Bad science?

Yes, given the complexity of science today, your average person cannot really do effective science without some sort of education. It is very difficult to contribute something that hasn't already been done, unless you educate yourself.About the only field where amateurs can still contribute is astronomy. A field which I used to study on my own, and do observations of variable stars, and search for comets and near earth objects.So again I refer to my own experience with the plumbing. I do a lot of plumbing, but that doesn't make me a plumbers IMO. I might be able to answer 95% of all questions concerning house plumbing, but if you started asking me questions about commercial plumbing, I might give the wrong answer, or not know the answer. So I hesitate to call myself a plumber. With a little schooling, and maybe get a licenses or 2, then I could start to call myself a plumber. I am almost there, but not yet.

There's a big difference between "profit motive" and "profitable patents?"

No, I am using the two terms interchangably.

quote:

---

I guess this is probably where I'm having difficulty with your's and schraf's definitions. If you're "doing science", aren't you (almost by definition), a "scientist"?

---

Yes and no. In the common use of the word, no. If someone says "I am a scientist", I think most people would assume that they are a professional, and that's the way I'm using the word, pretty much.I also define it further in the ways I've described, as in testing theory, etc.

quote:

---

It's not really important - it's just one of those issues to which I have some kind of visceral (rather than logical) reaction. Indeed, it probably has more to do with being vaguely uncomfortable about a feeling that we're setting science and scientists up for accusations of "elitism" than anything else.

---

See, I don't mind elitism being attached to professioal scientists at all. There's a reason most undergrads in science never get to the PhD level; it's damned difficult and it is a real accomplishment that most people don't understand nor respect at all. It is an elite group and should be regarded as such.That doesn't mean that doing science, using the scientific method, should be considered an elite activity. Far from it. But the idea that anybody who "does science" is a scientist is just not true in my mind, using my definition of "scientist."

quote:

---

My feeling is that many non-scientists often perceive practioners as equivalent to some kind of "priest-hood": exclusive, unapproachable, and given to making pronouncements from on high that mere mortals aren't given to understand. Since nothing could be further from the truth, the more restrictive the term we use, the less likely we are to make science and scientists more "trusted" by the general populace.

---

I don't think that, in general, professionals are mistrusted because they understand things that the general populace doesn't. Every professional has specialized knowledge that people who are not in that profession don't understand.

quote:

---

I'm sort of groping blindly for a way to bridge this gap. The pursuit of knowledge was once considered the great leveller. Unfortunately, given the incredible complexity of most scientific disciplines today, and the years of training and experience that are required to understand the details, it really IS becoming "unapproachable" to the average person. I'm not sure there's any way around it. I'm open to suggestions.

---

What science needs is another Carl Sagan.

well, I do NOT think "science" needs another Carl Sagan. I had thought so before I saw the way he behaved in public. He was sooo pro science, that his molecules mattered more than psychology. This was clearly too restrictive, to my mind. But I do not think that we need a next generation Carl Zimmer either (see the latest issue of SCIENCE where he writes on Viruses and DNA) but then again I would be "bad" scientist if I am wrong about Carl and not correct about myself. Does the ability to get a "news" article in SCIENCE make Zimmer a scientist & me in consequentia not?I dont mind if people want to try to discuss me at all here. I will not get mad but below is what I think about it. I think Quetzal is closer when he worries about elitism. There is a crossover between specialization, socialization, and professionalism that I cross fairly quickly here, and if SCIENCE itself is being authorized by elites than there is room for worry , it seems to me.I am definitely “doing” it, whatever it is that I “do” ,’outside’ the academy, but right next to those in it such that one reading me in context would be hard pressed to notice (the) any difference. Kant, while putting the parts he realized could come together in the Conflict of the Faculties noticed the good thing that “universities” were where they were institutions that “made” doctors (phds) but he also recognized that the phd kind of work, could occur by “layman” as well, those not professionally affiliated with a given such institution, provided they cared for and were concerned with the same subjects otherwise becoming conferred.When there is some issue of about “elitism” or the difficulty of the strech between a freshman course in a scientific subject well done by a stundent and the actual work of research scientists and post-docs etc, there is a social aspect other than the simple quantity of time necessary to “know” all of the relevant things. Most higher learning however is simply a matter of time and devotion to the topic rather than some skill that separates off the very cream of the best in a given. Specialization makes this somewhat a necssisty. Clearly those who have not achieved up to the highest levels can be frustrated with pronouncements coming from the seeming “on high” but if this is merely something that is matter of time or schooling (Harvard schooled profs love to lord it over Cornell students and faculty to a rather annoying degree, but justified more often than not. I am thinking of Strogatz in math and I think Simon Levin made a smart move leaving Cornell for Princeton etc) then ,the enunciations that appear no matter if the social factor is also involved to be less discrete than “correctness” calls for, *might* be ok.Now there is the social factor, and that more than simply the level of difficulty in the amount of time, that is really the problem and this CAN cut across most of the academy, especially that which is relevant to object of EVC conversations. There is a somewhat clearly visible and intellectually labelable secularity to higher education and *this* when it comes to calling someone like me as NOT being a scientist is really kinda wrong.I am not as well rounded as your average graduate of any ivy league school but I am extremely well, more self than not, trained in reading biology. This was a conscious choice I made and contine to differentiate my life with but I am doing it OUTSIDE the standard, traditional and actual means currently made as economical as possible by univeristites and colleges more than other institutions. I consider my self to be a scientist. I am constantly thinking through the history of biology and tyring to develop ways to test ideas both of my own conception and falsify those of others that might appear at first blush to be of a different color than the rule of law I think I see as causally necessary etc.So unless the issue of what makes a scientist is to say that theory is not science, that empirical bench work but not paper and ink is science, then OK I might not be a scientist ,(I had always since a teenager labeled my self as a “natural historian”)but I shall give an example to show how much MORE I must do just to maintain the same relation to history that one in the academy must and can do with less psychological burden thus in my view deflating any gain it would ever make to allow scientists to be “elite” as Sharf wanted to say later.http://www.asa3.org/asa/PSCF/1993/PSCF3-93Hedman.htmlAt this web site the author wrote,

quote:

---

Cantor's Universe Not Necessitarian
An incontingent world view regards the universe as having a necessary structure, as being uniquely determined by just the requirement of self-consistency. All phenomena in principle could be deduced from its system of basic laws. A contingent universe does not contain within itself a sufficient explanation of itself, and so cannot be understood simply by a priori reasoning. In his writings about the nature of the universe Cantor was deeply conscious of its contingent character. Following Leibnitz, Cantor thought of the universe as being built up from two kinds of elementary units: corporeal (matter) and ethereal (ether) monads. Cantor held that transfinites exist in concreto in a nevertheless temporal, bounded universe, because there are a transfinite number of such monads. Cantor further believed that the cardinality of the corporeal monads was Aleph-Null, and of ethereal monads was Aleph-One, his "First World Hypothesus." But in spite of his philosophical investment, Cantor was careful to stress that God did not necessarily have to create the universe in this or any other way.39 The existence of the transfinities in the mind did not even necessarily depend upon their realization in the physical universe..

---

This drawing out of the issue of contingency is definitely an advance over the work of Dauben that is cited in the references. But the writing goes way beyond the science that the work attempts to discuss. Cantor is against the positivism that Kant’s work lead to NOT to what is ostensibly exposed by Cantor’s thoughts on reality. So in order to get a definite stance on contingency this author had cashed in Cantor’s thoughts BEYOND the original organic nature that Kant exposed and Cantor sought to provide math for, for his own historicization of science itself. What this author did not try to do was to see what, if anything, the first world hypothesis, might mean, in today’s science. If, in other words, it actually provides a theoretical position other than contingent leanings, that can change the work of scientists for a better yesterday, specifically in correspondence with Mittag-Leffler who said that Cantor was 100 years ahead of his time, when it came to order types. Bertrand Russell refused to follow this direction of Cantor deciding to think about what counts as proof in math harder than others after Cantor instead. Godel however opened this back up but in ways that are still not being taught in the most difficult courses even if, (I am not in these classes to actually know), they might be dismissed as not socially / secularly needed, even if they are. The author did not realize that biology itself might be a science composed of Aleph-tw0 point sets whereas traditional chemistry and physics is only Aleph -One (according to Cantor (not me)) thus he did not find out that for instance Faraday’s question as to if an electric fish could be both a conductor and an insulator might be answered from a science of Cantor conception, in that TIME. He did not look hard at the relation of chemistry to electricity nor the notions of macrothermodyanmics as different than phenomenological thermodynamics so he could re-read Gould’s contingency in biological change on his own interpretative basis.These are all things that can and do do but you will not find them anywhere in the academy that I know of. As soon as they are I will have a job but because this projection of my own doing is wider than secualarism and is not out of filiation with creationism I can not find this work IN the university setting, nor among the people I meet in Ithaca. That is why I am doing this all on-line. But I will not all of a sudden become a “scientist” as soon as this kind of thinking finds a chair somewhere to which grad students are writing theses for. If I am going to become a scientists this way, I would have already been one. That is the only way this makes sense. The other fate is that I am just ”crazy’ to think that what I do will EVER find a legit output. I personally don’t need to worry about this as I already know it does. It works for me, all politics aside.This ability to read science this way IS however contrary to what counts as elite commentary ON SCIENCE so it can easily be mistaken taken that what I am talking about is not “science” but then what I am doing would already be past, and that it barely is.Edited by Brad McFall, : error of contentEdited by Brad McFall, : commas, etcEdited by Brad McFall, : wrong infinte number denotation

Carl's "science" exemplared. I objected to the hand bag, but it made it in.

Hello. 2nd day checking this place out and now my first post.
Hopefully the topic is Bad science.There seems to be hundreds of definitions of science. Is seems to me that evolutionists think that fossils talk a very long time to form.(millions of years perhaps)If part of science is observation and we observe in Japan and following the Mount St. Helens eruption the formation of fossils in a short period of time. Should that not be taken into consideration by evolutionists that fossils can be formed quickly. And is that not bad science if they refuse to change thier idea after observing something.

RiveratYour comment about contributing to science and needing to be educated is interesting if you come from a creation belief. How does one educate themself on the sphere of the earth when the school teaches that it is flat?Not that I believe anyone believes the earth is flat but just trying to make a point that so call enlightened ones of our society have closed their minds off to anything new. Or old in this case.There is a book called "None of these diseases." It is about a doctor who for 50 years is laughed at because he wants other doctors to apply biblical practises of hygiene to their work. Many of his ideas are still used today and he got them from the bible, not from the educated ones who laughed at him.

Hello Armbar and welcome to EvC - I hope you enjoy your stay I'm afraid it seems to you wrong. There is a difference between (some) fossils being millions of years old and them taking that long to form.If you dig around EvC I'm sure you'll find a discussion of how long fossilisation takes (I think it cropped up in passing in a thread within the last few months).

---

Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day after

Well,It is odd indeed that despite there being a readable difference of temporal relocations in the ambiguity of the niche occupant vs recess environmentally that any ambiguity in the FORM of a fossil vs the time it takes to form possibly influencing living form-making (given the caveat that was linked to your post above)that "scientists" continue to miss the overlaping as it circles around theoretically.It is rather precarious to carry out the reasoning as to a final cause of quick fossil formation back to the design AFTER the mechanical activity being reflected in the occupants of niches ordered by fossil data (inside and outside the actual shapes and places of said fossil"s") but I had expected that John Davison would have cognized the possiblity and I fully anticipated that I would discuss this in his thread that has now surpassed the limit without much progess in the debate being made (here on EvC). He for instance insists that the environment itself must be extripated when discussing ontogeny geographically and this makes the application of a practical logic to the organs in any organon of fossil records harder to apply in his case for instance.This makes the existence of scientists of this figure even farther removed than I would consider pragmatically. It is not however MORE likely taphonomy can have a larger share of the efficient cause in biological change (which you seem to have thought) than would be manifest in the relation of chromosome rearrangment and the kinds of mutational categories that pink sasquatch presented. As long as one continues to restrict these judgements to individuals without respect to their environment (and that such as what is the environment of fossil formations) we can not say that scientists have reached their full potential.Edited by Brad McFall, : spelling

The term SCIENCE is being thrown around as being pretty sound in meaning. I disagree. From an old educator who has taught the scientific method to lots of kids; Science is nothing other than experimenting with the evidence that shows repeated similar proofs. That's it.As you can tell, this definition of SCIENCE wipes out both "creation science and "evolutionary science". Neither is proveable by repeated experiments. So the various opinions expressed in these forums are just that. Interpretations of the evidence. Does the evidence change because of our interpretations? No, the evidence is just the evidence. It just lays there waiting for interpretation. Please don't bother to call SCIENCE as anything other than SCIENCE. Period.

---

Lan

quote:

---

From an old educator who has taught the scientific method to lots of kids....

---

Uh oh. If this statement:

quote:

---

Neither is proveable by repeated experiments.

---

comes from an "old educator", then I am beginning to see why our education system is failing.The scientific method works as follows:A theory or model is proposed. From the theory or model, one predicts phenomena that should be seen. Preferrably, the phenomena should not have been observed yet; however, previously observed phenonema could count if it was not used in the formulation of the theory (like, for example, how General Relativity "predicted" the already known precession of the perihelion of Mercury). If the phenomena are observed, this is considered a confirmation of the theory. If the phenomena are not observed, this is considered a potential falsification of the theory; then one must either find an explanation why the phenomena were not observed as predicted, one must modify the theory to take into account the failed prediction, or one must replace the theory with a better one.All scientific fields operate this way. Biology is no exception. The theory of evolution is good science precisely because it has passed most of the tests to which it has been subjected and failed very, very few.

---

"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

I notice that you registered twice. If you like we can merge the two registrations or delete the earlier if you have not posted using it.Let me know which you prefer.At the bottom of this message you will find links to several threads which will help make your stay here more enjoyable. In particular, the use of the LGRB (Little Green Reply Button) at the bottom right of each message lets you reply to a specific message and also notifies the person that posted the message (if they have notify turned on) that there has been a response.Again, welcome.

---

The conditions that would allow the fossils to from happened quickly. The volcanic eruption covered the bodies of many animals and plants. However, the process where the soft tissue and calcium of the bones are replaced by stone have not yet occured. It is that process that will take many many years.

Alternatively, especially in many of the biological subdisciplines, an observation is made (a new organism, a complex interaction, etc), and a hypothesis is developed to explain the observation. Then, either experiments, predictions, retrodictions, or possible additional observations are outlined ("if this is true, we should see..."). Then further observations are made to test the hypothesis. If it isn't disconfirmed, then we can start assigning confidence levels to the hypothesis. The more data, the better the probability that our idea is correct. Mostly, biological scientists don't "pull something out of the air", then try and find data to support their ideas. IOW, observation first then theory, not usually the other way around as you outlined - again, at least in biology.