved with science are about 80% inaccurate because you end up obscuring the finer details.

Quote:

I'm not going to disagree with you here generally. For the most part, science behaves itself. However there are times when politics gets involved and that's when trouble begins. That's what scares me a little. That there are a few areas of science where objectivity is being ignored by one or possibly both sides, or where progress on some issues stop because one philosophy is fasionable (instead of provable to rigid scientific standards) or that those in power stall the issue to retain power.

Then it's not science. The big thing that annoys me about "Global Warming" is that depending on who is funding the research, that's what policy is based off of. In addition, you have policy makers making long term policys based off of 200 year forcasts with a system we can't even predict a week in advance. If you want to make people more enviromentally friendly, do it in the name of the enviroment. Don't just say "ZOMG! In 200 years the Earth is going to be massively hot unless I start using less gas!" 'cause we don't even know what the weather is like next week, let alone 200 years from now.

RavagerOfDreams · Apr 21, 2008, 02:13 AM // 02:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Onarik Amrak

big image

wouldn't that prove god's exsistance and disprove science?

Redfeather1975 · Apr 21, 2008, 03:38 AM // 03:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by RavagerOfDreams

wouldn't that prove god's exsistance and disprove science?

We really don't even have a uniform definition of what god could even be.

I'm agnostic, meaning my only assumption is that I can't possibly know at this time what the definition is or if it even matters.

But I can feel sometimes that any definition of god in religion could possibly be a misinterpretation based off true understandings of only localized relationships.
So that every definition of god could contain some truth to it, but it's highly inadvisable to treat any whole part of them as absolute, as they are only using a limited scope of relationships to be defined.

Science may end up infallibly proving a definition for god, by finding all possible relationships between things. Don't know right now what's actually possible.
But is fun to think about.

azzer20 · Apr 21, 2008, 03:52 AM // 03:52

I like science, that's my question to you mortals

Redfeather1975 · Apr 21, 2008, 04:04 AM // 04:04

Begone zombie! Your evil presence has no power here!

RavagerOfDreams · Apr 21, 2008, 04:59 AM // 04:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redfeather1975

We really don't even have a uniform definition of what god could even be.

I'm agnostic, meaning my only assumption is that I can't possibly know at this time what the definition is or if it even matters.

But I can feel sometimes that any definition of god in religion could possibly be a misinterpretation based off true understandings of only localized relationships.
So that every definition of god could contain some truth to it, but it's highly inadvisable to treat any whole part of them as absolute, as they are only using a limited scope of relationships to be defined.

Science may end up infallibly proving a definition for god, by finding all possible relationships between things. Don't know right now what's actually possible.
But is fun to think about.

no i'm saying hes got a floating ruler with a hammer tied to it that definatley says F*** YOU science so i was saying doesn't that prove that their is something that is making the ruler stay up that can defy the laws of gravity?