It almost never really seems to be as cut and dry as those cases. It's pretty hard to determine sometimes if they intentionally compromised their research or if they were swayed by their preconceived notions.
There are some criteria that can used to make strong cases for intentional fraud:
1) Did you use results in a study that appear to have been faked in order to pass peer review?
2) Did you use your apparently faked study results as a lobbying platform for an ideological cause?
3) Did you accept money/gifts as a result of the above?
If [y], hi there, we'll be taking back that PhD. You'll get an invoice in the mail for the sum of money you took from the government in order to bake-up a fake study that ultimately hurt public interests.
Also, I don't particularly care if you were 'swayed' by your own political ideology and the money wasn't the sole reason that you faked a study. The result's the same.
#3 usually happens regardless of whether 1or2 happened as well. Most scientific research is done in the name of grants, prizes, books or future profit. If getting money for doing research was an absolute sign of dishonesty, then no one would have their hands clean.
#3 usually happens regardless of whether 1or2 happened as well. Most scientific research is done in the name of grants, prizes, books or future profit. If getting money for doing research was an absolute sign of dishonesty, then no one would have their hands clean.
I'm not saying that #3 is a bad thing in a vacuum; obviously people should be paid for their work. I'm saying that if you accept gifts / money in exchange for putting together a bogus paper, or in order to become the 'science' behind a pseudo scientific movement (i.e. - if you have accepted bribes in order to defraud people), there should be punitive consequences.
I view it as a form of white collar crime, little different from Bob McDonnell accepting vacations & sports car joy rides in exchange for political clout.
@N1tSt4lker already mentioned Mr. Wakefield (no more 'Dr.' 4 u, lulz), but my poster child for this sort of legal framework is Richard Lindzen.
He's a climate researcher who's done a large body of legit work, but is also a Libertarian nut. And that's fine... except he decided that everyone must be wrong about climate change, because otherwise the world would be largely incompatible with his ideology.
So, he began publishing bogus papers, starting with his 'Infrared Iris' paper, which used temperature data that Lindzen must have known was unacceptable to use because it represented an extreme sample. Subsequently, even though his faked results passed peer review (because they were faked), researchers couldn't replicate Lindzen's work. This culminated in a rebuttal paper.
Lindzen then went on to try and publish more bogus work, but it wasn't up to scratch for reputable journals - so he kept submitting to obscure publishers until he found a Korean rag that hooked him up. This work was actually found to be even less rigorous than the retarded 'Infrared Iris' idea.
But Lindzen retains full tenure, enjoys all of the benefits of being labelled an academic, enjoys influence on the IPCC committee because he's a Scientist! (TM) and there's essentially zero reason for him to discontinue using his credentials to support misinformation.
Given the nature of this thread, many of you probably followed the recent Nye-Ham debate from a while back. Nye actually has a nice account and what he thought about the debate up, which is well worth taking the time to have a read through.
dangit page not found, does anyone know if there is a different site that has it?
Given the nature of this thread, many of you probably followed the recent Nye-Ham debate from a while back. Nye actually has a nice account and what he thought about the debate up, which is well worth taking the time to have a read through.
dangit page not found, does anyone know if there is a different site that has it?
Does this show now anybody else feel kinda stupid and inadequate or is it just me? I have a general grasp of most science, but Cosmos regularly throws some real high-end concepts at us, the viewers, and I feel like since I'm not already aware of them and since I don't fully understand them I'm a bit of a dummy.
Does this show now anybody else feel kinda stupid and inadequate or is it just me? I have a general grasp of most science, but Cosmos regularly throws some real high-end concepts at us, the viewers, and I feel like since I'm not already aware of them and since I don't fully understand them I'm a bit of a dummy.
The objective of the show is to expose the audience to things they haven't heard of before, and give them a taste of what the horizon of known science looks like right now. You absolutely aren't 'dumb' if you aren't familiar with the show's material - some of the material is stuff that even the most prominent experts in that specific field aren't sure about yet.
I would like to hope that the majority reaction to the high concept material in Cosmos is just a tug on that part of the brain that wants to solve a problem (mine got tugged pretty hard, in a way it hasn't been in a long while). Certainly it's not the intent of the show to try and intimidate you or make you feel like you're incapable of solving certain problems.
I know most of the scientific elements Cosmos covers, but those history segments trend to throw out a lot of things I've never heard of before it's really impressive how they managed to focus on the human element of scientific discovery.
I know most of the scientific elements Cosmos covers, but those history segments trend to throw out a lot of things I've never heard of before it's really impressive how they managed to focus on the human element of scientific discovery.
The road of scientific progress has never been simple or easy for those the community upholds as it's greatest minds.
If our society actually valued science, shows like Cosmos wouldn't make anyone feel dumb, we'd already know most of this stuff. The history segments are super important because they lay out a solid foundation for how we got to this point and why scientific exploration is imperative. The fact that most people, myself included, haven't heard much of the history portion is proof of just how fucked up our priorities are when it comes to education.
"I see everything twice!"
+1
Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
If our society actually valued science, shows like Cosmos wouldn't make anyone feel dumb, we'd already know most of this stuff. The history segments are super important because they lay out a solid foundation for how we got to this point and why scientific exploration is imperative. The fact that most people, myself included, haven't heard much of the history portion is proof of just how fucked up our priorities are when it comes to education.
If our society valued science this show wouldn't need to exist.
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
I think that's a bit unfair of an assumption. Without looking too hard I can find two people on this forum with advanced degrees who each could benefit from a general overview about different subjects than their specialty. Dr Tyson himself is regularly schooled in new subjects on his internet radio show.
Hell, first time I heard the creationist song and dance about how "evolution breaks the laws of thermodynamics" it was from an electrical engineer.
Loving science or focusing on a scientific field doesn't negate the need for broad overview science shows like Cosmos or Through the Wormhole.
Yeah, the science aspects of the show are interesting, but I'm getting way more into the historical stuff. I've gotten like two new heroes just from the last two episodes.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
+3
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited May 2014
It's a bit odd to me they had an episode dedicated important women in astronomical science, yet in a previous episode where they were discussing the work of Herschel they completely neglected to mention Caroline Herschel at all. That actually bothered me a fair bit, but that episode was great and it was fantastic to see the historical contributions from women to science being recognized in the show.
SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
I'm probably three episodes behind on this show now, but at least I preordered the blu-ray. I'm sure it'll look better than when I stream it over this DSL connection anyway.
I was kind of disappointed they did not show some of the first mammals to stick it to dinosaurs were Bats!
The fact they are cherry picking the women in science is kind of odd when you consider that the plan of this program is to generate interest in science
Cherry picking is what I thought was the odd part of it because why show this person when they as well made a equal observation or greater.
Also I did find the point about who pointed out continental drift was interesting because for years I was told it was some weatherman in the US who discovered it
I know I'm saying this with hindsight, but... my mind is just fucking blown.
How do you explain earthquakes or volcanoes without continental drift? Where is all of that energy coming from? How do you explain the dramatic, face value evidence that South America and Africa seem to just slide into each other like puzzle pieces? How do you explain how mountain ranges form, against the wishes of gravity? How do you explain the presence of diamonds on the Earth's surface - super heated and compressed carbon. How did it get like that? Magic? How do you explain aquatic fossils sitting on top of mountains? Did coral reefs somehow just form up there a few million years ago, without a drop of water in sight?
How the Hell can you be so surrounded by such overwhelming and extremely obvious evidence that the Earth's surface is anything but stable, that the core is extremely hot / molten, and just... I dunno, toss your hands into the air? Were people just not bothering to collect samples for some reason, or what? Did nobody notice that, gee whiz, it sure gets super hot as we dig down into the crust, which is kinda odd if it's solid all the way through and the only energy source is the sun?
It's been a pretty consistent narrative in Cosmos that, whenever someone comes up with some new theory about how the universe works, said person is then ridiculed / ostracized / persecuted / intimidated / dismissed / or otherwise devalued by the Powers that Be - whether they be the established scientific community or larger religious/government/corporate forces.
Seems like there's a few lessons to be learned there, both personally and culturally.
The simplest explanation is that it's very hard for us to imagine really large large things. Whether that's time, speed, huge masses moving, that kind of thing.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
It's a huge leap of logic to come up with "the whole Earth's crust is moving" from individual pieces of evidence. The connections between two continental landmasses (South America and Africa, in this case) could have been coincidental, and required mapping both of those landmasses in the first place, something that wasn't done until around 400 years ago. Things that are obvious now (Germ theory, light travelling in a vacuum, evolution, etc.) were not obvious then.
Even scientists are wary of false pattern recognition, and they should be. A fundamental scientific discovery often requires a high level view of the evidence that is continuously corroborated by more and more evidence, and often takes evidence way beyond the lifetime of any one particular person. It's also why science works in a practical sense, as opposed to theology or non-science philosophies.
And lots of paradigms are changing. Gary Becker, who just died, won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work. He was instrumental in tying social sciences to economics, and a big proponent that people are basically rational actors when making economic decisions. The paradigm shift he helped create was the fact that "hey, people don't JUST buy things. They are influenced by marriage, by race, by discrimination, etc." But his rational actor theory is currently challenged by other more recent economists, because humans do not always act rationally. As Neil Tyson says in one of the Cosmos making-of videos "Science isn't just the 'Eureka' moments... it's often a scientist saying 'huh... that's weird.' as well."
Evidence that seems so overwhelming now didn't just come about from a single discovery or claim, but from years and years of corroborating evidence. We truly stand on the shoulders of giants, every time someone makes a new discovery or refutes an old belief.
But seriously, without continental drift, how do you explain earthquakes and volcanic eruptions? If the earth was thought to be more or less just a compressed ball of dirt & metal, with some depressions here or there that turn into oceans / rivers / lakes, where does all of this energy magically come from to create an earthquake or volcano? Where is all of that magma coming from? Is rock just spontaneously melting & exploding, somehow?
Again, I know, hindsight... but seriously! This was the 1930s, not the 1700s! We have the proponent for the theory on actual black & white video!
That nobody said, "Huh. It doesn't make much sense for rock to just explode like that for no reason," or "Huh. It doesn't make much sense for the Earth to suddenly start to violently shake, but only in very specific places," just blows my mind.
I think what's bothering me most is that I can see the whole circle jerk playing out in the theater of my mind. Some old tenured guys in Britain and/or America just start badmouthing this German guy, and everyone else just rides on their coattails - the point of the enterprise becoming not to foster new discovery or even defend existing principles (whatever those were), but just to bully & ridicule that foolish and stupid German.
I can see over and over again, played out just as the articles I'm now reading say it did, and I'm reminded of a lot of contemporary circle jerks of exactly the same stripe. Some of which I participated in (and some of which I continue to participate in).
...it's difficult at best to reconcile that doing this was so destructive in this instance, while I'm sure and would argue the case any day that doing the same thing to Ken Ham or Jen McCarthy is a positive thing.
Posts
#3 usually happens regardless of whether 1or2 happened as well. Most scientific research is done in the name of grants, prizes, books or future profit. If getting money for doing research was an absolute sign of dishonesty, then no one would have their hands clean.
Still.
Come on scientists, figure out how to elevate yourselves above common bodily needs already.
I'm not saying that #3 is a bad thing in a vacuum; obviously people should be paid for their work. I'm saying that if you accept gifts / money in exchange for putting together a bogus paper, or in order to become the 'science' behind a pseudo scientific movement (i.e. - if you have accepted bribes in order to defraud people), there should be punitive consequences.
I view it as a form of white collar crime, little different from Bob McDonnell accepting vacations & sports car joy rides in exchange for political clout.
He's a climate researcher who's done a large body of legit work, but is also a Libertarian nut. And that's fine... except he decided that everyone must be wrong about climate change, because otherwise the world would be largely incompatible with his ideology.
So, he began publishing bogus papers, starting with his 'Infrared Iris' paper, which used temperature data that Lindzen must have known was unacceptable to use because it represented an extreme sample. Subsequently, even though his faked results passed peer review (because they were faked), researchers couldn't replicate Lindzen's work. This culminated in a rebuttal paper.
Lindzen then went on to try and publish more bogus work, but it wasn't up to scratch for reputable journals - so he kept submitting to obscure publishers until he found a Korean rag that hooked him up. This work was actually found to be even less rigorous than the retarded 'Infrared Iris' idea.
But Lindzen retains full tenure, enjoys all of the benefits of being labelled an academic, enjoys influence on the IPCC committee because he's a Scientist! (TM) and there's essentially zero reason for him to discontinue using his credentials to support misinformation.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html
I hang my head in eternal shame.
The existence of hyperlinks is clearly a lie!
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The objective of the show is to expose the audience to things they haven't heard of before, and give them a taste of what the horizon of known science looks like right now. You absolutely aren't 'dumb' if you aren't familiar with the show's material - some of the material is stuff that even the most prominent experts in that specific field aren't sure about yet.
I would like to hope that the majority reaction to the high concept material in Cosmos is just a tug on that part of the brain that wants to solve a problem (mine got tugged pretty hard, in a way it hasn't been in a long while). Certainly it's not the intent of the show to try and intimidate you or make you feel like you're incapable of solving certain problems.
The road of scientific progress has never been simple or easy for those the community upholds as it's greatest minds.
If our society valued science this show wouldn't need to exist.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
People like that exist and thats why we need Cosmos
Hell, first time I heard the creationist song and dance about how "evolution breaks the laws of thermodynamics" it was from an electrical engineer.
Loving science or focusing on a scientific field doesn't negate the need for broad overview science shows like Cosmos or Through the Wormhole.
You know what's scarier? Some of them have doctorates.
HMM. I WONDER WHY?
http://static-media.fox.com/cosmos/Cosmos_Quest_Episode_1.pdf
http://static-media.fox.com/cosmos/Cosmos_Quest_Episode_2.pdf
http://static-media.fox.com/cosmos/Cosmos_Quest_Episode_3.pdf
http://static-media.fox.com/cosmos/Cosmos_Quest_Episode_4.pdf
http://static-media.fox.com/cosmos/Cosmos_Quest_Episode_5.pdf
http://static-media.fox.com/cosmos/Cosmos_Quest_Episode_6.pdf
http://static-media.fox.com/cosmos/Cosmos_Quest_Episode_7.pdf
http://static-media.fox.com/cosmos/Cosmos_Quest_Episode_8.pdf
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Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
The fact they are cherry picking the women in science is kind of odd when you consider that the plan of this program is to generate interest in science
Also I did find the point about who pointed out continental drift was interesting because for years I was told it was some weatherman in the US who discovered it
http://static-media.fox.com/cosmos/Cosmos_Quest_Episode_9.pdf
Also, I think the cherry-picking is just a result of only having so much time to tell the stories.
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I laughed so hard, probably because it's been just long enough since i've heard yet another jab at that poor senator.
He's never, ever going to live it down.
He's dead, soooo
It sort of bothers me that such a large, fairly transparent, idea would be openly ridiculed like that.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Wegener/wegener_5.php
I know I'm saying this with hindsight, but... my mind is just fucking blown.
How do you explain earthquakes or volcanoes without continental drift? Where is all of that energy coming from? How do you explain the dramatic, face value evidence that South America and Africa seem to just slide into each other like puzzle pieces? How do you explain how mountain ranges form, against the wishes of gravity? How do you explain the presence of diamonds on the Earth's surface - super heated and compressed carbon. How did it get like that? Magic? How do you explain aquatic fossils sitting on top of mountains? Did coral reefs somehow just form up there a few million years ago, without a drop of water in sight?
How the Hell can you be so surrounded by such overwhelming and extremely obvious evidence that the Earth's surface is anything but stable, that the core is extremely hot / molten, and just... I dunno, toss your hands into the air? Were people just not bothering to collect samples for some reason, or what? Did nobody notice that, gee whiz, it sure gets super hot as we dig down into the crust, which is kinda odd if it's solid all the way through and the only energy source is the sun?
This was status quo n the 19 Goddamn 30s?
...Holy shit, we're so stupid.
It's been a pretty consistent narrative in Cosmos that, whenever someone comes up with some new theory about how the universe works, said person is then ridiculed / ostracized / persecuted / intimidated / dismissed / or otherwise devalued by the Powers that Be - whether they be the established scientific community or larger religious/government/corporate forces.
Seems like there's a few lessons to be learned there, both personally and culturally.
Aryan Physics.
Lotsa people gonna be mad at this series now.
Even scientists are wary of false pattern recognition, and they should be. A fundamental scientific discovery often requires a high level view of the evidence that is continuously corroborated by more and more evidence, and often takes evidence way beyond the lifetime of any one particular person. It's also why science works in a practical sense, as opposed to theology or non-science philosophies.
And lots of paradigms are changing. Gary Becker, who just died, won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work. He was instrumental in tying social sciences to economics, and a big proponent that people are basically rational actors when making economic decisions. The paradigm shift he helped create was the fact that "hey, people don't JUST buy things. They are influenced by marriage, by race, by discrimination, etc." But his rational actor theory is currently challenged by other more recent economists, because humans do not always act rationally. As Neil Tyson says in one of the Cosmos making-of videos "Science isn't just the 'Eureka' moments... it's often a scientist saying 'huh... that's weird.' as well."
Evidence that seems so overwhelming now didn't just come about from a single discovery or claim, but from years and years of corroborating evidence. We truly stand on the shoulders of giants, every time someone makes a new discovery or refutes an old belief.
Again, I know, hindsight... but seriously! This was the 1930s, not the 1700s! We have the proponent for the theory on actual black & white video!
That nobody said, "Huh. It doesn't make much sense for rock to just explode like that for no reason," or "Huh. It doesn't make much sense for the Earth to suddenly start to violently shake, but only in very specific places," just blows my mind.
https://www.google.com/search?q=alternative+continental+drift+theories
I can see over and over again, played out just as the articles I'm now reading say it did, and I'm reminded of a lot of contemporary circle jerks of exactly the same stripe. Some of which I participated in (and some of which I continue to participate in).
...it's difficult at best to reconcile that doing this was so destructive in this instance, while I'm sure and would argue the case any day that doing the same thing to Ken Ham or Jen McCarthy is a positive thing.