Tag: science

The static answer

In related news, a similar study has determined that increased cholera outbreaks cannot be explained by rainbow-striped unicorns:

Cholera outbreaks seem to be on the increase, but a new study has found they cannot be explained by global warming…. Vibrio lives in water near river mouths, waxing and waning in cycles based on blooms of plant plankton. The plankton are eaten by tiny crustaceans to whose shells Vibrio attaches. Warmer ocean surface waters suppress plankton growth, so scientists had assumed cholera outbreaks would decrease with global warming.

So, the hypothesis was that cholera outbreaks would decrease with global warming. But the subsequent observation is that cholera outbreaks are increasing. Now, the logical mind would conclude that the most likely explanation is that global warming is therefore not taking place, even if it is possible that there is no relationship between cholera outbreaks and global temperatures. But since what presently passes for the scientific mind no longer permits the questioning of certain assumptions revealed by the Divine Consensus, the conclusion is that the hypothesis must be wrong. In fact, it must be reversed.

So, even when science is wrong, it is right. That sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it…. The question is, is this better described as “self-correction” or “the answer is static, only the question is dynamic”?

AGW/CC exploded

Those pesky Swiss just cut the legs out from under the global warming fascists:

The first results from the lab’s CLOUD (“Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets”) experiment published in Nature today confirm that cosmic rays spur the formation of clouds through ion-induced nucleation. Current thinking posits that half of the Earth’s clouds are formed through nucleation. The paper is entitled Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation.

This has significant implications for climate science because water vapour and clouds play a large role in determining global temperatures. Tiny changes in overall cloud cover can result in relatively large temperature changes.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a politically sensitive topic, as it provides support for a “heliocentric” rather than “anthropogenic” approach to climate change: the sun plays a large role in modulating the quantity of cosmic rays reaching the upper atmosphere of the Earth….

Climate models will have to be revised, confirms CERN in supporting literature: “[I]t is clear that the treatment of aerosol formation in climate models will need to be substantially revised, since all models assume that nucleation is caused by these vapours [sulphuric acid and ammonia] and water alone.”

So the globalists will be expected to provide substantially revised versions of models that already didn’t work in the first place. Is that the familiar spinning sound of scientific epicycles that I hear off in the distance?

Solve for X

If scientists wish to better understand why the rest of humanity sometimes doesn’t view Asimov’s “Nightfall” as a classic cautionary tale, but rather as a cheerful little story with a happy ending, this sort of thing might be why:

The Alliance for Human Research Protection speaks out against a US government-proposed anthrax vaccine experiment on children. Such an experiment would sacrifice children’s welfare, much as canaries sent into the coal mines were sacrificed. The National Biodefense Science Board,convened a two day meeting of the Anthrax Vaccine Working Group at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services. The July 7 meeting was open to the public, followed by a closed meeting on July 8.

I propose a new law that dictates any scientist who seriously proposes experiments on unconsenting children that involves lethal diseases be officially stripped of human status and turned over to cosmetic research laboratories. I mean, precisely how obtuse do you have to be to fail to understand that this sort of thing is simply not done?

“Performing experiments in non-consenting children, especially when they do not have a condition the experiment is designed to address, is carefully regulated.”

Carefully regulated? Why is it regulated, carefully or not? It should be completely illegal. And the Tuskeegee experiment was far from the last time this sort of thing happened, as they’re still doing similar experiments with clueless, uninformed people even today.

The amazing thing is that many scientists genuinely believe they should be running the world. I think a much more relevant debate is whether the rest of the human population should take them out and shoot them in preemptive self-defense now or simply keep a closer eye on the myopic bastards. The usual arguments about the niftyness of technology and increased populations don’t really matter all that much when the only extant threats to human existence have all been produced by scientists.

Since so few scientists, and even fewer science fans, have any capacity for comprehending logic, I will put the argument into mathematical terms. It doesn’t matter how many positive integers you add together if in the end, you multiply the sum by zero.

Here is the test: Sum(1:N)*0 = X. Solve for X. Then explain what value of N will cause a change in the value of X.

Um, that’s no planet….

First economists, then biologists. Do I really have to explain the obvious to astrophysicists too?

An alien world blacker than coal, the darkest planet known, has been discovered in the galaxy. The world in question is a giant the size of Jupiter known as TrES-2b. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft detected it lurking around the yellow sun-like star GSC 03549-02811 some 750 light years away in the direction of the constellation Draco. The researchers found this gas giant reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it darker than any planet or moon seen up to now.

“It’s just ridiculous how dark this planet is, how alien it is compared to anything we have in our solar system,” study lead-author David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com. “It’s darker than the blackest lump of coal, than dark acrylic paint you might paint with. It’s bizarre how this huge planet became so absorbent of all the light that hits it.”

It’s not ridiculous or bizarre, it’s absorbing light BECAUSE IT’S A GIANT ALIEN SPACE STATION WITH GALACTIC STEALTH TECHNOLOGY, you overeducated morons! Now, hurry up and figure out the only thing about it that really matters… is it heading this way?

It’s not all nails

I am aware certain Pharyngulans and anklebiters are dubious about the legitimacy of the intellectual contempt in which I hold one PZ Myers. They appear to genuinely believe that the Fowl Atheist is not only capable of holding his own in debate with me, but that he has only been avoiding any such encounter because his argumentative skills are so much superior to mine that it would somehow pollute them to actually put them to use.*

The fact is that PZ knows perfectly well that I will destroy every last bit of his credibility if he is ever foolish enough to permit a direct engagement again. By way of evidence, I offer his latest bit of philosophical buffoonery as but one of many examples of how PZ can’t argue his way out of a paper bag.

[L]et’s cut straight to the statement Brown finds objectionable: “Science is the only philosophical construct we have to determine TRUTH with any degree of reliability.” And there, I disagree with Brown completely: it is an eminently scientific statement. It may make philosophers gack up their breakfast, but who cares?

Science is a process of empirical rationalism that produces testable answers about the nature of the universe. We learn new knowledge, knowledge that actually holds up to critical scrutiny and testing against the real world. The pipes don’t leak — not much, anyway, and we have a method that allows us to test and tighten everything up. And yes, we have evidence that it is true: I can show you a cell phone that uses the principles of quantum physics, I can show you statistics on infant mortality that are improved by vaccinations and antibiotics and hygiene. We have progressively deeper understanding of ourselves and our environment that is produced by this powerful tool.

Science works. That is the criterion for saying it is a way “to determine truth with any degree of reliability.” That is a valid statement, and yes it can be relied on as true, in the scientist’s sense of the word: provisionally and usefully. Both of Brown’s denials were simply wrong.

But there’s another part of Kroto’s statement that bugs Brown, and that he doesn’t really address. This is the missing part of his argument, and the one he fills in by telling us that we were expected to giggle at the claim… the idea that science is the only useful tool we have.

“The illogical positivism of Kroto’s talk is symptomatic of a widespread problem. Although Kroto is exceptional in his self-confidence and lack of intellectual self-awareness – few other people would state as baldly as he does that science is the only way to establish the truth – no one in the audience seems to have reacted with a healthy giggle. They may have felt there was something a bit off about the idea, but the full absurdity was veiled by layers of deference and convention. The great attraction of telling everyone else to think, to question, and to take nothing for granted is that it makes a very pleasant substitute for doing these things yourself.”

You know, if someone tells me there is only one way of doing something, and I want to show that they’re wrong, the very first thing I think of is to demonstrate an alternative. If someone were to say something truly false and giggleworthy, like for instance, “all cats are black,” what I’d do is go out and find a Siamese and a white Persian and wave them in his face. Isn’t that obvious?

I have often heard apologists wax indignant at statements by scientists that science, that is this kind of objective, constantly tested, empirical rationalism, is the only way to determine the truth of a matter. Usually it’s theologians who want to insist that they have another path. But never do they actually show me something about which we have reliable knowledge that was not determined by observing, measuring, poking, testing, evaluating, verifying…all that stuff that is part of common, mundane science.

So show me something that we reliably know without testing it against consequences in the real world, and then maybe I’ll see the joke here.

It’s at times like this that one has no choice but to shake one’s head and realize that despite one’s contempt, one has actually somehow managed to overrate the moron.

First, as Robert Winston, the former Professor of Science and Society at Imperial College London and past Director of NHS Research and Development, Hammersmith Hospitals Trust has said, “dogmatist scientists need to be reminded, now and again, that the discipline of science is not about absolute truth.” It is not, as my erstwhile biology tutor used to say, “in the truth business”. To say “science works” is not at all synonymous with saying it has the ability “to determine truth”, much less to claim that it is “the only philosophical construct we have to determine TRUTH with any degree of reliability.” Engineering works even better than science, logic works quite effectively in most situations, and there is no shortage of empirical evidence indicating that revelation and intuition work as well.

Like all these alternative paths to knowledge, science sometimes works and sometimes does not work. There is little point in resorting to a scientific version of the Atheist Dance here, as the oft-chronicled failures and financial corruption of scientists inevitably amounts to the confirmed unreliability of science as it is actually applied in the real world. One cannot reasonably compare practical logic and practical religion with ideal science, and while one could argue that ideal science would lead to perfect understanding, the same is also true of ideal revelation, ideal logic, ideal intuition, and ideal history.

But concerning the question posed, there are so many obvious answers that it is almost astonishing to have to wave them in PZ’s bearded face. Both math and logic permit things to be reliably known without testing them against the consequences, indeed, they are often utilized by scientists in lieu of science when the scientific method cannot be applied. The same is also true of all the documentary and archeological evidence that makes up recorded human history. It would be interesting to see what sort of replicable scientific experiment one would propose testing in order to prove the historical existence of Homer, as even DNA testing of current human populations matched to ancient DNA samples would not suffice to prove that one of them once wrote The Iliad. How would science go about proving or disproving the story that George Washington chopped down the cherry tree? It might be used to establish that there was no evidence to be found indicating that cherry trees grew in Mount Vernon during the reported lifetime of “George Washington”, but that is the most it could hope to accomplish.

There are entire fields of human knowledge that have absolutely nothing to do with modern science. One cannot scientifically demonstrate that Brad loves Angelina or that Marius served as the consul of Rome seven times. PZ cannot even scientifically prove that he exists, or as Nick Bostrom would have it, that the material world even exists as anything but a sophisticated electronic simulation.

To reduce TRUTH to nothing more than “that which science can discover” is to eliminate the greater part of the truths that matter. Love, Life, Consciousness, Meaning, Purpose, and Probability are all well beyond the scope of science. Even Sam Harris would not go so far as Myers has gone, his most recent book, The Moral Landscape is nothing more than a futile attempt to, (ironically enough), make a philosophical argument for what PZ blithely asserts to be the case.

This is a deeply stupid statement by a dogmatic, mid-witted scientist who, due to his affection for his hammer, has concluded that all knowledge must necessarily be comprised of nails.

* It would be very interesting to see a Pharyngulan attempt to prove that conclusion scientifically, for as we are informed, science is the only way we could reliably determine the truth of it.

You don’t say

Instapundit notes that a common theme among the science fetishists has been disproven. Scientifically:

The more people know about science, the less they believe in global warming. “The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.”

It would be very interesting to see a similar study done of those who are skeptical of TE(p)NSBMGDaGF. On the anecdotal level, we’ve already seen that it was the evolutionary true believers who didn’t know that sexual selection is a form of natural selection. And we already know that biologists tend to be innumerate.

The brave struggle of the post-scientist

Yes, climate “scientists” are certainly struggling to explain a lot of things. This reminds me, whatever happened to all those recent claims of “the hottest year ever”?

Exponents of global warming have struggled to explain why temperatures have declined in recent years instead of rising in line with the significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers now claim that sulphur emissions from power plants in China are blocking sunlight and having a cooling effect on the atmosphere, cancelling out the effect of global warming.

The impact of the sulphur emissions has combined with a cooler stage of the sun’s cycle and a change from the El Nino to the La Nina weather system in the South Atlantic has kept temperatures artificially low, the experts argued.

If true, this could mean a change in the Sun’s 11-year cycle along with measures to refine Chinese coal boilers will cause temperatures to rise significantly.

First, I think it’s worth pointing out that until rather recently, the global warming scammers were claiming that the temperatures were rising in line with their predictions. They were cherry-picking the temperature data, but apparently the cooling trend is too large and they can’t “hide the non-incline” any longer. Second, I note that if not true, this means that these intrepid “scientists” will manufacture with yet another excuse to explain why they are still correct despite the increasing mass of empirical evidence that disproves their predictions.

Recall what I have said on numerous occasions before. Once a “science” starts manufacturing epicycles on a regular basis, it’s all over but for the burial of the previous generation (or three) of failed scientists. If the die-hard Darwinists are any example, it may take another 150 years before they begin to openly admit that their core hypothesis is simply wrong. But skeptics can be relatively certain that the die is already cast.

The West hasn’t merely entered a post-Christian phase, it appears to be on the verge of entering a post-scientific one.

Science is inferior to Revelation

If one wishes to compare the relative effectiveness of Science and Revelation, it is first necessary to be sure one is comparing apples with apples and oranges with oranges:

ONE of the great strengths of science is that it can fix its own mistakes. “There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong,” the astrophysicist Carl Sagan once said. “That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.”

If only it were that simple. 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.

Why? One simple answer is that it takes a lot of time to look back over other scientists’ work and replicate their experiments. Scientists are busy people, scrambling to get grants and tenure. As a result, papers that attract harsh criticism may nonetheless escape the careful scrutiny required if they are to be refuted…..

Even when scientists rerun an experiment, and even when they find that the original result is flawed, they still may have trouble getting their paper published. The reason is surprisingly mundane: journal editors typically prefer to publish groundbreaking new research, not dutiful replications.

In other words, real Science in practice is very different than ideal Science in theory. This is not a surprise. But it inevitably leads to the observation that if we are to compare Science and Revelation at all, we must compare theory with theory and practice with practice. The asserted superiority of Science is based on its supposedly self-correcting nature. But science that is never replicated is not going to be corrected, therefore Science in practice cannot be justified by this non-existent self-correction.

Furthermore, so long as one appeals to this nonexistent self-correction, one is appealing to an ideal Science in theory. But to this, one must compare a similarly ideal Revelation in theory. And, obviously, a direct line of information from the Creator of the Universe is far superior to a mere repetition of a scientific experiment; in this specific case, a literal appeal to legitimate divine authority is no logical fallacy. From the Platonic perspective, it is clear that ideal Science is inferior to ideal Revelation.

The remaining question is if the flawed version of Science as it is actually practiced, without self-correction, is superior to whatever flawed versions of Revelation are practiced, to the extent we can even hope to distinguish between the real and the flawed forms of the latter.

As for the appeal to Carl Sagan’s reasoning, we need merely note that Sagan is know to be either a historical illiterate or a deeply dishonest science propagandist; in either case, one has little choice but to dismiss his judgment with regards to the subject.

Fred on evolutionism

As any fully sentient human must be, Fred is an evolution skeptic:

Evolutionists espouse the mechanistic and deterministic view, though more as metaphysics than science. Selective pressures, plausible though not measurable, defined, or confirmed, push evolution in certain directions. Much of it is wonderfully questionable, but we will pass over this. The evolutionist, again meaning the sort for whom evolution must explain all human behavior, falls into difficulties when he considers humanity.

Consider morality. For the evolutionist, everything must be explained in terms of maximizing the production of offspring so that, for example, honesty serves to promote cohesion in hunting bands, making them more efficient and therefore having more children. Right and wrong do not exist, nor Good and Evil, as these have no meaning within evolutionism unless they can be tied to fecundity.

Which leads the evolutionist into logical swamps. I have asked such people why I should not make a hobby of torturing to death the genetically feeble-minded. In evolutionary terms, killing them is a good idea, as it reduces the diversion of resources in maintaining them and raises the average intelligence of the group.

How they are killed has no evolutionary importance, and in any event executing them with a blowtorch would consist merely in substituting certain chemical reactions for others: Pain has no existence in physics.

Of course if I actually did such a thing, the evangelists of scientism would be horrified. They are not immoral. They just can’t explain why they are not.

I now await with no little pleasure the predictable attempts to redirect the discussion from the obvious problems with evolution to religion, creationism, and intelligent design in lieu of actually attempting to defend their “theorum”. Note to the insufficiently read: “theorum” is the word for a a statement that has been not proven on the basis of previously established statements, but one that credentialed midwits would like you to accept at face value.

The humility of science

In the middle of Jonah Goldberg’s tribute to his father is this little gem that testifies to the need for Man to be humble about his knowledge and abilities.

At Thanksgiving every year as the carving of the turkey got underway, he would note that if there was a planet of super-intelligent turkeys watching all this, the spectacle would be worse than any horror movie ever seen. At the end of the meal, he would always look at the remains of the carcass on the platter and ask me, gravely, “Jonah, Do you think if we assembled the greatest doctors and scientists in the world, we’d be able to save this bird’s life?”

If there is any doubt that there was greatness in the soul of Goldberg senior, consider the following observation.

“The editorial is an encomium to Kerouac’s genius, that he was a “master of haiku.” The only problem is that haiku is the most rigid poetic form–17 syllables in three lines of 5 , 7, and 5 syllables each, a form set in concrete for three or four centuries–and, as NYT points out, Kerouac was able to overcome this and do haiku in different numbers of syllables, not even adding up to 17…. The examples cited by NYT editorial are pure crap.”

It is remarkable how much unmitigated bullshit one can see through if one merely refuses to assume that others, particularly those with the highest standing and most impeccable credentials, actually know whereof they speak. Don’t trust, just verify.