Category Archives: Antiscience

Crackpottery, woo, superstition

Even More Advice for the Physicslorn

Posted on by

After More Advice for the Physicslorn

Weird Science

Sure, if your neighbor claims he was abducted by aliens, and spent some time on Alpha Centauri learning the mysteries of that highly advanced civilization, it’s easy to conclude that maybe it’s time he upped his meds. But in an era when modern theoretical physicists are routinely batting around notions like extra dimensions, dark matter, dark energy, and parallel universes, the line between bona fide breakthrough and nonsensical physics-babble isn’t so clear. To the average person, saying the world is made up of tiny styrofoam balls only seems slightly crazier than saying everything in the universe boils down to tiny vibrating strings.

Includes a link to The Alternative-Science Respectability Checklist but not to Crackpot Bingo (until you get to the comments)

I suspect this goes over the head of the target audience without so much as a hair out of place. Or they’ve got their phasers set on “ignore.”

Verus scientia

Posted on by

How to identify real science, the better to filter out antiscience.

What is REAL science?

REAL science…
Recognizes its limits – Science only works with phenomena that can be independently verified by observations or empirical tests. This is a practical approach to the study of the natural world that has proven to be extremely conducive to the advancement of scientific knowledge. Since this approach does not rule out the existence of non-verifiable phenomena, any claims about the existence or non-existence of such phenomena are not scientific.

That’s R. E, A and L are at the link.

Did I Read That Right?

Posted on by

This is the kind of post I start reading, and I begin to furrow my eyebrows as phrases and sentences pop up that don’t seem right or are obviously wrong. I though it was just bad science journalism, but realized it’s a rant-y agenda piece, with the supposed “science” reporting as a setup.

Superfluids, BECs and Bosenovas: The Ultimate Experiment

It starts off OK, giving some history, but then there was

Bosons are force carriers like photons of light and fermions are the matter we can touch.

Force carriers are bosons, but not all bosons are force carriers (universal affirmatives can only be partially converted, quoth the logician) — you can construct bosonic systems from an even number of fermions. Bosons have integral spin angular momentum, and fermions have half-integral spin, and the statistics that describe their behavior is different. An attempt to bridge the gap between science and a lay explanation that fails because it’s scientifically incorrect.

[helium is] produced by nuclear decay, as from radium and polonium, dangerous alpha radiation releasing, in fact bare nuclei of helium that eventually pick up electrons and form stable helium isotopes.

Here’s a journalistic archaeologism (it’s certainly not neo-) dangerous radiation. Nuclear radiation in invariably dangerous. Actually alpha radiation is pretty much harmless as an external dose, as it deposits its energy in a very short distance, so it doesn’t tend to penetrate even a layer of dead skin. The source is dangerous when ingested or inhaled. But the Helium nucleus is already stable (it doesn’t decay) even before it picks up the electrons — that makes it electrically neutral, not stable.

Continue reading →

The End of Theory. Not.

Posted on by

A couple days back, Chris Anderson at Wired posted some junk about large volumes of data making the scientific method obsolete, misapplying George Box’s quote, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” I was a little too distracted to respond, but it didn’t exactly escape the notice of the science and skeptic blog-o-icosahedron.

Bee over at Backreaction responds. Several links to other responses at the end.
Update: Good Math Bad Math reacts as well

If We Built This Large Wooden Badger . . .

Posted on by

I remember reading about this last January, and now I see via Bee at Backreaction that it’s in the news again.

Floating banana’s appeal for funding slips

Despite getting about $105,000 from Quebec and federal art-funding agencies, Canadian artist Cesar Saez’s flying-banana project appears to be meeting turbulence. According to his project’s webpage, the Geostationary Banana Over Texas has failed to get enough grassroots funding to ensure its planned launch date in August.
[…]
People can think it’s a hoax,” Mr. Arpin added, “but artists have been doing a lot of interesting things that a lot of people haven’t been able to follow. He [Mr. Saez] is pushing the boundaries and letting people think outside the box – or the fruit basket.”

Maybe some people thought it was a hoax because you can’t get a helium balloon high enough to be in a geostationary orbit, and a geostationary orbit can’t exist over Texas. Geostationary is a scientific/technical term. It has a specific meaning. If you just make crap up, some people won’t take you seriously.

The project’s Web-based fundraising drive says it needs $1.5-million.

Oooh. My badger project needs $1.5 million. I can’t describe how badly it needs it. Pony up, people. Or at least start buying some t-shirts.

What Mr. Slack Got Wrong

Posted on by

What neo-creationists get right

[I]n the debate over evolution, I also think creationists’ doggedness has to do with the fact that they make a few worthy points. And as long as evolutionists like me reflexively react with ridicule and self-righteous rage, we may paradoxically be adding years to creationism’s lifespan.

I think that the creationists’ doggedness has far more to do with the fact that their ideology comes first, and they mangle science to conform to that worldview. When “facts” are presented that can be falsified by just looking around, sometimes ridicule is the only option left. But there was much more in the article that bothered me, and to a greater degree.

Mr. Slack goes on to make four points. On the first two, I say this —
Yes, science is incomplete — I don’t think any competent scientist is claiming that there isn’t more to be found. This is true of all fields of science, and the “designer of the gaps” is a false dilemma. The complexity of the cell being unknown to Darwin also falls short and points out the misdirected nature of many arguments against “Darwinism,” (much like arguments against Einstein and relativity) because the theory has advanced quite far since the original proposal. I’ll get to the misuse of “faith” a little later on.

On to the third point
Continue reading →

More Advice for the Physicslorn

Posted on by

Still catching up from more than a day (and more than a blog-cycle) without power. Guide for the Amateur Physicist, which (if I were to have input) might be subtitled “This is why your missive isn’t science,” or, if I were Mike Myers in an SNL sketch, it might be “If it’s not physics, it CRAP!”

[U]ntil your theory can be described mathematically, it has no hope of making clear predictions about the results of experiments. You must be able to get actual numerical answers to problems using your theory. This is an ironclad requirement.

Which renders the (unfortunately all-too-common) “My ‘theory’ has no math. Can you please verify it?” inquiry moot.