Tag: science

Dinosaur science

The OC suggests a new theory that explains the disappearance of the dinosaurs. “I wonder how all those dinosaurs managed to get to Titan in order to die and leave those vast oceans of volatile liquid hydrocarbons?” But the answer is so obvious. Rockets. It’s dinosaur science and the global consensus of astrosaurinauticists is totally settled.

The bracing -180°C temperatures prevalent on Titan mean that water ice acts more the way rock does here on Earth, and the liquids filling the seas and lakes are hydrocarbons which would be gaseous here – methane, ethane and such – though of course we humans like to liquefy and store them under pressure to run our barbecues, patio heaters etc. Just as water does here, however, the patio-gas seas evaporate when conditions are favourable to form clouds and fog, which subsequently rain down as LPG elsewhere. Earth and Titan are thus the only bodies in the solar system with surface geology moulded by movements of liquid.

And clearly, Earth and Titan are the only bodies in the solar system to have been colonized by spacefaring dinosaurs; the Sea of Krakens must have been their sacred burial ground. But this discovery of dinosaur space travel is even more significant than the OC imagines, since it could have incredible ramifications for biology as well… my hypothesis is that Man was not only bred, but uplifted by these spacefaring dinosaurs as well, hence the sudden increase in cranial size that paleontologists find so puzzling. Because artificial selection is known to be so much faster than natural selection, the Dinosaur Science hypothesis offers the perfect solution for Young Earth Creationists, Evolutionists, UFOlogists and Pan-Spermians alike. As for the Chicxulub and Barringer sites, it is now apparent that those were the dinosaur equivalents of Cape Canaveral and Volograd.

And now we have finally have the answer to the nature of God. Saurian.

Now I’m just wondering if the Nobel Committee is going to have to hold off another year on awarding me the Physics prize for the discovery of Dark Vapor, since obviously establishing such a ground-breaking scientific theory of this multidisciplinary significance will have to take precedence.

Godless and clueless

This science-related news is precisely why I find the constant atheist whining about nonexistent religious threats to science to be not only spurious, but downright nonsensical:

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students. The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High’s School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley’s dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

The average atheist who considers himself to be a strong supporter of science is far more worried about warning stickers on evolution textbooks than he is about the elimination of all science labs and the science teachers who teach them at a major high school. I’ll be surprised if this news gets one-tenth the attention on Scienceblogs that the average evolution-related kerfluffle at a school board does. You may recall that the usual suspects weren’t the least bit concerned about the coming application of Title IX quotas to science either.

It’s apparent that it’s not so much science that the godless self-proclaimed devotees of “science” and “reason” support, but rather scienthology. And being ideologically unsophisticated, they can’t even imagine a threat to science coming from the Left because they wrongly believe science to be inherently progressive. This also demonstrates that their devotion to reason is as tenuous as their supposed dedication to science.

Fractured physics and the death of Darwin

I’ve been paying closer attention to the LHC experiment than I normally would because I’m very curious to see how stubbornly scientists will cling to theories should they be proven outmoded by the very experiments designed to support them:

ormer Harvard professor Shahriar Afshar said that failure to find the particle would bring current scientific theory tumbling down like a house of cards with nothing to replace it. The controversial physicist, whose Afshar experiment has already found a loophole in quantum theory, said that unless the scienitific community starts contemplating a “plan B”, failure could lead to “chaos and infighting”.

He said failure will undermine more than a hundred years of scientific theory and undermine some of the mainstays of sceintific thinking, the Standard Model, a general theory of how particles fit together to create matter.

I’ve also found it to be interesting how in physics – real science – there is very little, if any, of the defensive and irrational babbling often heard from true-believing TENS advocates about how a lack of an alternative theory somehow justifies the continued use of a theory already known to be intrinsically flawed. It is usually easier to show that a suggested answer is incorrect than it is to come up with a plausible alternative answer, and it should not be forgotten that through eliminating false pathways, negative results also represent scientific advancement.

As I have consistently suggested, TENS is not only a predictively useless model, but a scientifically flimsy one as well. In fact, it is looking increasingly likely that it will be abandoned by the scientific consensus during our lifetimes. Once I began studying the subject, it was immediately obvious to me that critics had been focusing on the less vulnerable parts of the theory from the start; it is the natural selection element that has even less reliable scientific evidence to support it than speciation or the concept of evolution itself.

Consider the results of some of the first methodical scientific research into the natural selection hypothesis:

The new research, carried out by Mark Pagel and colleagues at the University of Reading, in England, studied 101 groups of plant and animal species and analyzed the lengths of branches in the evolutionary trees of thousands of species within these groups. The lengths of the branches are a measure of the time elapsed between two species branching off.

The researchers then compared four models of speciation to determine which best accounted for the rate of speciation actually found. The Red Queen hypothesis, of species arising as a result of an accumulation of small changes, fitted only eight percent of the evolutionary trees. A model in which species arise from single rare events fitted eighty percent of the trees.

Dr Pagel said that the research shows speciation is the result of rare events in the environment, such as genetic mutations, a shift in climate, or a mountain range rising up. Over the long term new species are formed at a constant rate, rather than the variable rate Pagel’s team expected, but the constant rates are different for different groups of species.

The work suggests that natural selection may not be the cause of speciation, which Pagel said “really goes against the grain” for scientists who have a Darwinian view of evolution. The model that provided the best fit for the data is surprisingly incompatible with the idea that speciation is a result of many small small events,

Now, this research deals with the matter of natural selection’s time scale rather than its existence, but nevertheless underlines my point that the natural selection hypothesis has always been logic, not science. The fact that it is difficult and dangerous to paint grizzly bears pink in order to see if they breed less successfully doesn’t change the fact that no one has ever tested the widespread assumption of why polar bears are white. And while the jury is still out on both matters, the exposed cracks in the major theories naturally leads to a philosophical question: since the foundations of both modern physics and modern Darwinism appear to be wobbling, what is the basis for considering materialism to be rational given such demonstrably flawed understandings of what the material happens to be?

Mailvox: science is a thing of the past

A mathematician/physicist writes of the negative effect peer review has on science:

I am writing concerning some pieces of yours I’ve seen which appear to be examining the peer review process in science. There can be little doubt that the peer review system presently in place is flawed, to the extent that it is doing science a grave disservice. I have now retired after being a senior lecturer at an English university in mathematics until 2002, before transferring to physics where I remained until retirement in 2008. In that time I have seen the reviewing standards in many of the so-called prestigious physics journals, as well as more general journals such as Nature, slump. I have also noted a difference in attitude from editors. Now they usually refuse to discuss any submission; if a paper is rejected, that is normally the end of the matter.

I catalogued cases in a number of areas of physics in a book “Exploding a Myth: ‘Conventional Wisdom’ or Scientific Truth?” There is little doubt, although I cannot prove it, that those controlling science and scientific funding in the UK would not have wanted this book publicised since, if the general public became aware of what is really going on, they might be less inclined to fund these hugely expensive dubious projects like the Large Hadron Collider and LISA. Incidentally you might be interested in some of the cases I discussed, particularly the one where I and a colleague took Nature to the Press Complaints Authority – and won. It’s worth noting that “Against the Tide” by Martin Corredoira and Carlos Perelman is similarly not as well known as it should be. It too reveals much of what’s going on in science. It should be realised that everything simply supports the status quo; anything that might rock the boat is buried. Hence, truly original science is becoming a thing of the past.

It sounds like a pair of interesting books, well worth checking out. What far too many scienthologists fail to understand is that it is not the critics of science who pose a real and present danger to science, but rather the very scientists whose abuse and misuse of it are being criticized. If the public begins to tire of funding science, which is a probability in the more negative economic scenarios, scientists will have no one to blame but the charlatans and ideologues in their midst.

Climategate: a prediction

This time, it’s bound to be right. But when did the scientific method become: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

Copenhagen climate conference: Met Office predict 2010 will be warmest on record. A new forecast for 2010 predicted it will be almost 1F (0.6C) higher than the long term average of 57F (14C) across the globe as a result of natural weather patterns and global warming…. However skeptics point out that the Met Office said 2007 would be the warmest on record, but it was not in the top five.

A “new forecast”? One that unexpectedly predicts record heat, no less? How very timely! I have little doubt that there was a “scientific” debate at Met Office that went something like this:

Scientist #1: “We need to do something to distract the press from that $%*#($% Jones and his leaked emails.”

Scientist #2: “Well, the PR boffins said they have almost two thousand signatures on the integrity statement.”

Scientist #3: (sarcastically) “Yeah, $*%”&*($# brilliant! ‘You think we’re fabricating the data already, so we’re going to throw more data you won’t believe at you.'”

Scientist #1: “Nine out of ten scientists believe that scientists have integrity… hmmmm, that wasn’t the best idea.”

Scientist #2: “Well, they did the falling polar bears… yeah, we really need a new PR agency.”

Scientist #1: “So, what do we do?”

Scientist #3: “We tell them that next year is going to be the Ecopolypse. Hell on Earth. The hottest on record. If they’re not scared any more, then we need to crank it up to eleven. New York under water. Polar bears stalking the streets of London. Artic beach vacations.”

Scientist #2: “But models say that it’s going to be relatively cool!”

Scientist #3: “So what? When have our models ever been right? Our climate models suck so completely that Tiger hit on them at the last British Open. It’s a no-lose proposition. Sure, we’ll probably get it wrong and then we’ll have to hope the media will cover our asses. But they’ve been solid on the CRU leak, and if we get it right, we’re @*%#(%^* gold!”

Scientist #1: “Actually, if I run Mike’s Nature trick on the latest GISS numbers, it could be 0.2F hotter next year.”

Scientist #3: “&*%* that 0.2F! We need one whole $*%$&(#$*%&$*% degree. It’s got to be simple enough that every idiot dumb enough to take this $*%! literally will do a linear extrapolation and panic when they realize that in a century, it will be 100 degrees hotter!”

Scientist #2: “You really think we can get away with it?”

Scientist #3: “Why not? We did in 2007.”

Digging deeper

Malcolm Gladwell simply isn’t smart enough to know when it’s time to throw in the towel:

First, the editorial in question made a number of other arguments that, I think, most observers would agree fall on one end of the nature-nurture continuum: that all IQ tests measure the same thing, that heredity is more important that environment in determining it, that group differences are relatively unaffected by schooling or socioeconomic factors. It also said that the IQs of different races cluster at different points, with the average IQ of blacks falling about a standard deviation lower than that of whites, and that these differences show no sign of converging over time.

Actually, first should have been Gladwell admitting that his statement about there being “no connection” between NFL draft order and quarterback performance is completely, utterly and provably false. But let’s summarize the points Gladwell makes in his continuing attempt to steer the discussion away from his egregious blunder by attacking “Stephen” Pinker. (The man’s name is actually Steven Pinker – you’d think Gladwell could get it straight by his second letter addressing Pinker’s criticism.)

1. Something Gladwell thinks about what most people would agree about an article. Who cares what Gladwell thinks about what people would agree with or not? And what does this old editorial have to do with Gladwell’s hypothesis about NFL quarterbacks anyhow? Irrelevant.

2. Only one-third of the editorial board signed the statement. BFD, especially since Gladwell doesn’t know the others “declined” to sign it, he only knows they didn’t sign it. Conclusion unsupported by facts.

3. The editorial appeared in the Wall Street Journal! Well, then it must be false, right? Genetic fallacy. And still irrelevant.

4. 14 of 52 signatories had received funding from an organization that Gladwell doesn’t like. Genetic fallacy #2. And, yes, still irrelevant.

5. I don’t know enough about a 1996 APA report on intelligence to judge if Gladwell’s summary of it is correct or not. But regardless, what does what Gladwell describes as its oppposition to “IQ fundamentalism” have to do with NFL quarterbacks and draft position anyway? All Gladwell has managed to prove proves is how far he is willing to stray from the original subject in attempting to poison the well against Pinker’s correct criticism of his egregious blunder regarding NFL quarterbacks.

However, Steve Sailer insists that there is method to Gladwell’s seeming madness:

[Y]ou’ve got to admit that Gladwell has a point: if people can make more accurate than random predictions about which college quarterbacks will be better than other college quarterbacks, then they can make predictions about more politically incorrect things, too. Thus, Gladwell wages relentless war upon predictions, upon quantitative thinking, upon science, indeed, upon that ultimate evil: knowledge.

It is no surprise that Gladwell is predisposed to attack both knowledge and the scientific fact of inherited intelligence, given how it is eminently clear that the man doesn’t possess a great deal of either.

NO evidence for global warming

Perhaps in part due to my respect for actual science, I find most scientists to be contemptible. But this news exceeds even my cynically low expectations of the charlatans. Is throwing out the original data really the scientific norm these days? Because I can testify that game developers, engineers, and computer programmers are all significantly more rigorous about protecting and saving their legacy information.

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation….

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Hang on… until yesterday, weren’t the CRU scientists claiming they weren’t providing the data because they had obtained it from various governmental organizations who held the rights to it and they had no permission to release it to the public? Was Real Climate deceived by the CRU or was Real Climate lying when they wrote the following on November 23, 2009: “CRU data accessibility. From the date of the first FOI request to CRU (in 2007), it has been made abundantly clear that the main impediment to releasing the whole CRU archive is the small % of it that was given to CRU on the understanding it wouldn’t be passed on to third parties.”

This is more than a smoking howitzer, it’s a meganuke that would – in a rational world of genuine science – blow away the AGW/CC charade permanently. It also proves that scientists should always be regarded as shady con men unless and until the scientific evidence they produce in support of their hypotheses indicates otherwise. Needless to say, all of “the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data” should immediately join the original data in the trash Every so-called “scientist” at the CRU who was involved with this fraud should be immediately fired. And those who stole taxpayer money on the basis of the scam should be prosecuted, along with those who junked the data if they did so – as suggested in the CRU emails – in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Score yet another one for the scientific skeptic. Never place any trust in an expert who can’t explain himself to your satisfaction. Especially when he’s asking you for money.

More climate fraud

This time, it’s in New Zealand:

The New Zealand Government’s chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn’t there. The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre. In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend…. But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result.

Worldwide fears? More like worldwide conclusions. I’m not at all surprised. The strong probability is that it has ALL been more or less faked, so the more closely the climate data is examined, the more likely it is that some amount of fraud is going to be detected. This is why no “scientific consensus” that does not involve genuinely observable and replicable science should ever be considered science. Today’s scientists held a position of public respect that relied on the successes of their predecessors but they have been shown to be unworthy of it with their stupid and shabby attempts to pass of non-science as science.

Science is not, and never will be, “what scientists happen to believe now”. That’s merely opinion, and often it’s not even informed, educated, or honest opinion.

Incredibly, the snake-oil salesmen are still trying to sell their con job to the public: “Tuesday’s report said no credible science supports an alternative hypothesis for the warming trend. Each year this decade has been among the top 10 warmest years since instrumental records began, the scientists said. ‘The science is quite decisive,’ said Michael Mann, a professor at Penn State University. ‘There is a very robust consensus about the reality of climate change and the need to confront it quickly.'”

That, by the way, is the very Michael Mann who created the “hockey stick” fraud. And unless instrumental records only began ten years ago, each year this decade has NOT been among the top ten warmest years on record. The hottest ten years according NASA’s GISS are:

  1. 1934
  2. 1998
  3. 1921
  4. 2006
  5. 1931
  6. 1999
  7. 1953
  8. 1990
  9. 1938
  10. 1939

The smoking howitzer

As bad as they are, the hacked CRU emails are actually turning out to be less damning than the comments made by the unfortunate programmer who was saddled with the responsibility for trying to transform the morass of data collected by the climatologists into something that was actually coherent and usable.

This is not good — the existing program produces a serious error when it’s run on what is supposed to be the old, working data. Harry presses on, finding a solution to that bug, going through many more issues as he tried to recreate the results of these runs for the data from 1901 to 1995. Finally he gives up. He has spoken to someone about what should be done:

AGREED APPROACH for cloud (5 Oct 06).
For 1901 to 1995 – stay with published data. No clear way to replicate process as undocumented.
For 1996 to 2002:
1. convert sun database to pseudo-cloud using the f77 programs;
2. anomalise wrt 96-00 with anomdtb.f;
3. grid using quick_interp_tdm.pro (which will use 6190 norms);
4. calculate (mean9600 – mean6190) for monthly grids, using the published cru_ts_2.0 cloud data;
5. add to gridded data from step 3.
This should approximate the correction needed.

Catch that? They couldn’t recreate the results, so they’re going back to their published data for the first 95 years of the 20th century. Only …

Next problem — which database to use? The one with the normals included is not appropriate (the conversion progs do not look for that line so obviously are not intended to be used on +norm databases).

They still don’t know what to use for the next several years. Harry gives up; it’s easier to write new codes.

22. Right, time to stop pussyfooting around the niceties of Tim’s labyrinthine software suites – let’s have a go at producing CRU TS 3.0! since failing to do that will be the definitive failure of the entire project.

This kind of thing is as fascinating as a soap opera, but I want to know how it comes out. Near the bottom of the file, I find:

I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can’t get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections – to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more.

The file peters out, no conclusions. I hope they find this poor guy, and he didn’t hang himself in his rooms or something, because this file is a summary of three years of trying to get this data working. Unsuccessfully. I think there’s a good reason the CRU didn’t want to give their data to people trying to replicate their work. It’s in such a mess that they can’t replicate their own results.

The appearance of these comments is particularly interesting in how it shows that the so-called “scientists” involved in the Great Global Warming Scam are not only committing blatant scientific fraud, they’re technologically incompetent to boot. Compare this fiasco with the emulator scene, where old and outdated software from decades ago, which is almost surely more complex than mere temperature data sets, is reliably supported by each new generation of hardware… at zero cost to the taxpayer or anyone else! The AGW/CC “scientists” are contemptible on several levels; only the completely clueless or totally corrupt would permit these dishonest bumblers any input whatsoever on globally significant matters of climate, economy, or government.

60 percent and make it tight

That’s the ideal covered/uncovered ratio. It is science:

Women who revealed around 40 per cent of their skin attracted twice as many men as those who covered up. However, those who exposed any more than this also fared worse…. The study, published in the journal Behaviour, found that the most popular women combined the 40 per cent rule with tight clothing and provocative dancing. The 15 per cent that combined all three criteria were approached by 40 men each.

That sounds reasonable enough. I tend to prefer something more on the order of 65 percent visible myself, but then, I’m not as easily threatened by the thought of competition as most men are. And, of course, it also depends upon the shape of that which is being exposed to the light; there are terrible forms better suited to mad Lovecraftian visions than night clubs that no man wants to see uncovered.

And it’s good that the researchers picked up on the tight thing. I am still amazed that women in the early 90s thought the baggy grunge look worked for any of them. You’d think they would have noticed that the man who popularized it married Courtney Love. All that oversized and baggy clothes do is make a woman look fat and insecure, even when she isn’t.