Target of skepticism [Archive]

Skepticus Rex

30th July 2006, 11:25 PM

Greetings, Skeptics...

I have long thought of myself as a sceptic (and, now, a Skeptic), and i applaud this communities efforts to destroy lies and reveal truth, in your battle against "paranormalists, woo-woos (nice term), conspiracy theorists and pseudoscientists."

It is always good to discover truth and debunk anything claiming to be true without sufficient evidence, and i think that should be done at every opportunity.

Now to the purpose of this topic...

I think that any organised Skeptical efforts would be most effective if there was no set target to the campaign.
As i quoted above, your stated targets are those popular, mostly controversial, areas such as government conspiracies, UFO sightings, etc. and it is good that people are shown the truth about these... However, it can always be claimed by supporters of those theories that you are actively attempting to debunk their theories, because you personally disagree (because, to be fair, you are).
But if the areas under scrutiny were to include mainstream ideas as well, such as the big bang, or uniformatarian geology (which would, presumably, prove true), then you would be seen as real, fair, skeptics, because you don't have any pre-suppositions, and wield the sword of truth like lady justice: blindfold, and indiscriminately.

I apologise if mainstream scientific ideas have been reviewed by you before, but i havn't seen them discussed on your website. It seems to me that mainstream ideas are always assumed to be correct, because so many people have concluded that they are correct before. But remember, the catholic church controlled mainstream knowledge for a large swath of our cultures history, but they were overturned.

wollery

31st July 2006, 04:06 AM

The difference is that mainstream science works by the methods of reproducibility, peer review and properly conducted tests, and is supported by huge rafts of evidence. When someone in mainstream science gets results that are at odds with standard theory others try to replicate these results. If they succeed then standard theory has to be altered or, in extreme cases, scrapped. If they fail then the person who got the odd results has to show that they can reproduce their results. If they can then others will examine the equipment used, and most likely find a fault in it, or the methodology used. In other words, there's no point challenging mainstream science with skepticism, because it already does so to itself!

But this is precisely the sort of stuff that psychics, homeopaths, etc. refuse to take part in. That's why they need to be challenged at every turn. That's why it needs to be pointed out to the public that these people refuse to be tested by people who doubt their abilities. That's why we need to point out the flaws in any tests that they do conduct.

Skepticus Rex

31st July 2006, 02:03 PM

When someone in mainstream science gets results that are at odds with standard theory others try to replicate these results.

however there are many cases where, if the results claimed do not fit with current theories, they are dismissed as 'impossible', and no further tests are done.
and also, some of the core theories, like evolution, are already assumed to be true, and are not tested using the scientific method. rather, studies relating to these theories are tested to see whether they fit with the 'already established' scientific truth of those theories.

If they succeed then standard theory has to be altered or, in extreme cases, scrapped.

to illustrate my comments above; how many times has this actually happened with the major theories of the current standard models? even when there is substantial evidence that the theories in their current forms are not correct, nothing is done to revise them.

wollery

31st July 2006, 02:28 PM

however there are many cases where, if the results claimed do not fit with current theories, they are dismissed as 'impossible', and no further tests are done.
Examples?

and also, some of the core theories, like evolution, are already assumed to be true, and are not tested using the scientific method. rather, studies relating to these theories are tested to see whether they fit with the 'already established' scientific truth of those theories.If a theory has stood up to multiple examinations, and has huge amounts of supporting evidence then it is indeed assumed to be accurate. Evolution fits into this group, along with relativity, quantum mechanics and stellar nucleosynthesis.

to illustrate my comments above; how many times has this actually happened with the major theories of the current standard models? even when there is substantial evidence that the theories in their current forms are not correct, nothing is done to revise them.The current standard models have stood up to all the challenges offered, and have quite a bit of supporting evidence. If that weren't the case we'd have different standard models. Since evolution has been directly observed in the lab with viruses and bacteria it seems churlish to challenge the basic tenet that organisms adapt to their environment. The exact mechanisms are less certain, but evolution quite definitely happens.

Again, I ask for examples, specific ones please.

Skepticus Rex

31st July 2006, 04:19 PM

Admin

31st July 2006, 06:13 PM

I think that any organised Skeptical efforts would be most effective if there was no set target to the campaign.
As i quoted above, your stated targets are those popular, mostly controversial, areas such as government conspiracies, UFO sightings, etc. and it is good that people are shown the truth about these... However, it can always be claimed by supporters of those theories that you are actively attempting to debunk their theories, because you personally disagree (because, to be fair, you are).
But if the areas under scrutiny were to include mainstream ideas as well, such as the big bang, or uniformatarian geology (which would, presumably, prove true), then you would be seen as real, fair, skeptics, because you don't have any pre-suppositions, and wield the sword of truth like lady justice: blindfold, and indiscriminately.

Hi, Skepticus and welcome.

Actually, at UKS we don't set out simply to debunk things like the paranormal, UFO sightings etc., we look at a wide range of topics and aim to understand them. Alternative medicine is a good example. It's not simply a case of debunking them and proving they don't work (many of them of course do not), it's also about understanding why people use them and the benefits they do get from them.

It's not a case of being 100% against alternative medicine but it is about finding out their appropriate usage. Someone using homeopathic arnica gel for bruising is doing themselves no harm - someone taking homeopathic nosodes as an anti-malarial is exposing themselves to great risk.

We're currently undergoing a few changes at UKS and we'll be adopting a more educational approach. I know what you're saying and largely agree. I don't think we need to be scrutinising mainstream science (hopefully they do that themselves) unless there is a reason to do so though.

Skepticus Rex

31st July 2006, 08:48 PM

Mongrel

31st July 2006, 11:19 PM

thanks, glad to be here :)

i just think it might be a good idea to go over a few of the major columns of current scientific consenus, to get a good background of what you think to be true, as well as what you a more sceptical about.
and also, as i said in my first post, it would boost the image of this movement, to show that nothing is above suspicion, and it would prevent people dismissing you as being close-minded to their radical views. even if you arn't close-minded, people will be able to point at the 'alternative' nature of the things you look at and say that you are targetting them due to a preconcieved objection

Unfortunately (from my point of view) when it comes to science the more accurate and definitive it becomes the harder it is to explain in terms that your average person will understand easily. Many common misperceptions of science are due to the simplified version that made sense to your average Daily Mail reader but are woefully inadequate if you're talking to a room full of your peers.

If you've ever perused the Terry Pratchett "Science of the Discworld" series he explained the concept of 'Lies to children' - a difficult scientific propostion is over simplified and analogised so that children can understand it, as they learn more they're simultaneously taught that the previous examples are wrong (and told why) but it bears a close enough proximity to what actually happens that it's used as a learning building block for the next stage.

When it comes to Science I'm always trying to improve my limited knowledge, sometimes it's easier and sometimes not and sometimes I just look at a paper, throw my hands in their air and exclaim "Haven't a clue what they're trying to say". A book that I've, shamefully, only just started reading is Carl Sagans' 'Demon Haunted World', even within the first few chapters it covers and answers the same questions you're asking now. Michael Shermers book 'Why People Believe Weird Things' rebuts the similar statement that's often pitched by the more out spoken religious groups that "we (skeptics) have faith in Science" - we don't, or shouldn't, we trust science and by extension scientists and the scientific method.

Edit - I've seen some of your other posts that ask similar questions but rather than follow you around the board I'll offer the advice here :)
Check the brief articles by John about 'The Open Mind (http://www.ukskeptics.com/article.php?dir=articles&article=the_open_mind.php)' and 'Beliefs (http://www.ukskeptics.com/explanation.php?dir=articles/explanations&article=beliefs.php)'. For checking on Anti-Evolutionary and Creationist claims Talk Origins (http://www.talkorigins.org/) is an invaluable site. Remembering the adage "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" always helps, if someone has a discovery that will "overturn science as we know it" it's really up to them to show the workings and proof. A good example are the Nobel prize winners Robin Warren and Barry Marshall (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4304290.stm), they were laughed at and scorned by the medical community but they persisted and due to a rather dodgy but conclusive methodology they were vindicated (although the 5 Pharmacists I work with reckon they should have got the IgNobel prize (http://www.improbable.com/ig/) as well).

Skepticus Rex

31st July 2006, 11:37 PM

Unfortunately (from my point of view) when it comes to science the more accurate and definitive it becomes the harder it is to explain in terms that your average person will understand easily.

i think that's a very unfortunate thing. it can lead to what people sometimes term the 'religion of science': because you are unable to understand the concepts involved you have to take the word of the scientist/priest, you can only understand the concepts by becoming a scientist/priest yourself. this is exactly the technique bodies like the catholic church used to use to establish their authority and control people.
if a body of scientists (say, the royal institute) decided they wanted to not let black people in, they could 'prove' that black people were less intelligent, and therefore unsuitable, and laypeople would have to choose to believe them or not, just a matter of faith. if other scientists objected to their 'proof', they could be called charlatans and heretics, and again laypeople would have to choose between them.
theoretically that could happen, but luckily there are many scientific institutions that could outnumber one trying that sort of thing, and all people within one institution are not likely to all agree to the charade.

If you've ever perused the Terry Pratchett "Science of the Discworld" series he explained the concept of 'Lies to children' - a difficult scientific propostion is over simplified and analogised so that children can understand it, as they learn more they're simultaneously taught that the previous examples are wrong (and told why) but it bears a close enough proximity to what actually happens that it's used as a learning building block for the next stage.

i really hate that concept, having recognised it while going through it. it's especially bad when teachers deny the existance of any higher level, and insist that what they're teaching you is the one, the only absolute truth.
unfortunately, there is no alternative but just not teaching children anything on a subject until they are experienced/intelligent enough to understand it, which is hardly an option considering the curiousity of children.

Mongrel

1st August 2006, 12:35 AM

i think that's a very unfortunate thing. it can lead to what people sometimes term the 'religion of science': because you are unable to understand the concepts involved you have to take the word of the scientist/priest, you can only understand the concepts by becoming a scientist/priest yourself. this is exactly the technique bodies like the catholic church used to use to establish their authority and control people.

Can you or would you try declare that you know everthing about everything? You have to accept that many people spend their lives researching one particular subject. Who am I to declare after a few internet searches and a pop science book that I fully understand Particle physics or String theory, maybe tell my Pharmacist Girlfriend that the 4 years of Uni and constant training modules are worthless now that I've found this really useful Wiki article?

The underlying principle behind the scientific method is, apart from the very rare case, self correcting. The chaps at the Royal Institute could, hypothetically, declare that due to some recent research that "black people were less intelligent, and therefore unsuitable", they'd attempt to publish it and - it wouldn't make it past peer review. If they'd bribed all the reviewers and it got published then it'd get shredded by the scientific community around the world.

i really hate that concept, having recognised it while going through it. it's especially bad when teachers deny the existance of any higher level, and insist that what they're teaching you is the one, the only absolute truth.
.

Maybe you were in the wrong class then. Knowledge is not something that's best assimilated in large blocks, it's much easier for everyone to handle in small chunks that you can work up from. Once you get past the schools and into Colleges and Universities seemingly basic subjects can diversify even more. If I have an interest in Chemistry which large chunks should I be taught? Organic, Inorcanic, Applied, Analytical, Physical, Macromolecular? Having a broad but slightly simplified base will allow a student to branch into any of these at Uni.

unfortunately, there is no alternative but just not teaching children anything on a subject until they are experienced/intelligent enough to understand it, which is hardly an option considering the curiousity of children.

So the sequence over time (off the top of my head please excuse mistakes)
"Light is the fastest thing in the universe"
"Light travels at 299,792,458 metres per second"
"Light is a constant"
"Here is how we measure the speed of light"
"Because light is a constant we can use it to increase our knowledge of distant stars"
"Thanks to Red and Blue shift we can tell all sorts of things about the age of the Universe"
"It's very important to Einsteins' Theory of relativity <explaination>"
"We can jigger with light to speed it up or slow it down"
Unless the average 12 year old has a particular aptitude for Physics learning all that in one fell swoop would probably wipe out the curriculum for a couple of years...

wollery

1st August 2006, 04:29 AM

example:
Eric Laithwaite, inventor of maglev train technology, presented a demonstration to the royal institute. he demonstrated that gyroscopes had some effects that seemed to be at odds with newtonian gravity. for the first time in 200 years, the proceedings of the demonstration were not published,

and what Laithwaite did with a 50 pound tyre on the end of a pole was dismissed as trickery.
Laithwaite carryed on his research on his own, and eventually worked out that the effect did fit into newton's laws. he has now patented a 'reactionless drive', but if he hadn't carryed on his research, and hadn't gotten sympathy from several universities, that entire effect, and the technological results, would have been lost.

I've been reading up on Laithwaite, he was quite a man. As for the rejection of the establishment, it's regrettable, but Laithwaite didn't present them with a new theory. He showed up at a talk, which is meant to be more of a social affair, showed them a strange object doing something that was incredibly strange and said, "Look, Newton was wrong!" It's not exactly the best way to endear yourself to a bunch of senior scientists. What he should have done was approach individuals and say something like, "Look, I've come across this phenomena that I can't explain. This is more your field of expertise, can you please help me out?"

Of course, in the end what was shown was that the thing does obey Newtonian mechanics, so although it's a new effect it isn't really new science. You'll also note that he got "sympathy" from several Universities, something you can't get without a member of academic staff to collaborate with, so he was actually working with "the establishment" which had supposedly rejected him out of hand.

there are other examples i could put of the scientific community dismissing things as 'impossible' with no supporting evidence, even contrary to evidence in support for the new idea, but they deal with subjects in 'pseudoscience', and as such you will dismiss them on principle as well.

I don't think I've ever dismissed something "on principle", and I'm insulted by your ad hom. Please give the examples, and we can take it from there.

now it's your turn, if there are huge amounts of evidence for evolution, give examples of evidence. the sort of things you require when reviewing theories as part of your Skeptical activities.

How many fossils do you want me to list? Stratified fossils which show serial changes. Genetics, which can be traced through different species. I've already mentioned viruses and bacteria which have been observed evolving in the lab. MRSA, VRSA, both of which evolved outside the lab. For more detail you might try looking at the web pages here - http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search/topicbrowse2.php?topic_id=46

however, if the 'standing up to challenges' takes the form of my first point, just dismissing them, then that isn't proof at all.

Firstly, you may note that in the example you give in your first point, the standard theory stood up to the challenge because the effect turned out to be due to the standard theory. Secondly, in science it is impossible to absolutely prove a theory correct, and anyone who says otherwise is either lying or labouring under a serious misconception.

depending on the type of theory, evidence is used in different ways. for example, with uniformatarian geology, there is lots of positive evidence for it, however, even a single piece of (irrefutable) negative evidence would completely disprove that theory. because a the negative evidence wouldn't be able to exist if the theory was correct. so evidence can only be used to prove or disprove a theory if all available evidence is looked at, evidence which may be ignored in my first point.

As I pointed out above, no amount of evidence can ever completely prove a scientific theory. One can never rule out the possibility of finding a piece of evidence which contradicts the theory in question, thus requiring that the theory be modified, or scrapped in favour of a new theory. This has happened inummerable times in science.

if everyone took that view (which a majority of people do), then it would be impossible for any new model to replace the current one. you are assuming that it is right, because other people have found it right... that is the complete opposite of scepticism.

You are again getting it back to front. In science, theories are assumed to be not wrong if they have not been found to be wrong, and will continue to be assumed to be not wrong until and unless they are proved wrong. This may seem at first like semantic wordplay, but it's actually an incredibly important philosophical difference.

Skepticus Rex

1st August 2006, 10:25 AM

I don't think I've ever dismissed something "on principle", and I'm insulted by your ad hom. Please give the examples, and we can take it from there.

i'm sorry that you're offended. what i meant was that you are already skeptical about most unorthadox claims (which are what are often dismissed by scientists), and since there is no evidence to 'prove' that my other examples were actually right (due to the lack of testing, which is due to the original dismissal) you would then agree with the scientists assessment to dismiss them.
i will collect my examples and post them in a while then. and since you don't dismiss anything on principle, then the nature of the examples and their source won't matter (as long as i can verify that they didn't make up the example, obviously)

How many fossils do you want me to list? Stratified fossils which show serial changes. Genetics, which can be traced through different species.

the relationships of fossils are determined through physical similarities, and the shared genes in different species are the ones that control their shared characteristics (mostly). all that proves is that DNA is a standardised language, with certain genes controlling certain characteristics across the board of life as we know it. that would be just as true if life was created by a god as if it evolved. in fact, in the evolution side of things, DNA would have to have been the first thing evolved in order for everything to have the same kind of gene transfer device.

I've already mentioned viruses and bacteria which have been observed evolving in the lab. MRSA, VRSA, both of which evolved outside the lab.

now the definition of evolution has changed from development from species to species to adaption and mutation. adaption and mutation are integral parts of evolutionary theory, but they are not its entirety. existance of them does not prove the rest of it.

Firstly, you may note that in the example you give in your first point, the standard theory stood up to the challenge because the effect turned out to be due to the standard theory.

however, the effect that the royal institute denied was real. if it hadn't fit into newtonian gravity (and therefore a revision would be needed) it wouldn't have been accepted. as shown by the fact that the discovery was almost completely ignored and denied until it could be shown to fit. if that happened to every anomalous discovery, then we would never know if our model was false, because we don't accept anything that doesn't fit.

One can never rule out the possibility of finding a piece of evidence which contradicts the theory in question, thus requiring that the theory be modified, or scrapped in favour of a new theory. This has happened inummerable times in science.

until recently. the scientific community is becoming more and more like the church that it replaced. Anyone that doesn't agree with the standard models is wrong, if they are a scientist, they are ostracised. (examples forthcoming)

You are again getting it back to front. In science, theories are assumed to be not wrong if they have not been found to be wrong, and will continue to be assumed to be not wrong until and unless they are proved wrong. This may seem at first like semantic wordplay, but it's actually an incredibly important philosophical difference.

i think you misunderstood what i was trying to say.
if literally everyone had the same view as you, that "The current standard models have stood up to all the challenges offered... If that weren't the case we'd have different standard models" then they would never be proved wrong, simply for the reason that no one would ever try to prove them wrong.
i hoped to have established, by the time i said that, that the scientific community has developed a nasty habit of simply ignoring anything that doesn't fit. and if that is the case, then no one would ever find anything by accident to cast doubt on their theories, because they would just ignore it.

wollery

1st August 2006, 01:53 PM

i'm sorry that you're offended. what i meant was that you are already skeptical about most unorthadox claims (which are what are often dismissed by scientists), and since there is no evidence to 'prove' that my other examples were actually right (due to the lack of testing, which is due to the original dismissal) you would then agree with the scientists assessment to dismiss them.

The point of skepticism is to examine extraordinary claims and ask if there is any evidence for them and whether they make predictions. If the answer to both is no then there is no reason to take them seriously. If you have a problem with that idea then you aren't the skeptic you claim to be!

i will collect my examples and post them in a while then. and since you don't dismiss anything on principle, then the nature of the examples and their source won't matter (as long as i can verify that they didn't make up the example, obviously)

We'll see when you post your examples.

the relationships of fossils are determined through physical similarities,

Not entirely, dating of fossils by various means is also important, since it would be foolish to say that one animal had evolved from another if both lived during the same period in history. That's why I also mentioned the stratification, which gives a timeline for evolution.

and the shared genes in different species are the ones that control their shared characteristics (mostly). all that proves is that DNA is a standardised language, with certain genes controlling certain characteristics across the board of life as we know it. that would be just as true if life was created by a god as if it evolved. in fact, in the evolution side of things, DNA would have to have been the first thing evolved in order for everything to have the same kind of gene transfer device.

I agree to an extent, but the God hypothesis fails to explain the huge amounts of junk DNA. We share genes with houseflies which do absolutely nothing in either species! Evolution explains junk DNA, but why would God bother to include identical DNA in diferent species which does nothing?

now the definition of evolution has changed from development from species to species to adaption and mutation. adaption and mutation are integral parts of evolutionary theory, but they are not its entirety. existance of them does not prove the rest of it.

Not the point of the argument. That organisms adapt to their environment is a fundamental tenet of evolutionary theory, but utterly unnessecary in creationism. That we observe it supports evolution but not creationism.

however, the effect that the royal institute denied was real. if it hadn't fit into newtonian gravity (and therefore a revision would be needed) it wouldn't have been accepted. as shown by the fact that the discovery was almost completely ignored and denied until it could be shown to fit. if that happened to every anomalous discovery, then we would never know if our model was false, because we don't accept anything that doesn't fit.

Misleading in the extreme. As I pointed out, Laithwaite was working with researchers to find out what was going on. Had they discovered that Newton was indeed wrong then the theory would have had to change.

until recently. the scientific community is becoming more and more like the church that it replaced. Anyone that doesn't agree with the standard models is wrong, if they are a scientist, they are ostracised. (examples forthcoming)No, people who disagree with the standard models are ostracised if their work offers no alternative explanation, or if the explanation is obviously false as is the case with Dr. Gentry). Einstein's theories were revolutionary, but the maths was indisputable. The same is true of quantum mechanics. Recently there has been a big controversy in cosmology due to a challenge to the dark matter model from Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), which is definitely going against the standard model. It did recieve resistance at first, but again, the maths works, so it cannot just be dismissed (see this page for an interview with Milgrom, where he explains the process he and his theory went through - http://www.physics.odu.edu/~weinstei/120f03/astro10.html).

i think you misunderstood what i was trying to say.
if literally everyone had the same view as you, that "The current standard models have stood up to all the challenges offered... If that weren't the case we'd have different standard models" then they would never be proved wrong, simply for the reason that no one would ever try to prove them wrong.
i hoped to have established, by the time i said that, that the scientific community has developed a nasty habit of simply ignoring anything that doesn't fit. and if that is the case, then no one would ever find anything by accident to cast doubt on their theories, because they would just ignore it.
And I think that I've showed the the scientific community doesn't simply ignore new theories if they have something to back them up, such as decent maths, and make testable predictions. There may initially be resistance, but as Milgrom points out, that may not be a bad thing!

Ginger Rogers

1st August 2006, 01:58 PM

For the most part, lay people like myself, have to believe what scientists tell us, because we're not scientists and we don't know or understand all the evidence, in the form of bizarre diagrams and graphs and equations that you wouldn't understand unless you'd studied the subject.
I don't know that that world is spherical - or I do only because thats what I've been told, and I can see that it's fairly likely since there is a 'horizon', because of night and day, and all that stuff - but since I've not been into space I am unable to see it for myself. Its the same for many common beliefs, how many of us can actually see or experience it for ourselves.
Some things are obvious, I mean we all know gravity exists because we experience it every day but there are many things we don't or can't.

wollery

1st August 2006, 02:06 PM

[pedantic git]
The world isn't spherical, it's an oblate spheroid, slightly flattened pole to pole!
[/pedantic git]

Ginger Rogers

1st August 2006, 02:09 PM

see, told you I'm not a scientist! :D But you see my point ^-^

Admin

1st August 2006, 02:22 PM

For the most part, lay people like myself, have to believe what scientists tell us

Yes. What skepticus was alluding to is the Argument to Authority that religions rely on and making the analogy that science is the same.

Where it breaks down however, is in the relevance of such authority. The major and crucial difference is that the authority of religion cannot be tested. If something is the word of God then that’s it – end of story.

With science however, the claims that we accept on authority can, potentially, be tested. In fact for science to be accepted it has to stand up to skeptical scrutiny; therefore science can back up its claims.

So, the quick layman’s terms answer is that yes we do accept science on authority much of the time, but we have good reasons for doing so. Science is an evidence-based method - religion relies on dogma.

We have faith in religion but we can trust in science.

Skepticus Rex

1st August 2006, 03:03 PM

...we can trust in science.

hopefully. :) only joking. but as i said earlier, it is possible.

anyhoo, evidence of people and theories being dismissed for reasons other than scientific merit:

immanuel velikovsky (a zionist). he did lots of things, but the most controversial was a catostrophic cosmology he worked on. i won't go into details, but his theories included predictions on the nature of Venus, which were later verified by probes, and several other ideas of his are now part of scientific consenus.
at the time, any form of catastrophism, especially involving biblical ideas of global floods, was despised by uniformatarians (including darwinists), and people proposing such theories were often attacked.
when he tried to publish his book worlds in collision, his publisher (macmillan, who also publish/ed science textbooks) was threatened with a boycott of all its scientific publishings by several prominant scientists and universities. macmillan then passed on the book to another publisher, one with no scientific connections. this meant it was immune to blackmail, but it also undermined the credibility of the book.
velikovsky was thrust to the margins of the scientific community, and even though many of his theories are now established, he is still known for his work having no scientific merit.

Wilhelm Reich (a pschotherapist cum natural scientist). he noticed some effects which implied the possible existance of a form of biological energy. he apparantly made detailed notes of his experiments with protozoa, but i can't find any reference to anyone else scientifically testing his conclusions.
his books were burnt by the nazis (he was jewish, and his research involved sex), and later, after moving to the US and developing a therapy based on his bioenergy, a series of articles attacking him triggered an investigation by the american FDA, who suspected he was selling a quack cancer cure. i can't find any details of the investigation, but they concluded that he was, and a judge ordered his books burnt (in 1954 in the 'land of the free'). from what i've read he didn't claim it would cure cancer at all, just that it appeared to be able to boost the immune system to destroy tumours.

this last example isn't someone being ostracised by the scientific community, since he isn't a proffessional scientist, but some of the things he was attacked with show the attitude i'm trying to demonstrate
richard milton (a scientific journalist). he wrote several books pointing out apparant problems in neo-darwinist evolution and also expressed concern about how many scientific discoveries might be lost due to the attitude i'm proposing here (including the examples above, funnily enough).
various critics (quite a few scientists, including richard dawkins) called him personally several things including 'stupid' and 'mentally ill'. one of his articles was removed from a journal when richard dawkins told the editor that milton was a 'secret creationist'. milton denies that he is any such thing.
i have never seen anything actually addressing the issues he raises. apparantly personal attacks on him and his supposed beliefs are enough to debunk scientific theories.

Physiotherapist

1st August 2006, 05:42 PM

If you want to find out more about Reich, then Alexander Lowen's books might be helpful. He had his own therapy with Reich and then went onto develop his own practice. Lowen was a teacher, lawyer and latterly a doctor and has written many books in which he talks about Reich.

Mojo

1st August 2006, 06:36 PM

anyhoo, evidence of people and theories being dismissed for reasons other than scientific merit:

immanuel velikovsky (a zionist). he did lots of things, but the most controversial was a catostrophic cosmology he worked on. i won't go into details, but his theories included predictions on the nature of Venus, which were later verified by probes, and several other ideas of his are now part of scientific consenus.
at the time, any form of catastrophism, especially involving biblical ideas of global floods, was despised by uniformatarians (including darwinists), and people proposing such theories were often attacked.
when he tried to publish his book worlds in collision, his publisher (macmillan, who also publish/ed science textbooks) was threatened with a boycott of all its scientific publishings by several prominant scientists and universities. macmillan then passed on the book to another publisher, one with no scientific connections. this meant it was immune to blackmail, but it also undermined the credibility of the book.
velikovsky was thrust to the margins of the scientific community, and even though many of his theories are now established, he is still known for his work having no scientific merit. I'd be interested in knowing which of his theories "are now established".

Skepticus Rex

1st August 2006, 06:39 PM

Ironically, some of the concepts Velikovsky originally put forward in the 1940s, which at the time were heretical, are in fact much more widely accepted within the mainstream today. These include:

* The idea that global mass extinctions were caused by Earth colliding with an extraterrestrial body (particular the anomalous iridium levels at the Cretaceous boundary, which marked the destruction of the dinosaurs).
* The neo-Darwinist ideas of punctuated equilibrium in evolution.
* Velikovsky's arguments that electromagnetism must be given greater consideration in astronomy can be seen in the light of the subsequent discoveries such as the Van Allen belts, the sun and planets have extensive magnetospheres, and that the "vacuum of space" was in fact found to be permeated with charged plasma (the "solar wind").
* The idea that cometary impacts could have precipitated "dark ages" within historical times (eg the AD Dark Ages in Europe)

However mainstream academia contends that their acceptance of such ideas has little or nothing to do with Velikovsky's work, which is generally regarded as erroneous in all its detailed conclusions by academia.

wollery

2nd August 2006, 02:23 AM

Velikovsky? :o

You're including Velikovsky as an example? :confused:

Velikovsy? ::)

Oy vey. Velikovsky's work (if you can call it that) was about as unscientific as you can get. He started from the premise that the bible and other mythological stories were 100% accurate and then tried to account for them with physical astronomy. This involved having planets bouncing around the solar system like billiard balls. That's why he proposed extinction being caused by collisions, nothing to do with anything like physical evidence. That's why he proposed EM being more important, he had to have some mechanism to throw the planets around.

His predictions about Venus weren't confirmed by probes, since what the probes showed was a planet which is millions of years old. Velikovsky said that it was ejected from Jupiter (whose chemical makeup it does not resemble, not even close) as a comet, whizzed about the solar system in ways that aren't physically possible, screeched to a halt in its present orbit and suddenly changed from a comet into a planet!

Please note, I am not dismissing this out of hand. I've looked at Velikovsky's stuff and there's not one shred of real science in it. His predictions are worthless because they result from a wild fantasy which bears no resemblance to anything approaching reality. That a few minor bits of what he suggested turned out to be not entirely innacurate is neither here nor there. This should all be plain to anyone with even a modicum of knowledge about science who reads his stuff. The "scientific establishment" didn't disregard it because it went against their cherished views, they disregarded it because it's a load of complete bollocks.

I'm afraid that I don't know enough about Wilhelm Reich or Richard Milton to comment on their cases yet. I'll read up on them and get back to you.

Mojo

2nd August 2006, 10:27 AM

from what i've read he didn't claim it would cure cancer at all, just that it appeared to be able to boost the immune system to destroy tumours.
In what way would boosting the immune sysyem to destroy tumours not be curing cancer?

Skepticus Rex

2nd August 2006, 12:20 PM

The "scientific establishment" didn't disregard it because it went against their cherished views, they disregarded it because it's a load of complete bollocks.

however, at the time they didn't know it was complete bollocks. they disregarded it from a preconcieved idea that it was bollocks. i wasn't saying it's right, I think most of it's bollocks, however, there are parts of his theories that were correct, but they were also dismissed, because of the nature of the rest of it.
that's the reason i didn't want to use these examples, because although they are examples of the scientific community ignoring (or even attacking) things because they disagree (without further research to refute it), they are people that have been proven wrong (or havn't been proven either way yet), and so people think it doesn't matter that they were dismissed.

In what way would boosting the immune sysyem to destroy tumours not be curing cancer?

what i meant was, he didn't go around saying "i've cured cancer, give me money and i'll cure your cancer", he was doing further research into it at the time.

wollery

2nd August 2006, 01:42 PM

however, at the time they didn't know it was complete bollocks. they disregarded it from a preconcieved idea that it was bollocks. i wasn't saying it's right, I think most of it's bollocks, however, there are parts of his theories that were correct, but they were also dismissed, because of the nature of the rest of it.

Actually that's not accurate. The basic tenets he was working from were bollocks. That renders any conclusions he comes to bollocks, whether or not some of them later turn out to be accurate.

I'll give you an example of how starting from crap can give you a prediction that turns out to be accurate, but doesn't alter the fact that it's all crap. When I was a lowly PhD student a couple of friends and I were being very silly over lunch and decided to come up with a new theory of cosmology. We decided that since everything in the Universe rotates or orbits something else it follows that the whole Universe must rotate, and is probably a sphere. This has the upshot that, due to centripetal acceleration, all galaxies should be receding from the centre of the Universe, and the further out from the centre they are the faster they'll be travelling. This gives the result that if you are at the centre of the Universe every galaxy you look at should be redshifted, with the magnitude of the redshift being proportional to its distance. It's a theory which starts from a basic tenet, makes two predictions, namely that galaxies should be receding, and that their recession velocities should be larger the further away they are. Both of these predictions turn out to be correct. Does this mean that parts of our theory were correct? Of course not, because the theory is fundamentally flawed. Nothing can move faster than the speed of light, and in order for the overall rotation to not be apparent (which it isn't) the rotational velocity of distant galaxies about the Universal centre must be faster than light! The predictions are worthless, because they are based on a flawed premise. The science is wrong from start to finish, despite making some predictions which turn out to be correct. As an aside we also decided that since the Universe was a sphere it probably had a solid boundary, and eventually the galaxies would run into this boundary at high velocity. We called it the "Rotating Universe, Splat!" model. :D

that's the reason i didn't want to use these examples, because although they are examples of the scientific community ignoring (or even attacking) things because they disagree (without further research to refute it), they are people that have been proven wrong (or havn't been proven either way yet), and so people think it doesn't matter that they were dismissed.

As I said earlier, Velikovsky's work was dismissed because upon reading it, it becomes clear that it is almost impossible to describe as science. It's that wrong, from start to finish!

I had hoped that you were going to give examples of people who's work had been dismissed or attacked without any basis, regardless of whether or not they were right. Velikovsky certainly doesn't fall into that category, and from what I've been reading about Wilhelm Reich, his case doesn't either. I couldn't find many sites that aren't rabidly pro-Reich (i.e. they talk about him being a martyr) and obviously have an axe to grind, but those that I did all say that other people failed to find the Orgones that he claimed to have discovered. This suggests that other researchers tried to replicate his work and failed. They also say that the book burning incident has been exagerrated, what actually happened was that the court ordered the destruction of labelling attached to his Orgone collectors, which had been deemed he was selling on false pretenses, i.e. that they could cure all manner of diseases. He was prosecuted by the FDA on charges of fraud, in that he was claiming a medical benefit for which there was no evidence (now why can't they do that to homeopaths?). He was jailed for contempt of court because he kept selling his collectors after he had been ordered not to. The court records, and FDA records are available for public scrutiny.

what i meant was, he didn't go around saying "i've cured cancer, give me money and i'll cure your cancer", he was doing further research into it at the time.He claimed that his Orgone collector was benificial to health, despite there being absolutely no evidence to back up these claims. His notes have been studied by others who have found nothing in them to support his assertions.

Still need to read up on Milton, but I'm not holding out much hope, although I'm keeping an open mind.

Skepticus Rex

2nd August 2006, 02:36 PM

Nothing can move faster than the speed of light, and in order for the overall rotation to not be apparent (which it isn't) the rotational velocity of distant galaxies about the Universal centre must be faster than light!

that is exactly what i mean.
current understanding has it that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and therefore you dismissed your model on that premise.
if it was possible that things could move faster than light, then your model might well have worked.
i'm not saying that there is anything faster than the speed of light, but remember nothing is certain.

He started from the premise that the bible and other mythological stories were 100% accurate and then tried to account for them with physical astronomy. This involved having planets bouncing around the solar system like billiard balls. That's why he proposed extinction being caused by collisions, nothing to do with anything like physical evidence. That's why he proposed EM being more important, he had to have some mechanism to throw the planets around.

and that is bollocks to you because you are starting from the assumption that those mythological stories are completely false. there is no evidence that they are false (lack of evidence isn't evidence), just as there is no evidence they are correct (not that i know of, anyway).
if those stories were correct, no matter how unlikely that is, then velikovsky's theory makes sense, doesn't it?
so although it was unscientific to use unproven, anecdotal evidence to base a theory on, it's also unscientific to say something is impossible due to lack of evidence.

now, i'm not saying that velikovsky's theories are right, or even anywhere near right. but the fact is, he was dismissed because everyone knows the bible is a load of crap, which is not a scientific fact.

if people have tried to reproduce Reich's work and failed, then i agree they were right to dismiss it. i hadn't found any reference to any such tests, but thats probably a gap in my research

Mojo

2nd August 2006, 02:53 PM

Still need to read up on Milton, but I'm not holding out much hope, although I'm keeping an open mind.Here's his website: http://www.alternativescience.com/

Mojo

2nd August 2006, 03:18 PM

and that is bollocks to you because you are starting from the assumption that those mythological stories are completely false. there is no evidence that they are false (lack of evidence isn't evidence), just as there is no evidence they are correct (not that i know of, anyway).

There was no evidence that the stories are correct. There was also no evidence that planets bounce around the solar system like billiard balls, that Venus was ejected from Jupiter, that Venus was once a comet, or that comets' tails are edible (that was another of his: manna fell out of the tail of the comet as it passed overhead). There was no evidence supporting Velikovsky's ideas. That is why they were not seriously entertained.

if those stories were correct, no matter how unlikely that is, then velikovsky's theory makes sense, doesn't it?

But as you have said, there is no evidence that these stories are correct. Without evidence that these stories are correct, Velikovsky has no evidence supporting his ideas.

so although it was unscientific to use unproven, anecdotal evidence to base a theory on, it's also unscientific to say something is impossible due to lack of evidence.

It is unscientific to accept something as a theory if it has no supporting evidence. It doesn't matter who puts it forward: a theory without evidence is not going to be accepted.

Skepticus Rex

2nd August 2006, 03:29 PM

It is unscientific to accept something as a theory if it has no supporting evidence. It doesn't matter who puts it forward: a theory without evidence is not going to be accepted.

physicists currently believe in a substance called dark matter. this is a theoretical substance that was proposed in order to explain the discrepancy between the observed mass in the universe, and the predicted mass from the big bang theory.
dark matter is said to exist in theory, when it is really just hypothetical (like velikovsky's ideas)

evolution was a widely accepted theory before any transitional fossils were found, and before the genetic evidence that is used to support it.

it was my impression that hypotheses are generally accepted (when there is no established alternative) until evidence is found for or against them. this definately appears to be the case with hypothese popular in the scientific community.

PS. as i keep saying, it doesn't matter that velikovskys ideas have been proven wrong now. at the time they were dismissed as fantasy, there was no evidence either way. his theories were just as possible as any others, except his were disapproved of due to their nature

Mojo

2nd August 2006, 03:42 PM

physicists currently believe in a substance called dark matter. this is a theoretical substance that was proposed in order to explain the discrepancy between the observed mass in the universe, and the predicted mass from the big bang theory.
dark matter is said to exist in theory, when it is really just hypothetical (like velikovsky's ideas) the discrepancy between the observed mass of the universe and the predicted mass is evidence that something is wrong either with the observations or with the theory. Dark matter is a hypothesis put forward to explain the discrepancy, and a reasonably parsimonious one. Basically "perhaps there's something we can't see". You do see the difference between this and the kind of fantastic stuff Velikovsky came up with, don't you?

Skepticus Rex

2nd August 2006, 03:51 PM

the discrepancy between the observed mass of the universe and the predicted mass is evidence that something is wrong either with the observations of with the theory. Dark matter is a hypothesis put forward to explain the discrepancy, and a reasonably parsimonious one. Basically "perhaps there's something we can't see". You do see the difference between this and the kind of fantastic stuff Velikovsky came up with, don't you?

are, but dark matter is more than just a hypothesis, that's my point. it is scientific consensus that it exists, and it's only a matter of time before they find it.
so sometimes hypotheses are accepted without evidence, and sometimes they are dismissed without evidence. the only difference is whether they fit with what the majority believes or not.

Mojo

2nd August 2006, 03:55 PM

evolution was a widely accepted theory before any transitional fossils were found, and before the genetic evidence that is used to support it.
Darwin's theory was developed as a result of observing the evidence. There was plenty of evidence before transitional fossils were discovered (a prediction made by the theory that turned out to be correct - I wonder why creationists still maintain that evolution hasn't made predictions that have subsequently been confirmed). The rediscovery of Mendel's work gave evolution by natural selection a mechanism, which had been a particular problem for the theory, and eventually provided further evidence, but there was still plenty of evidence when the theory was originally proposed. That is why it was accepted.

Mongrel

2nd August 2006, 04:14 PM

are, but dark matter is more than just a hypothesis, that's my point. it is scientific consensus that it exists, and it's only a matter of time before they find it.
so sometimes hypotheses are accepted without evidence, and sometimes they are dismissed without evidence. the only difference is whether they fit with what the majority believes or not.

Well Wollery is the person to ask about this but as I understand it;
Scientists know this is only a hypothesis, it has yet to be proven. It has an explaination that is consistent and explains certain, previously unexplainable, phenomena and is able to predict certain things.

At the moment some of the predictions are untestable, mostly due to the technology required, but then again Scientists around the world are trying to gather more data that they can use to further test the existence of dark matter.

Skepticus Rex

2nd August 2006, 04:26 PM

but there was still plenty of evidence when the theory was originally proposed. That is why it was accepted.

what evidence?
the similarities between species is circumstanstial evidence at best, and it supports the creationist claims as well. what other evidence was there that would scientifically support it?

It has an explaination that is consistent and explains certain, previously unexplainable, phenomena and is able to predict certain things.

It's a theory which starts from a basic tenet, makes two predictions... Both of these predictions turn out to be correct. Does this mean that parts of our theory were correct? Of course not, because the theory is fundamentally flawed.

according to wollery, whether a hypothesis can accurately predict situations, that doesn't have any bearing on it's reliability. for all we know, the dark matter idea might be fundamentally flawed. and it isn't the most scientific of hypotheses, since it was created to fit the observed facts to a previous theory, instead of being based on evidence.

Mojo

2nd August 2006, 04:40 PM

what evidence? http://www.nyu.edu/projects/fitch/courses/evolution/html/evidence.html#DarwinsEvidenceForEvolution

Mongrel

2nd August 2006, 05:02 PM

according to wollery, whether a hypothesis can accurately predict situations, that doesn't have any bearing on it's reliability. for all we know, the dark matter idea might be fundamentally flawed. and it isn't the most scientific of hypotheses, since it was created to fit the observed facts to a previous theory, instead of being based on evidence.

Two reasons
The people who use the hypothesis realise that it's incomplete and may be changed, at the moment it reflects their best ideas about how the Universe works.
Wollerys' example required one of the fundamentals of modern physics to be wrong, the theory could predict but was inconsistent with the facts.

Skepticus Rex

2nd August 2006, 05:02 PM

"patterns of variation in domesticated and wild fauna and flora support descent with modification." - genetic variation within species is not evolution

"patterns of species distributions in time and space support branching evolution from common ancestral lineages." - i read an article once which shows that in a catastropic flood situation, fossils would be stratified in the same way they are now (the levels being how far from the sea the lived, as opposed to time. i can't find the article now though)

"branching evolution explains a range of different phenomena: e.g., why a hierarchical system is used for classification, why morphological features used for completely different functions nevertheless show "homology" in form, and why vestigial ("rudimentary") organs exist." - human ideas of classification come from humans, and are applied onto nature, they don't represent actual fact.
- if there was a 'master plan' to nature, then there would be similarities in homology between species ('why throw away a good idea?').

the vestigial organs is the only piece of evidence that doesn't also fit into other explanations, and the fact that an organ isn't used doesn't mean it's 'left over'.

i'm not supporting the creationist view, i'm just saying that there was no particular reason to assume evolution from that evidence, and the same could support many ideas.

Mojo

2nd August 2006, 05:10 PM

Mojo

2nd August 2006, 05:11 PM

Skepticus Rex

2nd August 2006, 05:18 PM

This is why, even if he made a few lucky guesses, "the nature of the rest of it" makes it reasonable to reject his theories.

what i mean by 'the nature of it', it was it is proposing.

so what you're saying is that it was right to dismiss his theories, because planets hitting eachother is silly? in other words, you think it was right to dismiss the theory because of the opinion that it isn't right? (it doesn't matter that we can see it's a silly idea through hindsight, the idea that clocks run faster on top of tall buildings sounds pretty silly, doesn't it?)

So basically, because you don't think this was evidence for evolution, it is unreasonable for scientists at the time to have accepted it as such?

what do you think?

i think that, to be fully scientific, they should have, their own opinions aside, set off to find more evidence before claiming it was true.
they could have told people they thought it was pretty likely to be found, but they should have remembered that there wasn't sufficient evidence yet. as opposed to hooting in joy that they've found an alternative to creation, and running off to sneer at people who disagree.

Mojo

3rd August 2006, 01:26 AM

so what you're saying is that it was right to dismiss his theories, because planets hitting eachother is silly? in other words, you think it was right to dismiss the theory because of the opinion that it isn't right? (it doesn't matter that we can see it's a silly idea through hindsight, the idea that clocks run faster on top of tall buildings sounds pretty silly, doesn't it?)

How seriously would you expect someone to be taken if they claimed that clocks run 5% faster on the third floor than they do on the ground floor?

Skepticus Rex

3rd August 2006, 10:44 AM

How seriously would you expect someone to be taken if they claimed that clocks run 5% faster on the third floor than they do on the ground floor?

that's just a more specific version of the question i asked you, what's the point of that?
you do realise i was referring to one of the demonstrations of einstein's relativity when i mentioned clocks running faster the higher up they are, don't you?

and you've ignored all of my questions.

if what you mean by 'the nature' of a theory is different than what i said in my last post, then say so. but otherwise can you answer the question please?

So basically, because you don't think this was evidence for evolution, it is unreasonable for scientists at the time to have accepted it as such?

i answered this, but i also asked what you think about it.
would that amount and type of evidence be enough to establish a new theory nowadays?

Mojo

3rd August 2006, 03:46 PM

that's just a more specific version of the question i asked you, what's the point of that?
you do realise i was referring to one of the demonstrations of einstein's relativity when i mentioned clocks running faster the higher up they are, don't you?

Do you know how much faster Einstein predicted clocks would run at the top of buildings? This is relevant to the case in point. Velikovsky's ideas appeared to contradict observed facts without having any real supporting evidence.

and you've ignored all of my questions.

if what you mean by 'the nature' of a theory is different than what i said in my last post, then say so. but otherwise can you answer the question please?

Would that be the question "What do you think?" I thought that was rhetorical. I addressed the other questions in the post with my question about the clock.

i answered this, but i also asked what you think about it.
would that amount and type of evidence be enough to establish a new theory nowadays?

If it wasn't overturning an already established theory (and there wasn't really any scientific theory of evolution at the time apart from Lamarckism, which was addressed by Darwin's evidence), it would probably be a good starting point.

Skepticus Rex

3rd August 2006, 04:26 PM

Do you know how much faster Einstein predicted clocks would run at the top of buildings? This is relevant to the case in point. Velikovsky's ideas appeared to contradict observed facts without having any real supporting evidence.

i don't know exactly, but i also don't see how that's relevant to the point.
the point is, clocks running faster the higher they up sounds like a silly idea unless you know (and believe) relativity. exactly like planets colliding sounds like a silly idea.
velikovskys ideas didn't contradict observed facts at the time, because the facts proving him wrong weren't observed yet.
the only scientific evidence against his ideas (at the time) was that they required orbits that wouldn't fit into newton's celestial mechanics (they arn't an observed fact, they a set of equations that explains what we have seen of the orbits of bodies in our solar system. it is theoretically possible that newtons mechanics are wrong, and we just havn't seen the exceptions yet). velikovskys ideas didn't claim that such erratic orbits were happening now, but that they did in the past.
we can only tell what happened in the past by extrapolating back using newton's mechanics. therefore the models don't show what actually happened in the past, but rather what happened in the past if we're right about celestial mechanics.

If it wasn't overturning an already established theory (and there wasn't really any scientific theory of evolution at the time apart from Lamarckism, which was addressed by Darwin's evidence), it would probably be a good starting point.

it wasn't a scientific theory as we know it, but the idea that darwin's theory overturned was creation. the majority of the evidence darwin used to support his theory also fits in with the idea of creation (also mendels genetics), which is why i'm saying that scientifically it should have been another hypothesis alongside creation and any other hypothesis that explained the facts.
what actually happened was that evolution was hailed as a great new discovery and used to justify all sorts of things as an established fact.
any later discoveries to prove or disprove it are irrelevant. in fact, i doubt that the credibility of evolution would have been affected at all if no further evidence was discovered, because as far as the scientific community is concerned it's a given that evolution is true.

if there was a new theory proposed that explained all the things that evolution explains, using the same evidence, do you think it would be given equal status alongside evolution in the current scientific community? would you give it equal status?
would you dismiss something as impossible because it is impossible in the paradigm you've chosen?
there is always a chance that your paradigm is incorrect. if you test every new thing using your paradigm as evidence, then you will never find out if your paradigm is wrong.

Mojo

3rd August 2006, 05:49 PM

i don't know exactly, but i also don't see how that's relevant to the point.
the point is, clocks running faster the higher they up sounds like a silly idea unless you know (and believe) relativity. exactly like planets colliding sounds like a silly idea.
velikovskys ideas didn't contradict observed facts at the time, because the facts proving him wrong weren't observed yet.
the only scientific evidence against his ideas (at the time) was that they required orbits that wouldn't fit into newton's celestial mechanics (they arn't an observed fact, they a set of equations that explains what we have seen of the orbits of bodies in our solar system. it is theoretically possible that newtons mechanics are wrong, and we just havn't seen the exceptions yet). velikovskys ideas didn't claim that such erratic orbits were happening now, but that they did in the past.
we can only tell what happened in the past by extrapolating back using newton's mechanics. therefore the models don't show what actually happened in the past, but rather what happened in the past if we're right about celestial mechanics.

The point that I was making was that the very small differences in the speed of clocks predicted by Einstein did not contradict the observed facts; they were simply too small to have been noticed. Velikovsky's ideas, as you point out, would need newtonian celestial mechanics to be wrong on a scale on which they appear to work pretty well.

Einstein backed up his theories with mathematics (that old evidence stuff again). What did Velikovsky back his ideas up with?

it wasn't a scientific theory as we know it, but the idea that darwin's theory overturned was creation. the majority of the evidence darwin used to support his theory also fits in with the idea of creation (also mendels genetics), which is why i'm saying that scientifically it should have been another hypothesis alongside creation and any other hypothesis that explained the facts.
what actually happened was that evolution was hailed as a great new discovery and used to justify all sorts of things as an established fact. (emphasis mine)

You do concede, then, that there was evidence for Darwin's theory at the time?

any later discoveries to prove or disprove it are irrelevant. in fact, i doubt that the credibility of evolution would have been affected at all if no further evidence was discovered, because as far as the scientific community is concerned it's a given that evolution is true.

Pure conjecture on your part.

There was evidence to support the theory when Darwin originally published. A lack of further evidence (if no more had been found) wouldn't have made the theory any less credible in the absence of other credible theories, but would have made the theory far less robust against attacks from competing theories, had any arisen.

if there was a new theory proposed that explained all the things that evolution explains, using the same evidence, do you think it would be given equal status alongside evolution in the current scientific community? would you give it equal status?

If it used all the available evidence, certainly. But not if, for example, it relied on arguments from incredulity and declined to investigate further.

would you dismiss something as impossible because it is impossible in the paradigm you've chosen?

Paradigm shifts do happen. See, for example, the work of Robin Warren and Barry Marshall on Helicobacter pylori, for which they recently were awarded a Nobel Prize.

there is always a chance that your paradigm is incorrect. if you test every new thing using your paradigm as evidence, then you will never find out if your paradigm is wrong.

There certainly is the chance that the prevailing paradigm is wrong, and as I have pointed out, this sometimes turns out to be the case. But it's up to those proposing new theories to come up with the evidence to make their case.

Skepticus Rex

3rd August 2006, 06:09 PM

The point that I was making was that the very small differences in the speed of clocks predicted by Einstein did not contradict the observed facts; they were simply too small to have been noticed. Velikovsky's ideas, as you point out, would need newtonian celestial mechanics to be wrong on a scale on which they appear to work pretty well.

velikovsky's ideas didn't contradict observed facts, they contradicted a model based on a set of observed facts. there are no observed facts from the time velikovsky's catastrophies happened, except what he claimed were facts hidden in mythology.

newtonian models explain what is currently happening in the solar system, and fit with what has been observed. if velikovsky's mythological evidence (which had not been proved either way at the time) was correct, and recorded actual events, then those events would count as observed facts. if those events don't fit into into the newtonian model, then the model is not completely accurate.

Einstein backed up his theories with mathematics (that old evidence stuff again). What did Velikovsky back his ideas up with? his mythological 'evidence'. it was assumed by the scientists that there is no possibility of any accurate recordings surviving in any form from a time when people have been shown to have made accurate astronomical measurements. there was no attempt made (at the time velikovsky's theories were dismissed) to analyse his findings for possible historical accuracy.

You do concede, then, that there was evidence for Darwin's theory at the time?

"the majority of the evidence darwin used to support his theory also fits in with the idea of creation"
evidence darwin used. not evidence that does. the majority was referring to the fact that the majority also supported creationism. a piece of evidence that doesn't support a theory (it didn't contradict the theory, it just didn't support it) doesn't constitute supporting evidence for a alternative theory.

Pure conjecture on your part.
i know, i wasn't claiming it was anything else.

There certainly is the chance that the prevailing paradigm is wrong, and as I have pointed out, this sometimes turns out to be the case. But it's up to those proposing new theories to come up with the evidence to make their case.

however, if the new theory is treated like i am proposing many are, then any new theory will be dismissed evidence or otherwise.

Mojo

3rd August 2006, 09:36 PM

however, if the new theory is treated like i am proposing many are, then any new theory will be dismissed evidence or otherwise.You're ignoring the way careers in science work. The way for a young scientist to make a name for themself is to get involved in developing a new theory. This means getting stuff published, which means prestige. If a new theory with genuine merits comes along, ambitious scientists will ruthlessly jump on the bandwagon.

If the new theory has enough evidence behind it to make it look worth their while.

Skepticus Rex

3rd August 2006, 10:22 PM

You're ignoring the way careers in science work. The way for a young scientist to make a name for themself is to get involved in developing a new theory. This means getting stuff published, which means prestige. If a new theory with genuine merits comes along, ambitious scientists will ruthlessly jump on the bandwagon

if a new theory comes along that challenges one the foundations of current scientific consensus (evolution, big bang, etc.), do you really think that ambitious scientists will jump to support it?

anyway, you're still ignoring my questions.

you said.

"the nature of the rest of it" makes it reasonable to reject his theories.
referring to velikovsky.

i said "so what you're saying is that it was right to dismiss his theories, because planets hitting eachother is silly? in other words, you think it was right to dismiss the theory because of the opinion that it isn't right?"

can you answer that question please: is that what you were/are saying?

i also asked
"would that amount and type of evidence be enough to establish a new theory nowadays?"
referring to darwin's evidence for evolution plus mendelian genetics.

you said

If it wasn't overturning an already established theory (and there wasn't really any scientific theory of evolution at the time apart from Lamarckism, which was addressed by Darwin's evidence), it would probably be a good starting point.
which actually supports me saying that they should have taken it as a hypothesis and treated as such, not paraded as a solution to the origin of life and treated like an established fact.

and also, i said
"it wasn't a scientific theory as we know it, but the idea that darwin's theory overturned was creation. the majority of the evidence darwin used to support his theory also fits in with the idea of creation (also mendels genetics), which is why i'm saying that scientifically it should have been another hypothesis alongside creation and any other hypothesis that explained the facts.
what actually happened was that evolution was hailed as a great new discovery and used to justify all sorts of things as an established fact."

and you ignored the main point of that to say that i accepted darwin's evidence for evolution, whereas i did no such thing:

i mentioned "evidence darwin used. not evidence that does. the majority was referring to the fact that the majority also supported creationism. a piece of evidence that doesn't support a theory (it didn't contradict the theory [creation], it just didn't [actively] support it) doesn't constitute supporting evidence for an alternative theory."

so do you accept my argument that darwin's theory was overturning an 'established' theory (although we wouldn't call it such)? in that case it wouldn't constitute 'a good starting pont', would it?

the comparing Einstein and Velikovsky thing is a tandem, i just used clocks running faster as an example of a silly idea (if you don't accept relativity), the two being comparable is unnecessary for my argument.

wollery

4th August 2006, 03:06 AM

that is exactly what i mean.
current understanding has it that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and therefore you dismissed your model on that premise.
if it was possible that things could move faster than light, then your model might well have worked.
i'm not saying that there is anything faster than the speed of light, but remember nothing is certain.
Sorry I haven't got back to this sooner, I've been rather busy. Apologies also that this is going to be a fairly long post, but it needs to be.

Your statement above is exactly what I'd expected (and hoped) you'd say, and it demonstrates perfectly the point I'm about to make. I must say beforehand though that this point isn't a personal attack on you or anyone else, it's just a fact.

You don't know enough science.

That's it.

Don't stop reading, please, bear with me on this. I gave you an example of a crackpot theory (my own) and pointed out an obvious fundamental flaw, that it would require faster than light travel. Your reaction? "if it was possible that things could move faster than light, then your model might well have worked." You wouldn't have accepted it if I'd just said that it was fundamentally flawed, and you'd be right not to, so I had gave an example of how it was flawed. But that isn't the only flaw in the theory. In fact it's almost impossible to find any part of it that isn't flawed. So to satisfy you that it really is a crap theory I'm going to explain the biggest flaws.

As I explained in my first post about this, for the "Rotating Universe, Splat model" to work the Universe must rotate as a rigid body (or very close to). If it didn't then the centripetal acceleration wouldn't work, and the effects would be lost. However, to rotate as a rigid body, and expand it must be getting angular momentum from somewhere, otherwise the rotation would have slowed almost to a halt a very long time ago, which would have stopped the expansion. Moreover, simple rotation about an axis would create expansion in two dimensions only - the rotating Universe would be a flat disc, much like our Galaxy. In order to get the Universe to expand uniformly in all directions it would have to tumble chaotically. But this again requires that the angular momentum of the Universe be constantly changing, which would require almost infinite amounts of energy to pumped into the system. Where is all this energy coming from?

Are we convinced yet that the Rotating Universe, Splat model is complete crap? Well I'm not finished trashing it yet!

To see the Universal expansion as uniform under the Rotating Universe, Splat model requires that we be at, or very near, the centre of the Universe. If we weren't then we'd see the galaxies directly towards and away from the centre of the Universe accelerate away from us at a high rate. But the galaxies to the sides of us relative to the expansion would appear to have very little acceleration. In fact, since the expansion is radial, not only we would be able to see a preferred direction of acceleration, we'd actually be able to pinpoint the centre of the Universe. We don't see any preferred direction of expansion, so we must be at the centre.

This next point is the last I'll make, and may be the most difficult to get your head around. Light travels at a finite speed, every measurement that's ever been made confirms this. This means that light takes a finite amount of time to travel from one place to another, and the further it travels the longer it takes. This means that if you are looking at something a very long way away you are also looking backwards in time, to the way things appeared a long time ago. So let's apply that to the Rotating Universe, Splat model; as we look further out into the Universe we should see the galaxies as they used to be. In the Rotating Universe, Splat model the Universe starts out small, with the galaxies moving outwards slowly, it expands over time, with the galaxies nearer the outside speeding up as the Universe evolves. So if we look back in time then we should expect to see a slower Universe - i.e. we should observe the Universe to be accelerating with time. But what we observe when we look at very distant galaxies is a faster Universe - we actually observe the Universe to be decelerating! One of the basic predictions of the Rotating Universe, Splat model is not just wrong, but the opposite of what is observed.

Now, I could have just said that the Rotating Universe, Splat model is crap, it's fundamentally flawed from start to finish, but you wouldn't have accepted that. So I gave a simple and obvious flaw that's easy for anyone to understand. And that should be that, because I've spent years working to understand the basic, and not so basic, principles on which our Universe works. But it wasn't enough for you, because it's wrong to simply dismiss a theory which makes correct predictions even if it contains a flaw or two.

But this is precisely my point - I didn't dismiss it because it contains a flaw or two. I dismissed it because it contains almost nothing but flaws. You, not being a physicist, don't have the knowledge to see all those flaws, so what you see is the superficial "correct predictions", which when given the full physics treatment turn out to actually be incorrect.

Okay, I hear you say, why can't the scientists just explain this stuff to the laymen for all these "crackpot" theories. Well look at how much I just wrote! And the theory that debunks is just one paragraph long! If we spent the time necessary to thouroughly debunk all of the "crackpot" theories out there properly we'd never get any research done! Take Velikovsky as an example - he wrote 7 books on his theories. Should I have to address every point he makes? I'd have to write 7 books as well! I could do it, but why should I. I can point out a few basic fundamental flaws and say, "It's all this bad, trust me." And that should be enough, because I have the training and experience to read Velikovsky's work and see what's wrong with it. I can explain the most obvious flaws in the theory so that you can understand them, and I can explain the more complex flaws, although you may not understand those. And here is another part of the problem - since you don't understand the more complex physics how can you judge whose argument is right or wrong?

The bottom line is, at some point you have to trust the scientists to know what they're talking about. You have to trust that the vast majority of us are simply seeking the correct answer, whatever that may be, even if it means that everything we've published previously is wrong. Contrary to popular belief science isn't about confirming current theories, it's about testing them until they break. In fact, as a scientist, I look forward to the occasions where I say to myself, "Doh, how could I have been such an idiot!"

Okay, that's quite enough for one post. I hope I've illustrated my point well enough. Thank you for taking the time to read it.

Mojo

4th August 2006, 03:42 AM

if a new theory comes along that challenges one the foundations of current scientific consensus (evolution, big bang, etc.), do you really think that ambitious scientists will jump to support it?

If the new theory really has something in it, it only needs a comparatively small group to work on it. Ideas once thought of as ridiculous do get accepted, for example plate techtonics, or the idea that bacteria can live in the stomach. It's a question of digging up the evidence.

anyway, you're still ignoring my questions.

What questions? The post I was replying to didn't actually contain any.

you said.referring to velikovsky.

i said "so what you're saying is that it was right to dismiss his theories, because planets hitting eachother is silly? in other words, you think it was right to dismiss the theory because of the opinion that it isn't right?"

can you answer that question please: is that what you were/are saying? It is reasonable to dismiss ideas that require what appear to be requiring that well established laws operated totally differently in historical times if they don't provide any real evidence that this was in fact the case. Mythology doesn't really cut it. If you provide a theory that appears to be wrong about the way gravity acts on bodies, you'd better have something solid behind it if you want it to be considered seriously.

i also asked
"would that amount and type of evidence be enough to establish a new theory nowadays?"
referring to Darwin's evidence for evolution plus Mendelian genetics.

It would be enough for it to be established as a hypothesis Worth investigating (that's what this thread is about, isn't it? The claim that science ignores new ideas?)

you saidwhich actually supports me saying that they should have taken it as a hypothesis and treated as such, not paraded as a solution to the origin of life and treated like an established fact. The theory of evolution by natural selection isn't a solution to the origin of life, and is only "paraded" as such as a strawman.

Does it make any real difference whether it was described as a theory or a hypothesis in the mid-19th century? There was enough evidence then to at least make it a hypothesis worth further investigation, and there is enough evidence now to consider it to be a extremely well-supported theory.

and also, i said
"it wasn't a scientific theory as we know it, but the idea that Darwin's theory overturned was creation. the majority of the evidence Darwin used to support his theory also fits in with the idea of creation (also mendels genetics), which is why I'm saying that scientifically it should have been another hypothesis alongside creation and any other hypothesis that explained the facts.
what actually happened was that evolution was hailed as a great new discovery and used to justify all sorts of things as an established fact." Exactly what was the evidence supporting creation?

and you ignored the main point of that to say that i accepted Darwin's evidence for evolution, whereas i did no such thing:

i mentioned "evidence Darwin used. not evidence that does. the majority was referring to the fact that the majority also supported creationism. a piece of evidence that doesn't support a theory (it didn't contradict the theory [creation], it just didn't [actively] support it) doesn't constitute supporting evidence for an alternative theory."

What was the evidence Darwin didn't use? Are you suggesting that he ignored evidence contradicting his theory?

so do you accept my argument that Darwin's theory was overturning an 'established' theory (although we wouldn't call it such)?

If you're considering creation as the theory being overturned here, no. What was the evidence supporting creation as a scientific theory?

in that case it wouldn't constitute 'a good starting pont', would it?

If the new hypothesis has a reasonable amount of evidence behind it, or even if it just challenges the existing paradigm, it is worth investigating. How do you think, for example, the fact that separate components of the bacterial flagellum perform other functions came to light? Behe certainly didn't come up with that himself.

the comparing Einstein and Velikovsky thing is a tandem, i just used clocks running faster as an example of a silly idea (if you don't accept relativity), the two being comparable is unnecessary for my argument.

But it is inconvenient for your argument. You have suggested that science disregards ideas that appear ridiculous, and provided an example of a theory that appeared to give ridiculous results and was accepted because it was backed up with enough mathematical evidence to make it worth investigating.

Mojo

4th August 2006, 10:24 AM

what actually happened was that evolution was hailed as a great new discovery and used to justify all sorts of things as an established fact.

You seem to be claiming that "The Scientific Establishment" hailed evolution as a great discovery of Darwin's without any real debate, and objecting that this shouldn't have happened.

The idea of evolution itself wasn't Darwin's idea; it had been proposed earlier. Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (d. 1802), wrote about it in his book Zoönomia; When Darwin wrote The Origin of Species there was already a competing theory, that of Lamarck.

Darwin's idea was not evolution itself, but evolution by natural selection of inherited characteristics.

Darwin's theory was not immediately "hailed as a great new discovery" by the establishment. There was intense controversy, both for religious and scientific reasons. Lamarck's idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics was still being developed as an alternative theory, and various objections to Darwin's theory, and the idea of evolution in general, were raised by people who would have to be considered to be part of the "scientific establishment". You don't get much more "establishment", for example, than Lord Kelvin.

Skepticus Rex

4th August 2006, 02:55 PM

i'm sorry wollery, i saw your original post on your theory as implying that the speed of light being the limit was the flaw in your theory. i didn't contemplate your theory very far, because i thought you'd already mentioned all information pertaining to the point. so you're right, it is bollocks in general. i hadn't looked that far.
however, if the speed of light being an absolute limit was the only flaw, then that would be a different matter.

What questions? The post I was replying to didn't actually contain any.

the questions from previous posts that you hadn't answered yet, which you then did answer later in your post.

It is reasonable to dismiss ideas that require what appear to be requiring that well established laws operated totally differently in historical times if they don't provide any real evidence that this was in fact the case. Mythology doesn't really cut it. If you provide a theory that appears to be wrong about the way gravity acts on bodies, you'd better have something solid behind it if you want it to be considered seriously.

i think the most scientific route would be to consult some historians to get their view on his mythological evidence, as opposed to assuming there's nothing in it due to your assessment of a subject you havn't studied.
however, i will concede that this example doesn't quite represent what i was proposing.

It would be enough for it to be established as a hypothesis Worth investigating (that's what this thread is about, isn't it? The claim that science ignores new ideas?)

so your saying that if a hypothesis offering an alternative to current evolutionary theory came along (explaining all the same evidence), it would be given a fair try and not ripped to shreds by 'Darwin's rottweiller' (richard dawkins) et al?
this thread isn't just about science ignoring new ideas.
it's about the scientific community not being very scientific, rejecting new ideas that don't fit the current paradigm, and accepting ones that do (especially if they patch holes in it, like dark matter), whether evidence is produced to support them or not.
in extreme cases, this might produce cases of cognitive dissonance.

as for the rest of your post mojo:
'the evidence that darwin used' refers to the evidence that he stated in support of his theory. that doesn't contitute me admitting that the evidence did support it, or that there is other evidence he didn't use.
what i meant by creation being the equivalent of an established theory in relation to darwin's theory is that darwin's theory was based on evidence that supported creation as well, as i showed earlier when someone posted a ]did[/i] agree with it, because they felt it worked mathmatically and made sense.
scientists don't have infallible common sense, some things might exist that make no sense.

Mojo

4th August 2006, 03:30 PM

so your saying that if a hypothesis offering an alternative to current evolutionary theory came along (explaining all the same evidence), it would be given a fair try and not ripped to shreds by 'Darwin's rottweiller' (richard dawkins) et al?

No, I would expect "Darwin's rottweiler" et al. to try to rip it to shreds, in the same way that any new hypothesis would be tested. I've seen a really nice description in someone's signature somewhere of science as the process of crash-testing ideas.

this thread isn't just about science ignoring new ideas.
it's about the scientific community not being very scientific, rejecting new ideas that don't fit the current paradigm, and accepting ones that do (especially if they patch holes in it, like dark matter), whether evidence is produced to support them or not.
in extreme cases, this might produce cases of cognitive dissonance.

Science won't accept new ideas without examining them. That wouldn't be scientific; new ideas will be examined, often quite aggressively, to see if they actually stand up. Because of the amount of work that's been done over the last 150 years, today's current paradigms tend to be supported by
far more evidence than those of Darwin's time, so the amount of evidence that new competing theories need before they are seriously considered is likely to be higher.

The possible existence of "dark matter" is not really a new theory in itself. As you point out, it's just a "patch", a proposed means of explaining a contradiction between the predictions of the current theory and the observations. It will continue to be an unconfirmed hypothesis until either it is actually detected or a new or revised theory arises which explains the current observations.

the evidence that darwin used refers to the evidence that he stated in support of his theory. that doesn't contitute me admitting that the evidence did support it, or that there is other evidence he didn't use.
what i meant by creation being the equivalent of an established theory in relation to darwin's theory is that darwin's theory was based on evidence that supported creation as well. as i showed earlier when someone posted a link to darwin's evidence, look bakc and find my post.

The evidence only supports creation in the sense that God could have created it like that. In the absence of evidence for God's existence Occam's razor comes into play.

and about the einstein thing: einstein's ideas of gravity affecting time sound silly when you don't agree with relativity, but sceintists did agree with it, because they felt it worked mathmatically and made sense.
scientists don't have infallible common sense, some things might exist that make no sense.

Scientists agreed with it because it had supporting evidence: the evidence for it was mathematical in nature, or as you put it, "they felt it worked mathematically", but it was still evidence.

Skepticus Rex

4th August 2006, 03:35 PM

Scientists agreed with it because it had supporting evidence: the evidence for it was mathematical in nature, or as you put it, "they felt it worked mathematically", but it was still evidence.
scientists agreed to look at evidence for it, because they already agreed with it. if they thought it was rubbish and unscientific, they wouldn't have deigned to test it.

so i havn't managed to find any examples of scientists dismissing theories just because they disagree with them (none that as demonstratably so), and it's not possible to give examples of scientists accepting things just because they agree with them, because you will insist that they will be rejected the minute they don't live up to the evidence, and i say they may not if it's so 'good' a theory they don't want to let it go, but it's impossible to prove either case.

however i still think it's naive to think that scientists will always behave with the only the scientific method in mind, and not have any qualms about letting go theories they have worked under for centuries in some cases. or that they will accept a new idea from any source if it has the evidence to back it up.

i think that the scientific community suffers from pride, and has a too high opinion of itself, and that people are needed to review them like this site reviews other subjects.
i will continue to search for an example to prove my point, but often a subject dismissed from 'science' (whether it be a person or a theory) is so vilified that no (demontratably reliable) evidence can be found about the actual dismissal.

Mojo

4th August 2006, 03:51 PM

scientists agreed to look at evidence for it, because they already agreed with it. if they thought it was rubbish and unscientific, they wouldn't have deigned to test it.

Scientists will have done what they do with any new hypothesis: before testing the predictions, they will have examined the theory, in this case the maths behind it, to see if there was anything obviously wrong with it. If Einstein had arrived at his conclusions as a result of missing a minus sign at some point, nobody would have bothered to test the predictions. The maths held up, so it proceeded to the testing stage. With Velikovsky's ideas, I suspect that in the absence of strong evidence, astronomers will have lost interest as soon as they realised that it required a suspension of Newton's laws. You don't go on road-testing a car after the wheels have fallen off.

so i havn't managed to find any examples of scientists dismissing theories just because they disagree with them (none that as demonstratably so), and it's not possible to give examples of scientists accepting things just because they agree with them, because you will insist that they will be rejected the minute they don't live up to the evidence, and i say they may not if it's so 'good' a theory they don't want to let it go, but it's impossible to prove either case.

To be successful, a new hypothesis is going to have to explain the existing evidence at least as well as the hypothesis it displaces.

however i still think it's naive to think that scientists will always behave with the only the scientific method in mind, and not have any qualms about letting go theories they have worked under for centuries in some cases. or that they will accept a new idea from any source if it has the evidence to back it up.

i think that the scientific community suffers from pride, and has a too high opinion of itself, and that people are needed to review them like this site reviews other subjects.

I'm not suggesting that individual scientists do not have human weaknesses. Paradigm shifts are often accompanied by small groups, generally of older scientists, who refuse to abandon the old paradigm. But there are always younger scientists who are prepared to investigate new hypotheses in the hope of making their name.

Mongrel

4th August 2006, 03:53 PM

No, I would expect "Darwin's rottweiler" et al. to try to rip it to shreds, in the same way that any new hypothesis would be tested. I've seen a really nice description in someone's signature somewhere of science as the process of crash-testing ideas.

Science is the process of crash testing ideas; the scientist does not coddle an idea, or design tests to make it work. The scientist rams the idea into a brick wall head-on at 60mph, and knowledge is gained by examining the pieces. If the theory is solid, the pieces are from the wall.

;D

Skepticus Rex

4th August 2006, 04:02 PM

I'm not suggesting that individual scientists do not have human weaknesses. Paradigm shifts are often accompanied by small groups, generally of older scientists, who refuse to abandon the old paradigm. But there are always younger scientists who are prepared to investigate new hypotheses in the hope of making their name.

ah, but if older scientists were to publicly dismiss the younger scientists as inexperienced and chasing after things a 'real' scientist knows are useless, who's gonna believe the younger scientists when they say they find something?
their theories will be called pseudoscience, because the scientific community insists there's nothing in it, and anyone believing it is just as inbalanced as someone who believes in ghosts, because they are doing so despite all evidence to the contrary. (in this case evidence to the contrary being scientists dismissal of it). anyone who supports pseudoscience is ostracised from scientific circles, so younger scientists who want to have a career will not support a theory that's contraversial and liable to be dismissed in the above way.

however, i don't have any definitive examples of this happening, so you're right to not accept that wholeheartedly. but it does make sense if you remove the assumption of scientific integrity, and so you should at least take it into consideration when examining things that have been classed as pseudoscience and pseudohistory. (history would be even more likely to succumb to the above situation, because there are no scientific tests on the accuracy of theories in history)

Mojo

4th August 2006, 05:43 PM

Science is the process of crash testing ideas; the scientist does not coddle an idea, or design tests to make it work. The scientist rams the idea into a brick wall head-on at 60mph, and knowledge is gained by examining the pieces. If the theory is solid, the pieces are from the wall.

;D

That's the one. Huntsman over at JREF, I think.

wollery

6th August 2006, 01:03 PM

i'm sorry wollery, i saw your original post on your theory as implying that the speed of light being the limit was the flaw in your theory. i didn't contemplate your theory very far, because i thought you'd already mentioned all information pertaining to the point. so you're right, it is bollocks in general. i hadn't looked that far.
however, if the speed of light being an absolute limit was the only flaw, then that would be a different matter.But that was rather my point. I dismissed the theory, because it violated a law of physics that we observe to be extremely accurate. Your response was that we shouldn't dismiss it just for that reason, and rightly so, because it is actually possible to get round that objection. However, most people are familiar with the idea of the speed of light being inviolate, so that's the easiest of the objections to communicate. I could have included all of the objections straight away, but you saw how much time and effort was involved in doing that. That you didn't see that there were more objections to the theory, or that it's possible to get round the first objection without violating light speed just prove the point I made - you don't know enough physics. And you strike me as a fairly intelligent person. Imagine how hard it is to communicate the reasons for rejecting a theory to the general populace, most of whom know very little basic science, let alone enough to make an informed decision on which theories should or shouldn't be rejected, add to that the vested interests of the religious and the unscrupulous, and the idiocy of conspiracy theorists and what you have is a veritable battle royal, where scientists are having to fight to be heard above the clamour of wooism. We do our best, but sometimes we just have to say, "Look, it's crap alright!" Unfortunately that generally results in the charge of scientific censorship, and once that charge has been made it's next to impossible to get it out of people's minds. In fact many people make that claim despite their theory being thouroughly and properly debunked, precisely because it makes them an instant cause celebre!

Going back to the dark matter problem - it's generally accepted because it has support from another branch of physics, namely particle physics, which predicts that there should be a whole family of particles that have little or no interaction with normal matter except by gravity. Mind you, those particle physicists haven't even managed to find the Higgs' Boson yet, so what do they know? ;)

Of course dark matter does have a rival theory - MOND, short for MOdified Newtonian Dynamics, in which the gravitational constant loses strength in low acceleration scenarios. It has some fairly good predictive power, although as yet it doesn't explain all of the phenomena we see that dark matter is used to address.

Skepticus Rex

7th August 2006, 01:45 PM

i do know enough physics to know that travel faster than the speed of light is impossible, but i also know that physics is just a collection of our knowledge of the universe, not the actual workings of the universe.
hypothetically, there could be things that move faster than the speed of light, and our idea of relativity and such is wrong, which is a really bad example, i know, because everything we can see happening fits into it, and we can see a lot happening. however there is always the possibility of something we havn't seen yet and that is totally unexpected, especially in things where we don't have much data. yet any 'law' that fits with what we know is seen to be as inviolate as the fact that nothing can go faster than the speed of light, no matter how limited the data.

here's an example (well, two) of an idea based on limited observations, which survives even when further observations disprove it.
this is an anecdote, and i don't know whether this reflects scientific consensus or not.
at an aberystwyth university open day for physics, there was an astronomy lecture about the solar system, and stellar systems in general.
one part of this was about the ordering of the planets, and a reason was given for why our planets are in the order they are. the justification for that reason was that if they were in this order by chance, the chances would be extemely remote.
then, the lecturer (an astronomer with a doctorate or two) mentioned the other stellar systems that have been seen, and how they appear to have different orders form ours (all of them). apparantly this means that there must have been some anomaly in the formation of those systems, to make them differ from the norm, and therefore they are not representative.

no one else seemed to have any problem with that, and i didn't want to question the lecturer because every time i do that sort of thing i'm dismissed because 'they've been at it longer than me'. but surely someone here should see the fallacy in that: a theory is proposed (and accepted), based on one piece of data. when every other piece of data found after that is an anomalous result, the anomalies are dismissed as exceptions that don't matter.
occam's razor says that there is no rule for the ordering of planets, and it's just combinations (or permuations, i can never remember which), which is the realm of statistics, not physics.

later in the talk the oort cloud was mentioned, almost the same situation as above applies to this as well.
in case you don't know, the oort cloud is a hypothetical cloud of objects that encases the solar system (like a giant, 3 dimensional kuiper belt) and was proposed as a source of long term comets (since no one knows where they originate or how they are sustained). only one possible oort cloud object has been found (sedna, which is in the wrong place for the original hypothesis), which hardly proves it's existance.
looking, again, at other stellar systems shows that none of them have anything even remotely resembling an oort cloud. this either means they don't have long term comets, or that the oort cloud doesn't exist. the lecturer of course authoritively said that they can't possibly have any long term comets, but the other possibility is just as likely (or more, because the oort cloud was postulated in 1932, and one unlikely object has been found since, no where near the number expected).

if these two points are scientific consensus for astronomy (and, i'm glad to say, the oort cloud is still said to be just a hypothesis), then i think i can guess at the reasons for their stubbornness in surviving (the oort cloud being less stubborn, since other stellar systems might not have long term comets, we don't know).

the idea that there is a rule of how the planets in a solar system are ordered, and that all of them must be the same (except the exceptions) is pure uniformitarianism: everything is the same, and always has been (except things that don't fit into the theory, which are different). although i think the order of the planets just being chance is pretty uniform as well, and has the bonus of fitting the observed facts.

the oort cloud is popular because it solves a contradiction in what is accepted about long term comets. long term comets are said to be billions of years old (having formed at the same time as the rest of the solar system), yet if they are, then they would have disintegrated by now (hence the replenishment from the cloud).
we have data on long term comets being seen for millenia (apparantly ancient texts are trusted on the subject of comets), but no more. the idea that they have been in their orbits since the early days of the solar system is just an assumption, with no supporting evidence (as far as i can find). i don't think it harms estimates on the age of the solar system to concede that comets may have formed (or at least been in orbits away from planets and/or asteroid or kuiper belt) later.

vbloke

7th August 2006, 01:58 PM

Using gravitational topography as a guide (which is just beginning to be seriously studied now), then the planets in our solar system are in the places they are because of the interaction of the sun's and Jupiter's gravity.

Recent work by Michael Dellnitz, Marcus Post and Bianca Thiere of the University of Paderborn in Germany has uncovered evidence of a remarkable natural system of tubes connecting Jupiter to each of the inner planets. The planets appear to have positioned themselves at the receiving end of the tubes emanating from Jupiter, where those tubes are calculated using only the gravitational fields of the sun and Jupiter. It is as if the gravitational fields of the sun/Jupiter system determine the main features of the landscape, and the planets have somehow situated themselves in locations that lie at the far ends of these tubes. Together, Jupiter and the sun seem to have orchestrated the locations of all the other planets.

It is not clear what has brought this about. One possibility is that during the formation of the solar system, Jupiter reached a large size early on, and dust was transported around the solar system along the tubes to accumulate at certain spots. To put it another way, it may be that in the landscape set up by Jupiter and the sun there are preferred locations where the other planets are more likely to form.

Also, when discussing things like the Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud - these things are too small to see in extra solar environments. The smallest object we've seen orbiting another star is around 50 times the size of Earth. We don't have equipment powerful enough to see something the size of a comet that far away.

Skepticus Rex

7th August 2006, 02:09 PM

well the method of ordering the planets given then was completely different from that. also, that wouldn't make a general rule.
i'm glad that that what was in that lecture isn't widely accepted, but you have to agree it's pretty unscientific.

and about seeing extrasolar things, this guy seemed to think that we should have seen oort clouds, but hadn't. in which case, he's still not a scientist.

it's possible that this was a case of 'dumming down' science for laypeople, but the lecture was for (prospective) future students, who were doing their A levels at the time. it doesn't make sense to give them misinformation.
i would say that i hope that guy is just there for research and doesn't teach, but he was introduced as being one of those who would probably teach us if we went there. *shudders* i think i'd probably end up stabbing him with a pen or something.

wollery

8th August 2006, 01:34 AM

It's not just unscientific, it's plain dumb!

The research I've seen suggests that it's almost impossible for theorists to simulate a solar system like ours from scratch. They can reproduce the hot Jupiters, and systems with multiple gas giants quite easily, but rocky planets are harder to make. Of course, that may just be a resolution problem, i.e. they need to do simulations with more & smaller particles. And vblokes right, there's no way we could tell if another system has an Oort cloud or not, although we have observed dust rings at about Oort cloud distance from a very few stars. It should also be noted that the main reason that all of the systems we've found so far have been giant planets or hot Jupiters is that those are the systems our searches are sensitive to. As time goes by we're finding lower mass planets in larger orbits. It may turn out, in the long term, that systems like ours are the norm, but so far there's one system like ours and well over 100 that aren't!

Vbloke, do you have a reference for that research by Dellnitz, Post & Thiere, I can't seem to find it!

wollery

9th August 2006, 02:48 PM

Vbloke, do you have a reference for that research by Dellnitz, Post & Thiere, I can't seem to find it!

Bump.

Mark, I'd be really interested to read this stuff.

vbloke

9th August 2006, 03:03 PM

I got the initial source from New Scientist - I've asked them if they can point me in the direction of the paper, but I've not heard anything back yet.

As soon as I hear anything, I'll let you know.

Cuddles

11th August 2006, 10:46 AM

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg18925441.300

This is the New Scientist article. It says the work by Dellnitz on tubes is unpublished. A paper by the three mentioned can be found here : http://www-m3.ma.tum.de/twiki/pub/Allgemeines/DeJuPoTh06/DeJuPoTh2004-v16.pdf which calculates a path to Venus. The New Scientist article also mentions several other researchers using similar methods, although no references are given for any of them.

In relation to the argument that the Big Bang and dark matter are accepted while other theories are rubbished, I should point out that there are tens, or even hundreds, of competing theories, none of which have been rejected out of hand. These include MOND, as mentioned, variable light speed, string theory, supersymmetry, super-string theory, M-theory, quantum loop theory and many more, all of which have many different variations and using anywhere between 4 and 22 dimensions. None of these have been rejected because they explain the existing evidence, but this is also why they are not generally accepted either - because there is no eveidence to support them any more than the Standard Model. Every single physicist will agree that the Standard Model is incomplete at best, but at present there is no evidence available to choose between competing theories and so no reason to accept any of them over any of the others. Hopefully the LHC and ILC will at least narrow down the options once they are running. It can clearly be seen from this that scientists are not rejecting these theories out of hand, no matter how silly they sound, even though they are currently doing no more than explaining the same evidence and contradicting accepted theory, which Skepticus implied would cause any theories to be rejected.

As has already been pointed out, Darwin did not propose evolution, he proposed evolution though natural variation and selection. This means that Skepticus' statement saying variation within a species is not part of evolution is obviously false, since this is in fact the fundamental principle behind Darwin's theory.

i think the most scientific route would be to consult some historians to get their view on his mythological evidence, as opposed to assuming there's nothing in it due to your assessment of a subject you havn't studied.

What is "mythological evidence"? Myths are not evidence. Some of them may be based on fact, but asking historians to read ancient myths will never establish this. This is effectively the same as saying creationists are right because the Bible says so. If a theory says that the planets must move in ways that completely contradicts all available evidence, you need to provide some solid evidence that this is possible, claiming some old people wrote it in a book is not evidence. This is why this idea was rejected out of hand, there was no reason to think it correct.