How many times have you heard someone say that “science tells us” – or that it shows, reveals, says, proves, or makes clear?
It’s very common. But it’s misleading.
Scientists never talk like this while they’re doing science, which suggests that there’s something wrong with it. Rather, we say: “Our experiment was inspired by the fact that X, which was shown last year by Y et al”.
Category Archives: Science-general
Choose Your Words Carefully
Move Me Onto Any Black Square
Can’t remember if I’ve linked to this video before, but Feynman is so good at distilling the explanation down, so it’s worth seeing again. I’ve made a similar observation using sports, but here the master uses chess.
If it's not a Scottish Incredible Garden of Cosmic Speculation, it's Crap
Scotland’s Incredible Garden of Cosmic Speculation
[I]t is based on mathematics and science mixed with nature and man-made lakes. Built in 1989, it has been called by some the most important garden in the 21st century. It is a private garden built by Charles Jencks and his late wife Maggie in Portrack House, Dumfries, Scotland.
OK, some of the “science” is, um, on the thin side. But there are still some pretty neat things.
Science in Action
There is no single scientific method, but over at Uncertain Principles, we can see an example of science getting done in a particular way.
First there’s an observation of a phenomenon, which runs contrary to another, similar phenomenon: Playground Physics: Roller Slide Mystery
The acceleration of an object sliding down a ramp, even with friction, should not depend on the mass of the object. And yet, I very clearly go faster than SteelyKid does, and while I don’t have the video to test it qualitatively, I’m pretty sure Kate’s rate of sliding falls between SteelyKid and me.
So, the question for you is: Why does that happen?
The question is raised, and discussion ensues. A promising hypothesis is offered in the comments (and not too long before I read the post, so I didn’t get a chance to think about it)
Chad fleshes out the concept behind the suggested model and presents the data:
Roller Slide Physics Explained
Lacking the time to go and get better data (which can be a proxy for those situations where circumstances dictate that you can’t get more data, we have a simulation based on the model that has been constructed.
Roller Slide Physics Simulated
The results certainly point to the model being plausible, and would allow for a more detailed experiment should someone wish to follow up on it. Not a bad representation of the scientific method. But I didn’t entitle this “Scientific Method in Action,” and for one reason:
I really ought to be doing other things, but this roller slide business kept nagging at me, and I eventually realized I could mock up a crude simulation of the results.
If you want to sum up what science all about — more than just the method — it would have to include the inquisitiveness of the people who practice it. Unsolved problems bug us, and it doesn’t even have to be your own problem. If you tell a scientist what you’re stuck on, it’s not unusual to get a response a little later on that starts off with “I was thinking about that problem — have you tried X?” When you’re stuck on your own problem, the distraction of someone else’s problem is very attractive.
The Good, the Bad and the Misleading
EIA Report: Renewables Surpass Nuclear Output
Let’s start out with the bad and misleading.
Looking at all energy sectors (e.g., electricity, transportation, thermal), production of renewable energy, including hydropower, has increased by 15.07 percent compared to the first quarter of 2010, and by 25.07 percent when compared to the first quarter of 2009. Among the renewable energy sources, biomass/biofuels accounted for 48.06 percent, hydropower for 35.41 percent, wind for 12.87 percent, geothermal for 2.45 percent, and solar for 1.16 percent.
Biofuels, unfortunately, includes ethanol. In fact, it’s probably mostly ethanol and if ethanol production represents a net gain in energy over the energy used to make it, it’s by a very slim margin. Not only do we mandate its production and inclusion in gasoline in the US, it’s also subsidized (the good news is that the subsidy is scheduled to end, and there’s a chance it won’t be renewed) and diverting land use to corn for ethanol has driven food prices up. Touting a huge increase in the production of ethanol is not good, and it really shouldn’t count as energy production.
I’m not sure where all the additional hydro power is coming from, though. If it’s a rebound in areas that were previously seeing droughts and production is just a return to the norm (or a spike from e.g. above-average snowmelt) then it’s a little misleading as well.
But there is good news:
In terms of actual production, renewable electrical output increased by 25.82 percent in the first three months of 2011 compared to the first quarter of 2010. Solar-generated electricity increased by 104.8 percent, wind-generated electricity rose by 40.3 percent, hydropower output expanded by 28.7 percent, and geothermal electrical generation rose by 5.8 percent. Only electricity from biomass sources dropped — by 4.8 percent. By comparison, natural gas electrical output rose by 1.8 percent and nuclear-generated electricity increased by only 0.4 percent while coal-generated electricity dropped by 5.7 percent.
We are installing solar and wind, and coal use went down. Yay!
Misled by the Internet, or, Why Are You Listening to Cliff Claven, Anyway?
h/t to moo
The Feedback is There, but the Time Constant is Large
Carl Zimmer has a nice comment on the warts of science: It’s Science, but Not Necessarily Right
Scientists can certainly point with pride to many self-corrections, but science is not like an iPhone; it does not instantly auto-correct. As a series of controversies over the past few months have demonstrated, science fixes its mistakes more slowly, more fitfully and with more difficulty than Sagan’s words would suggest. Science runs forward better than it does backward.
One thing Carl doesn’t get into is that replication isn’t the only way to test results of an experiment. Since repeating an experiment is unlikely to result in publication, what is more likely is for a researcher to change the experiment or at least the emphasis of the experiment rather than simple replication or refutation. Success will depend on the initial discovery being true, but the results will still be novel and publishable. However, that really only works if the original experiment was correct — if the investigation doesn’t pan out, you are still faced with the problem of trying to publish something that is not deemed “interesting” by the journals (another issue raised in the article).
Star Power Trajectories
Slate‘s Hollywood Career-O-Matic
A visitor to the Rotten Tomatoes site can check out the data for individual Hollywood careers—that’s how Tabarrok came up with the Shyamalan graph—but there’s no easy way for users to measure industrywide trends or to compare different actors and directors side-by-side. To that end, Rotten Tomatoes kindly let Slate analyze the scores in its enormous database and create an interactive tool so our readers might do the same.
It only works from 1985 on, on the hypothesis that people tend not to review old clunkers as often as the classics, which results in sampling bias and this is what skews the older results.
As a general trend, actors seem to be all over the place, score-wise, but directors tend to get better over time.
A Science-is-not-Religion Post. Praise Maxwell!
And another thing… : Science is not my god
Faith in science does tend to be a good deal more practical than faith in many other things. For example, I have faith that, should I jump off a bridge, gravity will ensure my speedy reunion with the ground. I have faith that if I combine hydrogen with oxygen, I will have water. Why? Because these things have been proven, demonstrably, to be true. Theories in science are rarely just flights of fancy – they are usually based on existing principles which have been proven to be correct. Additionally, a key difference between “science” and “blind faith” is that, while “blind faith” refuses to change, “science” redevelops its theories when new, more accurate evidence comes to light, even if that means contradicting something which was earlier thought to be true. For example, should there prove to be no higgs boson particle, scientists will not continue irrationally believing in it, but will instead accept that the hypothesis has been dis-proven, and move on.