Category Archives: Science-general

Verus scientia

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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.

The End of Theory. Not.

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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

Maybe I'm Amazed

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I’ve read on a couple of blogs about The Amaz!ng Meeting 6, (TAM6), with some promises of summaries. A couple have been posted. (I’m still waiting on reports from some of you. Listen, I’m not joking. This is my job!)

The Bad Astronomer thinks it was the Best. Meeting. Ever.

Neurologica posts some thoughts

Moo gets an incomplete, having promised some cool hushhush surprise in a teaser.

Dueling Blogjos

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So, Blake wrote a post on What Science Blogs Can’t Do

Deedle dee dee-dee

Brian at Lealaps weighed in

If you know absolutely nothing about evolutionary biology, physics, ecology, or any other discipline you care to name you are not going to find the equivalent of a college course here on the science blogosphere. That doesn’t mean that it is not possible to gain some science education from the continuing efforts of so many writers, however.

Doddle da da-dum

So did I

Deedle dee dee-dee

Chad at Uncertain Principles responded

The mistake Blake is making is the flip side of the mistake in the most recent Ask a ScienceBlogger. The questioner in that case erred by thinking of blogs as a research tool, while Blake is erring in the opposite direction, by thinking of blogs as a teaching tool. In reality, they’re neither primarily about research, nor about teaching.

Doddle da da-dum

(End banjo/guitar parallel before the squealing starts)

I agreed with a lot of what Blake said. And I think that both Brian and Chad make some good points. And it’s a good thing I’m not running for office, lest someone call me a flip-flopper, but I think the real issue is everyone is arguing somewhat different points and there is not so much disagreement as all that.

It occurs to me I should also say that I’m not insisting that agreement be required here. Agreement is boring. Everybody is entitled to their opinion — and this is largely a discussion of opinion — and there’s a lot to be learned from looking at things from another perspective. So while I enjoy the saying “Opinions are like assholes: I don’t want to hear yours,” it’s not an actual maxim I apply.

Here’s more of what I would have written had I had more time the other evening, and what I have in response to the other posts. There are some closely-related but still distinct issues being addressed here: what roles do science bloggers play, what roles should they play, what role can they play and what roles do they want to play. And the answers will be different, depending on which question you are asking.
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On the Non-Omnipotence of Blogs

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Some more great discussion over at Science after Sunclipse: What Science Blogs Can’t Do

My thesis is that it’s not yet possible to get a science education from reading science blogs, and a major reason for this is because bloggers don’t have the incentive to write the kinds of posts which are necessary. Furthermore, when we think in terms of incentive and motivation, the limitations upon the effects of online science writing become disquietingly clear. The problem, phrased without too much exaggeration, is that science blogs cannot teach science, nor can they change the world.

And one of these reasons is the level at which science blogs are written

Why is introductory material so poorly represented?

Well, what do we science bloggers write about, anyway? This is how I caricature what I see:

0. Fun posts about random non-science stuff — entertaining, humanizing, but not the subject I’m focusing on right now.

1. Reactions to creationists and other pseudo-scientists.

2. Reactions to stories in the mainstream media, often in the “My God, how did they screw up so badly” genre.

3. Reports on peer-reviewed research.

Pretty much spot-on. That’s what I tend to blog about — entertaining crap, science-y or not, take-downs of bad science and science reporting, and “real” science, whether these are posts of my own making or it’s me acting as curator to direct a reader elsewhere. But all of the science-y stuff assumes a background, at some level, in physics, without which you probably can’t appreciate what’s going on.

Blogs aren’t the only source of information, of course, but something that’s closely related, discussion forums, suffer a similar scarcity of this information, but it’s not a completely bare cupboard. The host of this blog is a science discussion forum, scienceforums.net (SFN), and there’s been a push for some discussions of basic topics, from the ground up, but I think paucity of these posts suffers from the same basic problems that Blake discusses. So yeah, I might be able to point out and perhaps explain some really neat things about physics, but it’s not going to make much sense unless you already know a little bit about the subject; you’re probably not going to learn F=ma here, and it’s questionable I could make that level of material accessible and sexy enough in this format.

Update: I’ve made another post on the topic

Expert Texpert

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Don’t you see the joker laughs at you?

Over at Physics and Physicists, a followup to an earlier post, to which I had added my two cents.

In an earlier post, I responded to a writer who called professional scientists the “most scientifically illiterate group in the US” and pointed out several fallacies of that statement. The problem here is that the level of expert knowledge that scientists consider themselves to have. We know what it means and how it feels to know something very well. This is why when we read other area of studies, we know we do not have the same level of expertise and would rather be inclined to refer to a true expert in such a field.

Once again I find myself agreeing, and wanting to add a little more than would comfortably fit in the comments.

What is it to be scientifically literate? We really have to define the term before deciding whether scientists are or are not. When stories surface about scientific illiteracy, it seems that they are pretty basic science questions that are being asked, not in-depth inquiries that require an advanced degree to answer. If we’re going to set the bar that high, then virtually everyone is scientifically illiterate, but that means that “literacy” is the wrong word. “Literacy” is being able to read at an nth grade level or college level (argue amongst yourselves, both of you, as to what that means), but it doesn’t require that you be a literature major, capable of dissecting the works of Hemingway in great detail. But there is a continuum of ability above the threshold of “literate” in terms of what you can get out of the material. Being literate means you can read “An Old Man and the Sea” and understand it. If you think you have to be able to discuss the imagery in it to be considered literate, you’re just making it up.

So scientific literacy has to be the ability to understand the basics of science in general, and some of the major tenets of various disciplines. i.e. how is science conducted, and what’s important about physics and stamp collecting biology, chemistry geology, etc. Do you possess some knowledge, and can you apply it?

I think it boils down to how good your bullshit detector is.
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What Mr. Slack Got Wrong

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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
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