Mod Idea: Simulating surfaces -> Borg Technology -> Twinkie Physics -> Worldviews

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
Neanderthal man was shown to be an old man with severe bone/joint disease (arthritis?). The misshapen face is a result of acromegaly--the forehead and other bones thicken with age.

What year do you think this is? We're not a the end of the 19th century when Piltdown man was still thought to be an ancient human. It's been around a century since the first Neandertals were found, and the several dozen specimens certainly aren't all simply misshapen individuals.

Further, you have the entire Homo genus going back 2.5 million years, then the Australopithecines before that.

No "transitional form" in the fossil record has stood the test of time. Each one has been shown to be something other than what it was first thought to be. Have you seen photos of the skeletons? Or just drawings of the fleshed-out artist's conception? Need I remind you of Java man and his history?

This is a completely false statement. You can see the transitionary forms of horses for example as they go from dog sized with many toes to modern-sized with a hoof. Or take bison, who have more than halved in size in the past 100,000 years.

Volcanic "spewing" doesn't account for enough new mass to make up for it, though. AFA the continental drift maps, why is Africa actually shrunk?

If it's shrinking it's because one edge is being pulled down into the magma.

What about all that dirt in between the continents on the ocean floor? The continents don't actually float, you know.

Yes, the continents do float. They float on a bed of molten rock. There is absolutely no reason why a continent can't shrink, all it takes is a subduction zone. Iceland grows larger every single year as the mid-Atlantic ridge pulls apart.

[Baron Munchausen]

Krsqk,

If you are using 'information' from someone else then let this be a warning to you about taking sources uncritically. At the very least you ought to have more than one source for a claim before using it. I am not a 'professional scientist' by any stretch. I merely read publicly available books and articles at the 'popular' level. Yet I could instantly see the obvious distortions and omissions in those claims.

All of the points I made can be checked Online using a good search engine like Google. There are lots of science magazines and even some pretty decent technical references (like the Usenet Physics FAQ at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ ) available. There are even some good references for common misunderstandings of scientific knowledge, like the Science Misconceptions Page at http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/miscon.html And of course you can look things up at any reasonably well-stocked library.

Given how easy the access to vast quantities of detailed scientific information is these days, I cannot see how anyone could look up the depth of the icecap on Greenland and not also learn about the fact that it is constantly being renewed. So the depth of the lost plane in the ice proves nothing except the high rate of turnover. Either this is a very over-eager partisan just grabbing 'facts' out of an encyclopedia and rushing to hurl them at the enemy, or this is a deliberate attempt at deception. The combination of all those distortions together makes it seem more likely to be the latter. I advise you to be very careful of the 'source' of these claims.

[ December 19, 2002, 16:30: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[capnq]

Even multiple sources agreeing doesn't necessarily mean a piece of information is correct.

Sometimes a source cites other sources as support, but if you trace the chains of references, you find a closed loop with everybody agreeing with each other and not mentioning any conflicting references. Groups that are pushing a political agenda are often the worst offenders here.

I had a friend in college who one discovered that a research paper she had cited had gotten the info from one of her own papers.

Then you have the "urban legends" that keep circulating even after they've been publically debunked.

[Fyron]

I am inclined to agree with BM here. Most, if not all, of those "facts" are indeed wrong. I simply did not feel like regurgitating what had already been said about them. I apologize if my post was offensive; it was not meant to be.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by capnq:
Even multiple sources agreeing doesn't necessarily mean a piece of information is correct.

Sometimes a source cites other sources as support, but if you trace the chains of references, you find a closed loop with everybody agreeing with each other and not mentioning any conflicting references. Groups that are pushing a political agenda are often the worst offenders here.

I had a friend in college who one discovered that a research paper she had cited had gotten the info from one of her own papers.

Then you have the "urban legends" that keep circulating even after they've been publically debunked.

Yeah, being in the 'biggest crowd' doesn't automatically make one right in politics or science or anything else. There is really no substitute for thinking for yourself. But we all have a finite amount of time and various priorities. We can't test every single thing for ourselves, so it's good to know how to evaluate authorities and sources.

People do tend to seek out confirmation of what they want to believe, and this is true even of scientists. There is very real resistance to changes of scientific world views because scientists can have vested interests, too. That's also the reason for the persistence of Urban Legends. Just like storms kick up where the right conditions exist (warm air, moisture, etc.) Urban legends appear where some topic of strong public interest (including simple prurient interest) intersects with vague public knowledge of science or statistics, or some news story that fits the public expectation better when garbled.

That's funny about finding your own paper supporting something you chose to cite.

[Wanderer]

In New Scientist (UK edition from a week or two back - can't find an Online link to the story) there's an article about a study that showed that a large number of papers cited in scientific (although the same could apply to other disciplines) papers might not have been read by the person citing them...

They found that a certain paper had been cited 4300 times, with 196 of the citations spelling the paper wrong, putting the wrong year or the wrong page number. Despite there being a wide range of possible errors, there were only 45 different errors and the most popular mistake was made by 78 different people. This indicates people probably just copied the citation from someone else's paper without bothering to check its accuracy, which in turn indicates they probably didn't read the paper.

Which is worrying.

Possibly there's not as much going on as their findings suggest, but I seem to remember fleshing out the citations (with some popular books on the subject I hadn't read) in a university project biography to appear better read...

[jimbob]

One of my favorite citation "errors" was a direct competitor of mine who claimed that such-and-such had been proven in one of his prior publications.
When I went and checked the citation, it in turn referenced a prior paper. When I got to the original, it said something along the lines of "we suggest that such-and-such could be occuring". Really neat the way a 'probably/maybe' morphed it's way into a 'proven'. If the mob did it we'd call it results laundering

Unfortunately I don't know of any recourse, so I've chosen to simply ignor his research altogether, and publish as if he doesn't exist.

[geoschmo]

Baron and Fyron, there is a huge difference between being wrong about something and lying about something. Let's not turn this discussion into persopnal attacks, please.

(EDIT: After reading the Posts again I should not have included Fyron in this. Sorry Fyron.)

Krsqk, If your argument is that the scientific theories are not supported by the evidence available, then you need to be more careful than normal about the validity of your own evidence. Your position would be better served by simply not responding to some points or admitting you don't know, than to offer incorrect data and weaken the impression of statements you made previously that may have weight on their own.

Everybody take a breath. Let's keep this civil.

Geoschmo

[ December 21, 2002, 01:39: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Combat Wombat]

Don't mind me just bringing a old thread back to life for another lively discussion about Twinkies and such...

[geoschmo]

Well, thread necromancy is one thing, but did you have to dig up a thread that had gone out on such a sour note?