Science for stupid idiots

[billc]

In light of another thread on a recent debunking of an "everybody knows" theory of science that had a consensus of scientists behind it that now may not be true...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/science_for_stupid_idiots.html

You might be a stupid idiot, like me. At least I must be a stupid idiot, since I'm called that quite often. You see, I have doubts about some things. Things like catastrophic, man-caused global warming; neo-darwinistic explanations of evolution; the safety and efficacy of at least some mandatory vaccines; etc.
I'm not always called an "idiot." On global warming, I'm a "denier." On evolution, I'm a "creationist." On vaccines, I'm an "anti-vaccine nut." But you get the idea. I'm not rational and fact-based, like they are.
Here's my thinking on a

vaccine, before injecting one of my kids with one: what are the chances of harmful effects without the vaccine, and with the vaccine? I want two numbers. My nutty logic is that I want to minimize the chances of harmful effects on my child. To calculate that for a particular vaccine, I need those two numbers. An emotionless robot or[COLOR=#009900 !important]computer[/COLOR] would need those two numbers.

[

Yet we are rarely given even one of those numbers, much less both. Not from my doctor. Not from the CDC. Not from geniuses who write articles about how dumb I am for not simply believing their repeated assurances. They tell me it's all about informed consent, but they don't inform me (with the two numbers I need), and they don't ask for my consent. (Sometimes you can opt out, but try that with Hep B shots for your kid.)
Case in point: a recent [COLOR=#009900 !important]press release[/COLOR] from the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS told us that "few health problems are caused by vaccines." That report was then used to tell idiots like me, "For Pete's Sake, Go Get Your Kids Vaccinated Already!"
The NAS did not put a number on "few." Even if it did, that would be only one of the two numbers needed. In fact, the NAS explicitly said it doesn't have those two numbers. It said this about its study committee.

It did not examine information that would have allowed it to draw conclusions about the ratio of benefits to risks.
​

So the NAS cannot draw conclusions about the single thing of importance to a parent. But somehow everyone else can. You see, "fact-based" people can draw conclusions even where the NAS can't. And therefore, you are an idiot to not vaccinate your kid.

 

[billc]

How many studies done by really smart scientific types have errors in them...

[QUOTE]Maybe you are thinking this is all too hard and we should just believe the experts here: doctors.
Do you know how many doctors, some literally brain surgeons, made an important statistical mistake in their studies? Half of them. These were studies trying to prove that some medical treatment was actually effective.
Yes, half the studies showing that some medical treatment is effective are in error. We just found that out this week (at least for neuroscience journals).

Sander Nieuwenhuis and his associates from the Netherlands have done a study on one particular type of statistical error that apparently crops up in an inordinately large number of papers published in neuroscience journals. In their paper, published in Nature Neuroscience, they claim that up to half of all papers published in such journals contain the error.
​

[/QUOTE]

So how much can we trust an NAS study that is a study of studies, when half of those underlying studies contain a major error? (Also see this study of studies about video games on behavior: "most, if not all, of these studies suffer from common pitfalls in experimental design.")
And those errors were not even big enough to cause the papers to be withdrawn. Do you know how many medical research papers were withdrawn from publication due to major errors or outright fraud in the last decade? The answer is 788.
That is, hundreds of medical research papers have errors so egregious that the papers had to be withdrawn completely. And half or more of the rest might have serious errors. We should not be treated like benighted troglodytes for being skeptical of medical "science."

 

[Monroe]

The only thing I've really had an opportunity to look into was obstetrics. Holy crap, too many in the field don't use evidence based medicine. You really need to do your research.

 

[billc]

Also, on other scientific "consensus" and "everybody knows"...

Did you grow up reading about the brontosaurus, the largest dinosaur ever? It was the symbol of Sinclair Oil. If you are over 40 you probably knew all about the brontosaurus from science books at the time. But it never existed. It was a screw-up due to a fossil mix-up (head and body didn't really match). But scientists thought it was real -- for decades. It took about 90 years for the real story to come out and to be accepted.
I went to a science museum only a few years ago. It had an exhibit showing how the Bernoulli effect is what makes airplanes fly. (Maybe you've seen the animation of little dots going over the top, and under the bottom, of a wing.) Unfortunately, that is almost totally wrong. NASA explains how it really works. (Blowing over a piece of paper is much easier than solving five simultaneous partial differential equations.)
About 20 years ago, astronomers noticed that stars on the outer edges of galaxies had greater speeds than the known laws of physics would indicate, based on the observed amount of mass in the galaxies. So the scientists simply assumed there is a lot more mass, unobserved mass, in galaxies. They gave it a name: dark matter.

 

[billc]

and some more, I am breaking it up so it is easier to digest...

Dark matter and dark energy are believed to make up 95% of the universe. So far, they have been unable to find either thing that is 95% of everything.
There are many examples of things we thought we knew that turned out to be wrong. Not just the brontosaurus, but epicycles, philostogen, contact static electricity, bathybius, among others. General relativity and quantum theory conflict, unless you believe in string theory, which might not even be testable. There are serious issues with the Big Bang theory.
Recently, Texas Governor Rick Perry took a lot of grief for the statementthat "evolution is a theory" with "some gaps in it." Oh my. Let me give you a quote from the book Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism. According to its dust jacket, it "eviscerates the new assault on evolution" with "overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution."

There will be questions that perhaps will never be answered, simply because it is unlikely that we will ever uncover enough evidence -- the great diversification of invertebrate life at the beginning of the Cambrian period, more than 500 million years ago, being one possible example.
​

 

[elder999]

Well, at least you got the title right.
:lfao:

 

[billc]

Here is the original article on the errors in neuroscience papers...

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-statistical-error-large-neuroscience-papers.html

Why such errors appear in so many research papers is open to debate. Whether it’s due to researchers wishing to overstate their findings, ignorance, or simple sloppiness, it’s clear that more scrutiny and peer review must be done by researchers before submitting their work. Of course, that’s only half the equation, why are journals who obviously take their reputations very seriously not properly vetting such papers before publishing them?
In their study, the group reviewed 513 papers published in five different highly regarded journals over a two year period. They found half of the papers (where such an error was possible) had the error in them. In addition they also found that when looking at 120 articles published on Nature Neuroscience (with cell and molecular themes) that 25 had the error in them.
Clearly there is a serious problem here; this research project highlights a problem that is likely present in other areas of science as well; namely the inaccuracies present in science journals, mainstream science magazines, the media and perhaps even in classroom lectures. Failing to check for and fix simple statistical inaccuracies in papers presenting results obtained in research, calls into question their very integrity.

So, of course it is silly of people to question the accuracy of the claims of man made global warming, even in the light of the CLIMATEGATE scandal where scientists colluded to prevent skeptics from seeing their research, by destroying data, and plotted to keep skeptic's papers out of peer reviewed journals, by threatening to get the editors fired, or getting other scientists to withhold their papers from those journals.

 

[billc]

And for the evolutionists out there, a supporting article on the fake brontosaurus dinosaur...

http://www.unmuseum.org/dinobront.htm

There was a time when the dinosaur named Brontosaurus evoked images of a monstrous beast with four legs, a long, graceful neck dragging an even longer tail through primeval swamps. The meaning of the name, "Thunder Lizard," seemed perfect for an animal who must have shook the ground with every step he took. Thousands of children knew this dinosaur by that name. It even appeared as the symbol of a major oil company and starred as one of four ancient, extinct reptiles featured on U.S. postal stamps.In the last 30 years, however, this name has disappeared from books and museum exhibits about dinosaurs. Whatever happened to this famous beast?Casualty of the "Bone Wars?"The Brontosaurus, a member of a family of dinosaurs that walked on four legs with long necks and long tails called sauropods,was the victim of a war that was played out over a hundred years ago. Starting in the late 1860's, two of America's most prominent paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, had a falling out. Cope claimed that Marsh had paid quarrymen in New Jersey to divert fossils they found for him to Marsh. Personal attacks between the men, thinly veiled as "scientific criticism," followed in articles that they wrote for publication. Later, each would send teams into the fossil fields of the West where they would fight over digging rights amid claims that the other side had destroyed or damaged fossils in order to block their rivals from getting a hold of them.One outgrowth of these "bone wars" was an unscientific competition between Cope and Marsh to see who could discover the most species of extinct beasts. In their rush to beat each other to the next find, the scientists often based their claims on incomplete or inaccurate data.​

Wow, scientists behaving like regular human beings with the motivations of regular human beings...

In 1877 Marsh wrote a short two-paragraph article for the American Journal of Science. The article, entitled "Notice of New Dinosaurian Reptiles from the Jurassic Formation," didn't have illustrations and included only a description of the animal's vertebral column, but he named the creature anyway. Marsh estimated that the Apatosaurus, meaning "deceptive lizard", was fifty feet in length. Marsh followed this article with another one in 1879 where he showed a sketch of the creature's pelvis, shoulder blade and vertebrae.​

Othniel Charles Marsh​

In that same year, in another short article inAmerican Journal of Science, Marsh claimed finding another dinosaur based on a description of the pelvis and vertebrae. He named this oneBrontosaurus and estimated it to be seventy to eighty feet in length.
The Brontosaurus soon went on to become one of the most famous dinosaur species of all time. A nearly complete skeleton found by Marsh was mounted in Yale's Peabody Museum. There it captured the public's imagination as did a beautiful illustration Marsh published in The Sixteenth Annual Report of the US Geological Survey, 1895. The Yale skeleton was the first sauropod dinosaur put on display anywhere in the world when it was mounted in 1905 and the animal was clearly labeled as a "Brontosaurus."In contrast the few unspectacular Apatosaurus bones Marsh found were never augmented with a full skeleton.​

Marsh's 30-Ton MistakeIin his rush to beat Cope, Marsh had made a mistake, however. TheApatosaurus was not a separate species, but simply a juvenile example of Brontosaurus. In 1903 Elmer Riggs of the Field Museum in Chicago was studying Marsh's work when he found this mistake:...the writer is convinced that the Apatosaur specimen is merely a young animal of the form represented in the adult by the Brontosaur specimen.Riggs, following the naming rules for animals that applied at the time added:...In view of these facts the two genera may be regarded as synonymous. As the term"Apatosaurus" has priority, "Brontosaurus" will be regarded as a synonym.​

 

[billc]

And the money quote for the Brontosaurus...

To add insult to injury, the poor Brontosaurus not only got a name change, but it was discovered that he had the wrong head, too. One item that was not found in the excavation with Marsh's Yale skeleton was a skull. Marsh mounted a head found at a different location to complete the exhibit. For many years scientists suspected that Marsh had gotten the wrong skull, but it wasn't until 1970 that two scientists, John McIntosh from Wesleyan University and David Berman of the Carnegie Museum, proved it. The head that Marsh had mounted was from another sauropod named Camarasaurus. The properBrontosaurus/Apatosaurus skull actually had a slightly longer snout and looked a lot like the skull of another sauropod called Diplodocus.​

Every scientist "knew" and their was a "consensus" and it was wrong for 90 years...

 

[billc]

Hmmm...in the 1970's it was global cooling, in 2011 it's global warming...how many years is that...They couldn't even tell the skull on a set of bones was wrong for 90 years and man made global warming is a fact, how?

 

[billc]

The original article on "Dark Matter."

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/

What do we "know" about "Dark Matter"...

More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe's expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 70%of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn't be called "normal" matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe.

Hmmm...what will we know in another 90 years...?

 

[elder999]

The original article on "Dark Matter."

Actually, that's not "the original article on dark matter." The original article would be astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky's paper, in 1934.

 

[Jenna]

I believe comet Elenin will destroy us all on September 27th. To that end, I am currently engaged in a hedonistic consumerism and overeating spree to squander all my earthly possessions while I use the end-of-days scenario to wage war on my neighbours over who really owns our communal garden. Well, it was me that planted the rosemary! Astrophysicists at NASA tell me I am an idiot for believing all this pseudo-astronomy and internet-fueled conspiratorial cover-up hype around Elenin: http://www.space.com/12657-comet-elenin-nasa-questions-answers-facts.html

With all due respect, I do not need NASA to tell me I am an idiot. For spending all my possessions on consumer goods I have no possible use for; for eating food I do not require to keep me alive (and which is snortening my lifespan while others starve), and for fighting with all my neighbours over who owns the communal garden, no, I do not need NASA to tell me I am an idiot. I ALREADY know I am an idiot.

I sure hope them pesky Mayans were wrong.

*Oh on teh offchance that the earth does not end on September 27th, can I erase this post?

 

[billc]

That would be the article the author links to on dark matter. I put it there so people could look at it and see the article the author is mentioning.

 

[Steve]

With all due respect, I do not need NASA to tell me I am an idiot.

I'm not sure, jenna, but it looks like biicihak is the one calling you an idiot.

 

[billc]

Actually, I call no one an idiot, just pointing out that the people who make fun of people who have doubts about the theory of man made global warming might want to look at other "consensus" theories in science before they make fun of the "deniers," as the recent thread on Einstien's "incontrovertiible" theory on light speed shows.

 

[elder999]

That would be the article the author links to on dark matter. I put it there so people could look at it and see the article the author is mentioning.

But the author-and you-ignore the fruits of 77 years of science between the day that "dark matter" was conceived as a a mere concept-a postulation- a theory, and the day that the Hubble telescope helped scientists detect some of that dark matter, and say, Oh!There it is. You ignore that science is a process, and no more absolute than a number of other things in this life. Science-as I've said before-doesn't give us answers, it gives us models, and those models change over time.

Resentment towards science and "intellectualism" is the very worst thing about the "conservative movement" that I've experienced in my lifetime-the notion that we can't trust the "educated," the entire "anti-intellectual" element of conservatism is, quite frankly, hard for me to stomach-and another example of corporate manipulation: There's nothing wrong with pumping all the CO and CO2 and toxic gases into the atmosphere that you can-it's all good., and those scientists, well-don't they know that trees need CO2? That that's the gas that comes from breathing????'

I mean-honestly-I clean my home on a regular basis-clean the toilets, mop the floors, change the filters in my ventilation system- why should the earth-the home of us all-be any different?

In fact-the only one that would **** in their own bed, and say it's okay-the only one who would say, Jeez, man made CO2 is perfectly okay, the only one who would say, There is no man made global warming,

is an IDIOT.

 

[billc]

I think you missed the authors point elder, he isn't anti-science, he is anti-science that looks down on regular people who have questions about certain claims in science that are used to call him an idiot if he doesn't immediately acquiese to their demands. That is why he brought up vaccines. He isn't anti-vaccine, he just wants to know the risks and benefits before he injects his kid with a substance. For that he is called names by medical proffesionals, even though there are a lot of people alllergic to penecillin, and asprin, and there are drugs that pass through all the FDA tests and are later recalled because of some unforseen or overlooked side effect.

I'm not the one ignoring science as a process, I'm the one supporting that science is an ongoing search and sometimes what is known now is not what the truth actually is. The truth may come out after 90 years of believing one thing over another, no matter how many scientists believe a thing to be true.

 

[billc]

Who is more anti-science, the scientist who wants to check the methods and data behind the claims of man made global warming, or the scientists at East Anglia who did the IPCC report on climate change who destroyed their data rather than let the skeptics look at it, and then wanted to get the editors at the peer reviewed journals fired if they printed any work by the skeptics?

That isn't, anti-intellectual, it is understanding how people work. There are motivations beyond pure discovery of truth that sometimes get in the way of finding the truth, as the author points out in the dinosaur story. that isn't the only case of scientific rivalry getting in the way of research. the man made global warming debate reeks of this sort of manipulation, with scientists who are skeptics not being reasonably refuted but called names and attacked and denied access to the data.

 

[elder999]

I think you missed the authors point elder, he isn't anti-science, he is anti-science that looks down on regular people who have questions about certain claims in science that are used to call him an idiot if he doesn't immediately acquiese to their demands. That is why he brought up vaccines. He isn't anti-vaccine, he just wants to know the risks and benefits before he injects his kid with a substance. For that he is called names by medical proffesionals, even though there are a lot of people alllergic to penecillin, and asprin, and there are drugs that pass through all the FDA tests and are later recalled because of some unforseen or overlooked side effect.

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