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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On 1-10-2011 23:21, Darren New wrote:
> 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?"

You might give some remarks on why it is important and hint at places 
where having read this article earlier might have saved you some 
trouble. Perhaps even point to a field the authors did not mention and 
might have overlooked, while including it would make the paper stronger.

If I have a good paper under review I sometimes do things like that. 
Reviewing is more than pointing at the errors, you try to improve the 
article in any way you can. The highest honour you can get as a reviewer 
is 'we thank an anonymous reviewer' in the acknowledgements. I have not 
achieved that yet. :(

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

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>> I thought they still pretty much do that. Granted real scientists don't
>> follow the steps with absolute rigor. They may form an idea of what they
>> think should happen, then test by experimentation, record their results,
>> then try to repeat the results, then have peers repeat the results.
>
> That happens in some classrooms, but it's not as widespread as it should
> be.
>
> And we wonder why US students "fail" at math&  science in the real world.

To be fair, while the US is legendary for stupidity, there are plenty of 
stupid people in other countries too. Visit any shop while the computers 
are down and watch the poor checkout girl struggle to compute £2.99 + 
£4.85. Watch, and sigh.

>> Definitely. Rote memorization teaches nothing, except how to memorize.
>
> Exactly, and primary school is supposed to (or should be) be about
> learning how to learn rather than how to memorize.

But testing whether you've memorised specific facts is way easier than 
testing whether you're actually stupid or not.

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On Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:07:54 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> Definitely. Rote memorization teaches nothing, except how to memorize.
>>
>> Exactly, and primary school is supposed to (or should be) be about
>> learning how to learn rather than how to memorize.
> 
> But testing whether you've memorised specific facts is way easier than
> testing whether you're actually stupid or not.

Well, that's true, but if we're talking about measuring IQ, that's one 
thing.  Testing whether you can do stuff is actually not that difficult 
to do or evaluate.  You have someone do the job (or tasks of the job) and 
evaluate their performance.

It's time consuming, but it's not actually that difficult to do, 
especially if you're focused on the end results rather than how they got 
there (as long as it's within a certain period of time).

Jim

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>>>> Definitely. Rote memorization teaches nothing, except how to memorize.
>>>
>>> Exactly, and primary school is supposed to (or should be) be about
>>> learning how to learn rather than how to memorize.
>>
>> But testing whether you've memorised specific facts is way easier than
>> testing whether you're actually stupid or not.
>
> Well, that's true, but if we're talking about measuring IQ, that's one
> thing.  Testing whether you can do stuff is actually not that difficult
> to do or evaluate.  You have someone do the job (or tasks of the job) and
> evaluate their performance.
>
> It's time consuming, but it's not actually that difficult to do,
> especially if you're focused on the end results rather than how they got
> there (as long as it's within a certain period of time).

I don't know about other countries, but here the entire educational 
system seems to be focused on meeting targets and out-competing other 
schools. Measuring whether the pupils at your school understand the 
scientific method is hard; measuring whether they know Snell's Law is easy.

(Yet another example of how competition is always a bad thing.)

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On Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:02:50 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> I don't know about other countries, but here the entire educational
> system seems to be focused on meeting targets and out-competing other
> schools. Measuring whether the pupils at your school understand the
> scientific method is hard; measuring whether they know Snell's Law is
> easy.

No.  Measuring whether your pupils understand the scientific method is 
time consuming, not hard.

Memorizing a formula is not difficult for most people.  Being able to 
apply that formula in a real world situation (knowing that it applies, 
and which formula applies) is harder because it requires cognitive 
abilities and reasoning.

I remember arguing with my physics professor about this when I was at 
university.  I was taking engineering physics as a computer science 
student (and so was in a programme that represented < 10% of the students 
in the class) and we were required to memorise formulas for the exams.

I maintained that it was more important for me to know how to use the 
formula, as in a situation where I would be developing a simulation used 
to train pilots (as a concrete example), I'd be verifying the formula to 
use before coding it using a reference, just to be sure it was right 
because it is a high stakes situation that requires the formula be 
correct.

But my use case, had I continued down that career path, would be to need 
formulas infrequently, since once it was in code, it could be part of a 
reusable library so I wouldn't *have* to remember it.

Of course, in the prof's mind, this was wrong, and as a result, I didn't 
recall the formula when it came time to take the exams, and I failed the 
course.

But to this day, I know I was correct in my use case analysis and what 
was important for me as a CS student was knowing *when* to use the 
formula, not *what* the formula was.

> (Yet another example of how competition is always a bad thing.)

When one deals in absolutes, one is usually wrong or being hyperbolic.

Jim

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