The appeal to authority, explained

I don't think I ever fully understood the "appeal to authority" fallacy until a few hours ago.

Scientist A writes a paper on a possible way of solving a long-standing problem in cosmology. Scientist B, who is older and more experienced, says, "my trustworthy collaborator Scientist C says this paper is wrong, here are his arguments." I go away and read the paper and C's arguments and I find in favour of A. I report back to scientist B with a detailed report of why I think C is in error.

Scientist B responds with, "Scientist C and myself are experts in this field, we know it can't be right, therefore how can it be true ?" and nothing else.

By itself, "I know they're wrong because I'm an expert" is a complete non-argument. This should not be confused with, "here are my expert, detailed opinions as to why they're wrong."

I'm still holding out hope that in this particular case B and/or C will eventually follow-up with proper arguments, though I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.

I can't think of anything to say about the latest Doctor Whoepisode "Heaven Sent" except that it was one hour of...

I can't think of anything to say about the latest Doctor Who episode "Heaven Sent" except that it was one hour of pure, distilled magnificence. Best season ever.

The Baloney Detection Kit

The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking

Necessary cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood.

[I've become kindof skeptical of these various "fallacies" - they are too easily misunderstood. For most of them I want to respond with, "yeah, but..."]

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan/

A complete myth

Has there ever been a single recorded instance of the mythical "good guy with a gun" actually preventing a massacre instead of causing one ?

Originally shared by NewsThump

America is beginning to wonder precisely when a good guy with a gun is actually going to prevent a mass shooting.
http://newsthump.com/2015/11/28/good-guy-with-a-gun-fails-to-prevent-2708th-successive-mass-shooting/

The beginnings of a robot butler

An interesting read - not entirely what you expect it to be, but what it will become. Offering a service and training the AI in parallel. Somehow, I suspect Google are looking at this as well...
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3052646/innovation-by-design/life-with-my-robot-secretary

Living in solid rock

"The boreholes they sampled do not just contain bacteria and nematodes. They are home to a host of other small animals, from flatworms and segmented worms to fungi, microscopic rotifers and even what appears to be a crustacean."
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151124-meet-the-strange-creatures-that-live-in-solid-rock-deep-underground

A Falcon in Cornwall

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-34941462

Google is racist

I wanted to check the statistics on a previous post, and discovered how racist the world is.

Blue Origin's slightly weird landing video

Cooooool.... apart from the crappy CGI in the middle. But the landing sequence is awesome !

Originally shared by Jenny Winder

Watch Blue Origin’s surprise rocket launch and safe landing
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28539-watch-blue-origins-surprise-rocket-launch-and-safe-landing/

Clock boy's services are expensive

That's just stupid.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34904226

Take that, SpaceX !

Bezos have arguably just trumped Space X by vertically landing a rocket after a flight to 100 km altitude. Not an orbital flight though.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34909713

The right response to terrorism

THIS. This is how you respond to terrorism.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34897645

Housing the homeless by... giving them homes !

"Tsemberis soon received $500,000 in federal funding, which he used to track what happened to 139 chronically homeless people who were immediately housed and offered counseling. In 1997, the results arrived. The small team couldn’t believe it. It showed a retention rate of nearly 85 percent. The next best model’s retention rate? Sixty percent."

Forget your ideology and anecdotes about the homeless. Focus on the statistics. This actually works. Yes, there will always, always be some freeloaders who will exploit the system : any system. This model, however, minimizes that.

Originally shared by Adam Liss

No matter how averse you are to simply giving things to the people who need them most, you can't argue against the facts and data. It turns out that the best way to fight homelessness—the least expensive, with the highest long-term success rate—is to put homeless people in homes. Follow up with whatever mental health, addiction, or other issues they need to surmount, but first give them a safe, stable place to live. Then help them to thrive.

We need to revisit much of what we think we know;. Traditional ideas are often based on poor research, or on no research at all; they just sound right intuitively. But they often are just plain wrong. The philosophy of giving people what they need, unconditionally, is proven every time it's tried. They're indigent? Give them money. They're homeless? Give them homes. They're bigoted, racist, and selfish? Introduce them to the people they great and hate.

They're against expensive social programs that take money out of their own pockets? Have them give directly and protectively. It's both cheaper and more effective.

Via Piaw Na​
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/05/06/meet-the-outsider-who-accidentally-solved-chronic-homelessness/

Science funding in the political arena

This is a nice, detailed article which is ruined by the BBC's stupid habit of writing sequences of short, one-sentence "paragraphs". Come on. My high school English teacher wouldn't have put up with that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34871075

How we could let this happen

Pigeon-based cancer detectors

Forget worrying about whether technology will put us all out of work, the real threat is from our feathered "friends".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34878151

Welfare doesn't make you lazy

Originally shared by null
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/11/20/9764324/welfare-cash-transfer-work

Witness Andrew Neil being awesome

Well said, that man.

Originally shared by BBC News

Andrew Neil has delivered an opening monologue in response to the Paris terror attacks on BBC's show This Week. #parisattacks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIKg3Qexn7U

Science at the heart of government

"A government-commissioned review says UK science funding should be determined by a single independent agency. It argues this body should liaise with a committee of ministers, chaired by a senior cabinet figure."

"The review has been produced by one of the country's most respected scientists, Royal Society president Sir Paul Nurse. He says the aim of his proposals is to put science "at the heart of government"."

Yes, but government is not supposed to be at the heart of science ! Otherwise you really will get a false, politically-motivated consensus developing.

"in return for science having a more prominent role in government and society..."
Yes, good....
" offer ministers an opportunity to discuss funding directly with scientists".
Lord no. That's what research councils are supposed to do, at least as far as is humanly possible : prevent politicians having direct control over research. You'll never have a publically-funded system entirely free of political influence, but you can certainly restrict it.

[I'm not so sure about this one any more. Yes, politicians shouldn't influence scientists, but as long as the flow of information is the other way, this can be very valuable.]

"He himself admitted that this could be perceived as "doing a deal with the devil George Osborne", but said that his proposed reorganisation would be good for research and good for society."
Making science a bigger part of politics and society in general is great. But if the price is making politics a bigger part of science, then the price is too high.

Also :
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/11/when-worlds-collide-science-in-society.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34860952

Terrorism in perspective

Perspective

This chart of how terrorism in Europe is generally declining is floating around my stream. While the decline is important, I think it's also important to realise just how incredibly rare terrorism is anyway. I don't want to make any comment on the importance of counter-terrorism activities in keeping this number low, only to point how that from an individual sense, fearing death by terrorism makes no sense whatsoever.

The graph of terrorist killings below comes from http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-rise-of-religiously-inspired-terrorism-in-france/
I did not re-extract the original data, I simply used the graph provided.

The data for drowning comes from http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/
Only data for 2011-2012 is available; the EU does not, so far as I know, have a longer-established central statistics database. As far as I am aware this data is only for European residents, not for those who die while trying to reach Europe. In the UK at least, the number of drownings per year has remained pretty constant, so although there will be some variation, the numbers probably won't be dramatically different in 1970.

Other causes of death from Eurostat :
Transport - 35,000
Falls - 45,000
Unknown - 79,000. Yes, apparently there are 79,000 annual deaths in the EU that simply go unexplained or have "ill-defined" causes.
Pregnancy : 200-300.

So statistically, terrorism is only slightly more dangerous than getting pregnant. It's not even remotely as threatening as a trip to the seaside (though eurostat doesn't give details on how many drownings occur in lakes, rivers, swimming pools etc.), is completely and utterly negligible threat compared with getting in a car or being near a road, or falling over, or even compared with dying from unidentified causes.

Science in society

Science isn't an art, but it does need (almost) the same level of freedom of the arts. Science isn't journalism - it needs to search for the truth, but it's not supposed to be impartial. Nor is it a business, but competitiveness is a valuable part of the process. And while politics should be kept out of science, science should definitely not be kept out of politics.

Don't let them win

The hypocrisy of austerity

It's not the most important news story of the day, but it is important.

"David Cameron privately lobbied to stop the closure of police stations in his constituency as the force tried to find £60m of savings, the BBC has learnt. The disclosure has prompted Labour to accuse him of "jaw-dropping hypocrisy". Number 10 said Mr Cameron had acted in his capacity as a local MP who believed Thames Valley Police could make savings without affecting front-line services."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34815792

Xenophobic scientist is xenophobic

"Recently, German scientist Gangolf Jobb declared that starting on October 1st scientists working in countries that are, in his opinion, too welcoming to immigrants — including Great Britain, France and Germany — could no longer use his Treefinder software, which creates trees showing potential evolutionary relationships between species. He’d already banned its use by U.S. scientists in February, citing the country’s “imperialism.” Last week, BMC Evolutionary Biology pulled the paper describing the software, noting it now “breaches the journal’s editorial policy on software availability.”"

There is absolutely no lower limit on stupidity, even for very intelligent people.
http://retractionwatch.com/2015/11/11/bmc-retracts-paper-of-scientist-who-banned-use-of-his-software-by-several-countries

Bruno Maddox and the Magnet: A Story of Misconceptions

Originally shared by Jonah Miller

Bruno Maddox and the Magnet: A Story of Misconceptions

The ever-inquisitive Gary Matthews  pointed me to a 2008 article by Discover Magazine's Bruno Maddox (see: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/may/02-three-words-that-could-overthrow-physics), claiming that physicists cannot explain how magnetism works, and that they are in denial about it. I encourage you to read the article. Maddox is wrong—dead wrong—but his argument displays a number of common misconceptions about science. And I’d like to address some of them. The most important misconceptions Maddox displays are that of first cause, of classical intuition, and of distrust of the abstract.

(Those who want to read this post in blog form can do so here:
http://www.thephysicsmill.com/2015/11/12/bruno-maddox-and-the-magnet-a-story-of-misconceptions/)

(DISCLAIMER: The opinions in this article are my own. I will be describing very little real science here… just philosophy.)

The Misconception of First Cause

Early in his article, claims that nobody can explain how a magnet works and that nobody seems to be particularly bothered by this.

For one thing, as far as I can tell, nobody knows how a magnet can move a piece of metal without touching it.

Maddox writes

And for another—more astonishing still, perhaps—nobody seems to care.

I want to talk about the notion of “touch” later. But for now let’s focus on the other part of that quote—that nobody seems to care. What Maddox is getting at, I think, is that science can never answer why something happens… at a fundamental level, it can only offer descriptions and make predictions. It can only tell you how something happens.

A Hypothetical Conversation

Let’s imagine, for a moment, a hypothetical conversation between Maddox and a physicist. If he asks about magnets… the physicist will say something like “oh the electromagnetic force is caused by the magnetic field.”

“Okay, so what causes the magnetic field?” Maddox might ask. And to this a physicist might say “Well, the magnetic field is really a relativistic echo of this more fundamental thing, the electromagnetic field tensor. A magnetic field is created by moving charge… but that motion depends on your point of view. The field tensor is invariant.”

Maddox might push further. “What causes that?” And a physicist might tell him that it’s a low-energy limit of the electroweak force.

Maddox, getting really aggravated now, might push again. “But what causes that?” And the physicist, depending on her leanings on quantum gravity, would give him an unworried shrug. “We don’t know. It just is.”

What’s Wrong With Maddox’s Question

Do you see the problem? It’s the same problem as in theology. If you ascribe cause to something, then you must ask what causes the cause. One (very theological) answer is that God is infinite and can get around these petty problems like cause and effect.

But science has a better answer: we don’t know! And moreover, we cannot know! At a fundamental level, science is based on observations of the world around us. We are limited by what those observations can tell us. These observations can tell us a lot. They can tell us what happens—to bars of iron can be made to pull at each other. They can tell us how it happens—the bars attract if they are oriented in a particular way, otherwise they repel. And, with a bit of cleverness, they can give us the tools to make predictions—an electric current will attract an iron bar.

But observations, at some level, will fail to explain something. And that’s perfectly okay. In fact, it’s better than okay. It’s a good thing to know your limits! And this is a fundamental limit. The success of science is built on knowing that whatever Nature does must be the truth, no matter how counter-intuitive.

I believe Maddox knows this. He certainly lampshades it when he comments that

But as far as I can tell—and isn’t the point of science that all its bigger propositions come accompanied by this noble caveat?—[Steven Weinberg] really can’t [explain how magnets work].

But Maddox sees this as a reason to distrust science and it is not. It is science’s greatest strength.

(I don’t mean to imply that science has no explanatory power. It tells us that magnetism in a bar magnet is caused by either atomic spin or electron spin, for example… which is very powerful. But at some point, the chain of causes stops and you can go no further. We are empiricists and, at some point, we must simply accept things at face value.)

(I also don't mean to imply that we should stop trying to dig deeper. We must be always sceptical of what we know. But at the same time, we must be aware that we will fail to hit bedrock.)

The Misconception of Classical Intuition

Let’s reflect on that for a moment. Whatever Nature does must be truth, no matter how counter-intuitive. This is the second misconception Maddox displays. Maddox finds it unsettling that we cannot explain “how a magnet can move a piece of metal without touching it.”

But… what does it mean to touch? Let’s think about the subatomic realm, the world of quantum mechanics. In the world of atoms and electrons, “touch” is a fuzzy concept. For one thing, there is no such thing as a “particle.” Protons, electrons, neutrons, and even atoms and molecules, are not localized balls, like we’re used to in our world. They’re waves of probability, distributed throughout space (see: http://www.thephysicsmill.com/2012/12/30/the-dice-are-loaded-probability-waves/). What this means to us in the world of trains and aeroplanes is not totally clear. But it is the nature of Nature. So particles them, aren’t really particles.

For another thing, when we “touch” a table, there’s a lot of empty space between the atoms in our hands and the atoms in the table! What’s really happening is that the atoms in our hands are repelling the atoms in the table… for a variety of reasons, including the electromagnetic force and the Pauli exclusion principle (see: http://www.thephysicsmill.com/2013/01/27/binary-unity-the-pauli-exclusion-principle/). There’s none of the “touching” Maddox seeks at all! Maddox is disturbed by the idea that we appeal to “spooky action at a distance,” but a more interesting question is are there any forces that aren’t, fundamentally, this sort of spooky action at a distance.

(As a historical note, Einstein described quantum mechanics as “spooky action at a distance” because he was disturbed by the fact that quantum entanglement seemed to violate causality. We know now that it does not violate causality and Einstein was worried for nothing. But the electromagnetic force never bothered Einstein.)

Maddox is falling prey to the fallacy of classical intuition. He believes that because he experiences the world in a particular way, the world must be that particular way. But Nature is not so gentle! We evolved to perceive the world in a way that benefits us evolutionarily… not in the way it really is! Again, the great strength of science as a methodology is that it overcomes this classical intuition and allows us to glimpse the world as it really is. (Or at least, closer to how it really is.)

A Fallacious Distrust of the Abstract

Finally, Maddox says that

When you get right down to it, the mystery of magnets interacting with each other at a distance has been explained in terms of virtual photons, incredibly small and unapologetically imaginary particles interacting with each other at a distance. As far as I can tell, these virtual particles are composed entirely of math and exist solely to fill otherwise embarrassing gaps in physics, such as the attraction and repulsion between magnets.

Well, Maddox is right about one thing. Virtual particles are unapologetically imaginary. This is a complaint that I, and many other scientists, share with Maddox. But this isn’t a problem with the science. It’s a problem with lazy science communication.

As I described above, the notion of a particle is deeply misguiding. A particle is a “human-scale” approximation of the true nature of reality, which is made up fields and waves. Really, force isn’t carried by virtual particles. It’s carried by fields, which interact with each other via waves that travel at speeds no greater than the speed of light. And it just so happens that these waves look like particles to us if we squint. But this doesn’t work all the time. Sometimes the notion of a single particle simply doesn’t make sense (see: http://www.thephysicsmill.com/2015/01/25/sometimes-particle-isnt-possible/).

But, even in the realm of subatomic physics, the idea of a particle is very powerful. It provides intuition and a surprisingly robust computational tool. This is why, historically, high-energy physics has been misleadingly called “particle physics.” (And for those in the know, how the terrible name “second quantization” came to be.) And the notion of a virtual particle, an imaginary particle associated with the excitation of a quantum field, even more powerful.

So… if it makes good predictions…. is a virtual particle really imaginary? Or is it a valid way of interpreting the fundamental nature of reality?

The answer is that, despite my distaste for virtual particles… they’re often exactly as good of a description as waves—better, because they’re easy to work with. It’s true that the description fails sometimes, but so what?

(For experts, I’m discussing the occupation-number formalism of quantum field theory, vs. other formalisms. In particular, the occupation number formalism fails when a vacuum cannot be uniquely defined… a la Unruh effect or curved spacetime.)

This is why Maddox is wrong to distrust virtual particles. Maddox’s distrust seems to stem from the fact that virtual particles are purely mathematical and that there is a more general way to describe quantum fields. But he should not distrust this mathematical abstraction. It is the tool we use to make predictions.

Moreover, it’s the only tool we have. Scientists are not explaining why phenomena occur. Really what scientists do is build Lego models of the universe, simulacra that behave like the universe and allow us to make predictions. Equations and mathematical abstraction are the Lego blocks of our models. And the particle picture of quantum field theory is a very good model indeed.

Other Rebuttals

Maddox’s post is quite old… seven years old by now. I am not the first scientist to refute him. In particular, I’d like to recommend this blog post by Sabine Hossenfelder , which is, as usual, excellent:
http://backreaction.blogspot.ca/2008/04/spooky-action.html

Fighting fire with... jetpacks !

Jetpacks are about to get real. I kid thee not.

"Now, Dubai has announced an initial order for up to 20 Martin jetpacks, plus simulators and a training package, for delivery next year. But these will not be used as the latest must-have for the wealthy and foolish. Dubai wants them for more serious reasons. Lt Col Ali Hassan Almutawa, director of the Dubai Civil Defence Operations Department, said the packs would be used for reconnaissance and rescue. "We see them performing a first-responder role," he says, adding that the jetpacks would be particularly useful in the fire department during emergencies in Dubai's skyscrapers."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34778835

The EU is good for science

"Smith, an international relations theorist, said “all the evidence in the world” shows that “the best research is done by people working internationally”. He added: “The most successful knowledge economy is where people publish together with people in other countries. EU membership makes that immeasurably easier.”"

Originally shared by Jenny Winder
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/11/leaving-eu-would-be-a-disaster-british-universities-warn

Cameron does not understand consequences

A couple of leaked letters.
The first from Cameron, as an MP, to Oxfordshire Council raising concerns about the huge cuts in public services given here has only been a slight reduction in the Council budget and that it could be made up by "savings" and property sales.
The second is the reply from the head of the Council explaining that a 37% cut isn't slight, and that there is no more "back office" to make savings from and all the spare property has been sold, and that Cameron's recommendation in that regard is neither sustainable or legal.

Cameron comes out of as appearing to not understand the link between the decisions of his government and their consequences.

It's good to see some of his Ministers beginning to resist (IDS!), but it does feel as if the guts are being ripped out of the country, and that unless you have pre-existing or inherited wealth then you largely stuffed. And if you do: remember that these services that are being cut are crucial to the stability of society...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/11/david-cameron-letter-cuts-oxfordshire

Daft names for all

"The structure will be the subject of further investigation during the Operation Scan Pyramids project, which began on 25 October and is expected to last until the end of 2016."

Operation "Scan Pyramids" ??!? That's the best they could do ? I take it all back. Lousy names are not unique to astronomy.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34773856

On the EM drive

Another case where I'm not going to give any highlight quotes because the entire thing is perfect.

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/history-validates-initial-skepticism/

Sensationalism does more harm than good

As I've been saying for a while, sensationalism is damaging for public trust in science, and this is an excellent example of that.

When media sensationalism continuously reports "discoveries" like this, we get into a dangerous feedback loop. Reputable scientists come along and dismiss it as the nonsense that it is. Believers then say, "Ah, there you go again, dismissing anything that doesn't agree with your world view", reinforcing their view of the mainstream scientists as a dogmatic acolyte, eroding trust in the scientific consensus.

As for the discovery itself, it might be true. There's no reason to suppose the Universe has to be comprehensible, and even though violating the conservation of momentum is akin to saying, "a wizard did it", observations always have the last word. The point is that no reputable scientist would ever have made claims like this on evidence this flimsy.

Originally shared by Ethan Siegel

"But there’s this romantic notion we all hang onto, nonetheless, that if some talented maverick with a novel perspective comes along, even without the proper background, they (or possible we, ourselves) can change the course of history forever.

This is the story we tell ourselves about a genius like Albert Einstein, whose general theory of relativity turns 100 this year. It’s the story we tell ourselves about Tesla, Edison, Faraday, Newton and more. We all know the danger of following the crowd, of a herd mentality, and of accepting what’s presently known in science as absolute, indisputable truth. And that’s why, when it comes to the biggest lies and hoaxes of all, it’s often the most intelligent among us who are the most gullible."

Every few months now, the popular press goes wild with claims that there's a new engine out there, one that produces thrust without any exhaust, violating the fundamental law of conservation of momentum. While science is, fundamentally, an experimental endeavor, this is far, far more likely to be a case of our own, human failings than it is a case of revolutionary new physics. There are distinct patterns we fall into that allow us to fool ourselves, and the root of it is that we, ourselves, simply do not have the resources and capacities to become experts in everything, and yet we do not trust those who have done exactly that.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2015/11/08/the-em-drive-nasas-impossible-engine-highlights-our-greatest-failing

Why are we even having this conversation ?

Thread about asking not to cut science funding attracts loonies, "the ISS is a hoax" thread is apparently "hot and recommended", nope, I'm done for the day.

Aaaaaargh.

Amazingly, no aliens

Well there ya go.

"The observations presented here indicate no evidence for persistent technology-related signals in the microwave frequency range 1 – 10 GHz with threshold sensitivities of 180 – 300 Jy in a 1 Hz channel for signals with 0.01 – 100 Hz bandwidth, and 100 Jy in a 100 kHz channel from 0.1 – 100 MHz. These limits correspond to isotropic radio transmitter powers of 4 – 7x10^15 W and 10^20 W for the narrowband and moderate band observations. These can be compared with Earth’s strongest transmitters, including the Arecibo Observatory’s planetary radar (2 x10^13 W EIRP). Clearly, the energy demands for a detectable signal from KIC 8462852 are far higher than this terrestrial example (largely as a consequence of the distance of this star). On the other hand, these energy requirements could be very substantially reduced if the emissions were beamed in our direction. Additionally, it’s worth noting that any society able to construct a Dyson swarm will have an abundant energy source, as the star furnishes energy at a level of ~10^27 watts."
http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.01606

Standing up for science

As scientists we are used to testing and re-testing the evidence. But that process cannot be confined to the laboratory or the library. We also need to constantly review the evidence for the value of science in our society – to check and re-tension the arguments. And an important part of that is participating in the discussion of how society values science. For some scientists that’s an uncomfortable role and tricky territory to navigate – they would rather just get on with their research. But if we are asking for public funding, we have to step up and make the argument, as powerfully and as broadly and as reasonably as we can.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2015/nov/05/science-vital-campaign-argument-osborne

Just saw The Martian. My faith in Ridley Scott is restored.

Just saw The Martian. My faith in Ridley Scott is restored.

If only Interstellar had had the same science advisor...

How scientists avoid fooling themselves.

"“People forget that when we talk about the scientific method, we don't mean a finished product,” says Saul Perlmutter, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Science is an ongoing race between our inventing ways to fool ourselves, and our inventing ways to avoid fooling ourselves.” So researchers are trying a variety of creative ways to debias data analysis — strategies that involve collaborating with academic rivals, getting papers accepted before the study has even been started and working with strategically faked data."

Excellent, thorough article.
http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-fool-themselves-and-how-they-can-stop-1.18517?WT.mc_id=GOP_NA_1510_NEWSFHOWSCIENTISTSFOOLTHEMSELVES_PORTFOLIO

Japan still uses faxes and tapes

""They usually use postal mail, or fax for their communications. We sometimes receive a fax, written by hand which means such firms don't even use word processing software like Word." Burning data onto discs and delivering them through the post, accompanied by a data submission form "filled out by hand," was encouraged by managers... the attitude tends to be "vincible ignorance" - what Aldous Huxley described as "not knowing because we don't want to"."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34667380

The Last Kingdom

Pretty engaging so far. Sort of like Game of Thrones if you took all the magic away. Does have a few pacing issues and people like interrupting each other, and the soundtrack is not to my taste, but it's very watchable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6j5bDoga9Y

Work like a Swede

"The truth" appears to be that they're a good thing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34677949

The LHC is super cheap

"The LHC cost each British citizen £1.65 in 2015. I’ll bet you spend more on peanuts. Cancer research comes to about £2.80 per person, yet cancer costs us £250 per person per year. That’s not very good accounting. We each are taxed around £134 on all publicly funded research per year, equivalent to only 0.44% of GDP. This is the lowest level of investment of any of the G8 countries. If your measure is Nobel prizes, then we have more in the sciences than all bar America. The comprehensive spending review looms just over the horizon, and the science budget is set, like so many other public endeavours, to be cut by up to 40%."

"For me there is no conflict between the arts and science, we need and thrive on both. But here’s the rub: art blossoms when economies are strong, and doesn’t itself generate great wealth. Pure scientific research is a public investment and builds economies. Cutting the science budget is pruning the roots of a tree."

Originally shared by Jenny Winder

By Dr Adam Rutherford
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/01/science-is-vital-british-legacy-contact-mp

""Today's announcement represents an important landmark in thetransition of Reaction Engines from a company that...

""Today's announcement represents an important landmark in the transition of Reaction Engines from a company that has been focused on the research and testing of enabling technologies for the Sabre engine to one that is now focused on the development and testing of the world's first Sabre engine," said Mark Thomas, managing director of Reaction Engines."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34694935

The cult of ignorance

"English unfortunately doesn’t have a precise word for the German “Fachidiot,” a narrowly specialized person accomplished in his own field but a blithering idiot outside it. In any case, a surgeon is basically a skilled auto mechanic who is not bothered by the sight of blood and palpitating organs... We need the surgeon’s skills on pain of agonizing death, and reward him commensurately, but that does not make him a Voltaire."

http://billmoyers.com/2015/10/29/the-gop-and-the-rise-of-anti-knowledge/#at_pco=cfd-1.0

Science is in bad shape, apparently

I'm cautiously skeptical, but it's good to listen.

"Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are bunk. In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties.

...failures to prove a hypothesis are rarely even offered for publication, let alone accepted. “Negative results” now account for only 14% of published papers, down from 30% in 1990. Yet knowing what is false is as important to science as knowing what is true. The failure to report failures means that researchers waste money and effort exploring blind alleys already investigated by other scientists.

Over the past few years various researchers have made systematic attempts to replicate some of the more widely cited priming experiments. [JAC: These are studies in which exposure to a stimulus before taking a test can dramatically affect the results of that test.] Many of these replications have failed. In April, for instance, a paper in PLoS ONE, a journal, reported that nine separate experiments had not managed to reproduce the results of a famous study from 1998 purporting to show that thinking about a professor before taking an intelligence test leads to a higher score than imagining a football hooligan.

Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things wrong. But they also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over time as other scientists try to take the work further. Evidence that many more dodgy results are published than are subsequently corrected or withdrawn calls that much-vaunted capacity for self-correction into question. [JAC: Many experiments, particularly in organismal biology, are not repeated, nor form the basis of subsequent research. And the dodgy results can be seen by looking at obvious errors in published papers—papers that are not withdrawn or corrected.

...consider 1,000 hypotheses being tested of which just 100 are true (see chart). Studies with a power of 0.8 will find 80 of them, missing 20 because of false negatives. Of the 900 hypotheses that are wrong, 5%—that is, 45 of them—will look right because of type I errors. Add the false positives to the 80 true positives and you have 125 positive results, fully a third of which are specious. If you dropped the statistical power from 0.8 to 0.4, which would seem realistic for many fields, you would still have 45 false positives but only 40 true positives. More than half your positive results would be wrong.

John Bohannon, a biologist at Harvard, recently submitted a pseudonymous paper on the effects of a chemical derived from lichen on cancer cells to 304 journals describing themselves as using peer review. An unusual move; but it was an unusual paper, concocted wholesale and stuffed with clangers in study design, analysis and interpretation of results. Receiving this dog’s dinner from a fictitious researcher at a made up university, 157 of the journals accepted it for publication.Dr Bohannon’s sting was directed at the lower tier of academic journals. But in a classic 1998 study Fiona Godlee, editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal, sent an article containing eight deliberate mistakes in study design, analysis and interpretation to more than 200 of the BMJ’s regular reviewers. Not one picked out all the mistakes. On average, they reported fewer than two; some did not spot any.
I find this next one very disturbing (my emphasis):

Fraud is very likely second to incompetence in generating erroneous results, though it is hard to tell for certain. Dr Fanelli has looked at 21 different surveys of academics (mostly in the biomedical sciences but also in civil engineering, chemistry and economics) carried out between 1987 and 2008. Only 2% of respondents admitted falsifying or fabricating data, but 28% of respondents claimed to know of colleagues who engaged in questionable research practices.
And one more, which is pretty disturbing as well:

Christine Laine, the editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine, told the peer-review congress in Chicago that five years ago about 60% of researchers said they would share their raw data if asked; now just 45% do. Journals’ growing insistence that at least some raw data be made available seems to count for little: a recent review by Dr Ioannidis which showed that only 143 of 351 randomly selected papers published in the world’s 50 leading journals and covered by some data-sharing policy actually complied."

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/science-is-in-bad-shape/