On Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:49:31 -0400, Alain wrote:

>>> In short, a skill that isn't taught often enough is that of critical
>>> thinking.
>>
>> Definitely. Rote memorization teaches nothing, except how to memorize.
>>
>>
>>
> The question is often in the form of: I wonder what I could find if I
> watch this or that? Is there anything hiding behind that? What would
> appen if I do something <insert qualificatif>? Is that wild legent,
> myth, urban legend, beleif,... actualy based on some fact? What if that
> crack head could be onto something in his divagations?

That's one of the things I really like about Mythbusters.  They may not 
get the 'science' right all the time, but they are teaching important 
skills in problem decomposition and building a test.  If they ever 
changed the program so as to lose the elements of "developing their 
tests", the show would lose a lot of its appeal.

> Sometimes, it goes straight to perform some experiment, do some
> observations.

Yep.

Jim

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On Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:56:56 -0400, Jim Henderson wrote:

>> Sometimes, it goes straight to perform some experiment, do some
>> observations.
> 
> Yep.

I meant to add - but unfortunately, a poorly planned experiment generally 
won't yield meaningful (or useful) results.

Jim

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >>> There's plenty of that. Co-students mocking you, and the teacher grading
> >>> you. ;-)
> >
> >> Whereas in *real* scientice, it's other eminent scientists who mock you...
> >
> >    That's the whole point. If your results stand up to that kind of
> > scrutiny, you're a winner. (See eg. the paper named "100 authors against
> > Einstein".)

> What worries me is the possibility of a theory not being taken seriously 
> because nobody likes it, rather than because the theory doesn't work...

  Then the detractors would have to point out the flaws.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:
> Le 2011/09/30 11:32, Warp a écrit :
> > Mike Raiford<"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com>  wrote:
> >>       Define a question
> >>       Gather information and resources (observe)
> >>       Form an explanatory hypothesis
> >>       Test the hypothesis by performing an experiment and collecting data
> >> in a reproducible manner
> >>       Analyze the data
> >>       Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting
> >> point for new hypothesis
> >>       Publish results
> >>       Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
> >
> >    That list prominently lacks the crucial concepts of control(led testing)
> > and peer reviewing.
> >

> Look at the 4th and last points...

  Which say nothing about controls nor peer reviewing.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>>>> Whereas in *real* scientice, it's other eminent scientists who mock you...
>>>
>>>     That's the whole point. If your results stand up to that kind of
>>> scrutiny, you're a winner. (See eg. the paper named "100 authors against
>>> Einstein".)
>
>> What worries me is the possibility of a theory not being taken seriously
>> because nobody likes it, rather than because the theory doesn't work...
>
>    Then the detractors would have to point out the flaws.

That's what's /supposed/ to happen, yes.

It becomes worrying when people point out "flaws" such as "this theory 
is /obviously/ wrong. Everybody can see that."

I don't know if this actually happens in modern day science. I hope not...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 1-10-2011 10:18, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>>>> Whereas in *real* scientice, it's other eminent scientists who mock
>>>>> you...
>>>>
>>>> That's the whole point. If your results stand up to that kind of
>>>> scrutiny, you're a winner. (See eg. the paper named "100 authors
>>>> against
>>>> Einstein".)
>>
>>> What worries me is the possibility of a theory not being taken seriously
>>> because nobody likes it, rather than because the theory doesn't work...
>>
>> Then the detractors would have to point out the flaws.
>
> That's what's /supposed/ to happen, yes.
>
> It becomes worrying when people point out "flaws" such as "this theory
> is /obviously/ wrong. Everybody can see that."
>
> I don't know if this actually happens in modern day science. I hope not...

I am afraid it does.


-- 
Apparently you can afford your own dictator for less than 10 cents per 
citizen per day.

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andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> On 1-10-2011 10:18, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> > It becomes worrying when people point out "flaws" such as "this theory
> > is /obviously/ wrong. Everybody can see that."
> >
> > I don't know if this actually happens in modern day science. I hope not...

> I am afraid it does.

  Care to give an example?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 9/30/2011 23:21, Warp wrote:
>    Then the detractors would have to point out the flaws.

The problem is that for every idea whose flaws you ought to point out, there 
are 10,000 ideas from people who have no idea what they're talking about. 
It's like if you're debugging code, and some marketing guy comes up behind 
you and says "you should put a colon there. Plus, you spelled creat() wrong. 
And get rid of those empty parentheses." Would you actually want to spend 
the time telling him why he's wrong? Or would you just say "go learn 
something about what people already know about programming computers first"?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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On 1-10-2011 13:46, Warp wrote:
> andrel<byt### [at] gmailcom>  wrote:
>> On 1-10-2011 10:18, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> It becomes worrying when people point out "flaws" such as "this theory
>>> is /obviously/ wrong. Everybody can see that."
>>>
>>> I don't know if this actually happens in modern day science. I hope not...
>
>> I am afraid it does.
>
>    Care to give an example?

In general this is hard as I am part of the reviewing process myself and 
we don't talk about what happens to anyone other than the author. I 
don't think it is a law, but it is not done.

I know numerous examples of it that have resulted in a paper not being 
published in some journal. Though in practice almost all work will be 
published somewhere someday. Perhaps in a low ranking journal a few 
years later. But people can loose their job in the mean time. Especially 
if it happens in a peer review for a grant in stead of for an article in 
a journal.

One example that I was not involved in was in a reviewing process where 
the (well known) reviewer returned nothing more than 'I don't belief 
this'. This had no impact at all, because the editor rejected the review 
report and asked someone else for a report.

BTW there is a lot wrong with the peer review process that I don't want 
to go into detail about, as it might give the impression that any 
research is unreliable. In general it works and people are more honest 
than you might expect. Problems mainly arise when science is mixed with 
management and politics.

-- 
Apparently you can afford your own dictator for less than 10 cents per 
citizen per day.

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On 10/1/2011 4:46, Warp wrote:
>    Care to give an example?

I actually had a review rejected because my review was "5 of 5. Nothing to 
say except perfect."  Now, it wasn't a science article but a computer 
science article that was about the formal math rather than science, but 
people didn't believe I had read the article when really it was "this is 
perfect. what more can I say?"

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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