Sort of reminded of the movie The Andromeda Strain when it turns out the two town's people who survived exposure to the virus/organism one had a highly acidic blood PH (from drinking too much sterno) and the other was a baby who was sick and cried so much his blood PH on the opposite end. All purely fictional of course.
Anti-Science
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
I'd like to think of myself as a budding young scientist... And one thing I've learned is not take the media at face value when they're discussing scientific news. You might think, "well, that's obvious!" But I'm not strictly talking about the likes of the Daily Mail etc. Even 'reputed' scientific outlets and even journals themselves have agendas to push. Hence why I now always go for the published papers themselves and strip to the bare-bones of the methods and results due to publication bias.
That's one of the main characteristics of postmodernism - the plurality of truth, the rejection of objective reality, rationality and other principles of the Enlightenment. It's troubling to myself but it's the times we live in and I think it will only get worse in the near future, until it gets better.
I think it's that acting (not well) is far easier than making a big audience laugh and be content multiple times a week.
Even doing stand up well is hard when you get punters who don't understand it or decide to be cocks and ruin your act. Nevermind when you do it not so well.
Drink all the soap.alkalize your body
It's yanks innit.
That's what I thought. Them and the uneducated parts of their world. It's weird how they make up both end of the spectrum in this.
I heard the other day from a scientist that physics can only explain 4% of everything in the universe. You wouldn't back a horse on odds like that...
I think this is the crux of the matter and is more prevalent today than it has been before. One of the reason is that the "expert opinion" on a matter is so highly valued, that people with vested interest will do whatever they can to secure one. I think the best example is how the sugar lobby bought several highly renowned scientist and doctors in the 60's and together they pretty much laid the groundwork for the current diabetes epedemic
Especially when it comes to stuff like health, nutrition and drugs, there is A LOT of dissent in the scientific community, simply because there is so much money to be made here and therefore its inevitable that someone gets bought. Same goes for stuff like political science, where you can't really monetize it in the same fashion, but having a someone with a PhD on "your side" is still very valuable to some people.
Hell, even in stuff like history there is massive agendas and biases. I remember when i wrote my Masters and did my research, i came across a lot of shit that would make the History Channel seem like a bastion of truth. One would think there would be no vested interests in something like Roman history, but oh boy there was. One big thing was of course religion and the other one was immigration
Spot on. Many people don't want to get challenged nevermind consume media or research that opposes with their world view. Instead they create a echo chamber that just further increases their biases. One of the biggest issues is that these agenda driven documentaries and "experts" are much more brazen in their claims these day and have a pretty loose definition of what the truth is.
Things like "Ancient Aliens" are pretty harmless imo because of how ridiculous it is, much more dangerous are the ones who are actually (or seem) intelligent and well reasoned, but spout complete garbage. One of the best examples i can think of is Stefan Molyneux who is a libertarianist/anarchist youtube philosopher. Imo, he is charismatic, seem fairly intelligent and often supports his arguments with stats and sources. The problem is that he nothing but a demagogue who pushes a clear agenda and often his views are either harmful or downright dangerous. He also calls his videos "The truth about [x]" which plays right into the hands of reactionaries, conspiracy nuts and "redpilled" people who think they are the ones who only see the truth.
The other day, i came across this gem on youtube..i means FFS.
Sounds like an over-estimate if anything. We don't know anything about the universe outside the observable universe, and even of that there's so little data we have and most of it reflects the universe as it was billions of years ago. We don't know how much we don't know. On the other hand, outside the sciences we can't explain anything at all about natural phenomena we've observed. Something is better than nothing.
It isn't?Yes, there's quite an amazing bunch of people who actually believe the earth is flat
I'm familiar with his work. He's a bad motherfecker. Proper mental too. He's got some genuinely loony tunes ideas about parenting and early childhood experiences.
This whole "youtube science digest" stuff is a big problem. Everyone thinks they're a scientist now. Just because some prick like this shows a few power point slides of scatter charts and cherry-picks a select few studies which support his agenda.
That saying about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing has never been more true.
It's the age of disinformation.
The other 96% is explained on a geocities website with flashing green text.
Except that Physics, or any other science, struggle to explain what 100% means.
I do agree with the sentiment though.
Following the Lambda-CDM model (ΛCDM; standard model of big bang cosmology) physicists come to the conclusion that 95,1% oft the total mass-energy of the universe is dark matter and dark energy, while only 4,9% is ordinary matter.
That's where the 4% figure is coming from.
Ok I got one for you, a friend's mother had cancer caused by asbestos because she worked all her life in a trucking company and her office was level where the trucks got repaired, the brakes they use are made of asbestos and with all the years breathing the nice dust she got cancer on her lungs, they gave her a few months to live so she offered to be a guinea pig to any new medicine (University of Pennsylvania), well however they did she survived from cancer. Now gets better, my brother-in-law got cancer on his ...ass and he went to the same hospital and when I was talking with his doctor he told me they don't do any research in cancer (which is a big lie, is an University so they do research in many things and having so many good cancer doctors I'm sure they research on that), what got me was his change from a nice guy to an offensive guy. In US everybody wins with cancer, hospitals, doctors and big pharma but not in Europe so if is any cure I truly believe we would know.
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Aha, cheers. Although I wouldn't use those words myself, I can understand what they mean by it
Essentially everything you can "see" in the universe is part of the 4,x% and consist of leptons(electrons) and quarks. (every atom; every star; most of this is called baryonic matter)
Dark matter (~27%) must have energy and mass, but is probably non-baryonic in nature. We can observe dark matter only indirectly due to its gravitational effects on this 4,x%. So it must be there, but it doesn't interact with the electromagnetic force (=So it doesn't interact with light).
There are theoretical speculations what this could be, but it is difficult to test these things yet. There is a very small possibility that dark matter could be created with the large Hadron collider in Cern. It is more likely that this is not going to happen, because we don't have the necessary energy to do so. The most likely candidate for this form of matter are "weakly interacting massive particles" (WIMPs; that is an umbrella term for many different particles, that are not part of the so-called "standard-model" of particle physics). They were probably produced in the early universe, when energy levels were much higher and now they are just chilling around without doing much.
The biggest part is dark energy (~69%). We know very little about it. It is probably the reason why our universe is expanding. It behaves more or less like what Einstein introduced as cosmological constant (~fundamental characteristic of space in the sense that space itself has energy; "vacuum energy"). Yet nobody has imo really a clue what to make of it. Well. At least I don't.
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You obviously know a lot about this. Simple question. If the universe is expanding does that mean dark matter is growing or is the dark matter just becoming stretched?
Dark energy is likely eating up the dark matter and hence speeding up the expansion of the universe, as it acts against gravity.
Yeah, there will always be idiots who deny things just to be heard, but I've not seen any reputable scientists denying climate change. It's almost as bad when you had people in the 90/00s coming out saying things like cities will be flooding by now. It gives validity to the deniers.
I always think it's a strange argument when people say the pharma companies are hiding the cure from us. If any of them ever comes up with a cure for cancer they would become the biggest, richest company the world has ever seen.
The simplest way to think about it is the following:
think of particles floating in a fish-tank (the 4,x% normal matter + the 27% dark matter). When you double the volume of the tank, the particles will spread out further, which means that the density of the particles decrease ("there is more water between each particle"). Dark energy is a property of space itself. It always stays the same "per volume". So the larger space gets, the larger are the distances between matter (e.g. atoms). Consequently the relative amount of matter (=normal matter + dark matter) compared to dark energy decreases. If you make space big enough, you'll end up with almost no matter per volume while dark energy is still constant per volume.
Matter has the characteristic to gravitate towards one another. If that would be all we know, we'd expect that the matter would end up in "one big blop" (=> all matter compresses in a tiny amount of space). That would mean that we'd live in a universe that expanded for some time (due to the big bang) but after enough time gravity would take over and the universe would contract/collapse ("big crunch"). That was actually the opinion till about 1998.
Yet astronomers found out that this is not actually true. The universe didn't just initially expand (due to the big bang), but the expansion accelerated after a while. So there has to be a force, that counteracts the impact of gravity. This force is called dark energy. Measurements come up with something like 0.0069 trillionths of a gramme per cubic kilometer of space (thats about 200 billion times smaller than a grain of sand). Thats not a lot, but overall there is a lot of space in the universe. On average that force is stronger than the force of gravity that is created by the matter.
Shortly after the big bang, matter was still very concentrated. Relatively speaking there were a lot of particles floating around in very little space; => dark energy played almost no role. Yet the bigger our universe gets, the bigger the role of dark energy becomes.
Nobody fully understands the exact mechanism behind dark energy. There are different interpretations that are all quite raw. One way to look at it is by adopting ideas of Quantum mechanics. Using slang words: empty space is not really empty but a boiling sea of virtual particles, that jump in and out of existence ("vacuum fluctuations"). This might explain the dark energy. The problem is: Theories that could describe this vacuum fluctuation/vacuum energy as source for the cosmological constant (dark energy) come up with numbers that are clearly wrong (about 100 magnitudes to large!). So theory is just not there yet to explain our observations properly.
Science is just a method and the further away we go, the more you need to be critical because it is not an even playing field. The only place science can effect you is in your head and maybe it filters down elsewhere 
So in my mind people have to discern the difference between what is the truth and are we being led OR is our reality being influenced by things that are promoted in media (books,magazines, news papers, radio, tv etc) ? Is it a coincidence that much of todays narrative was in early science fiction? The problem is when people get educated to a degree they get prideful. Which creates a split and then what is the incentive or someone with a degree say, to listen to someone that in their eyes - is uneducated? I think people just need to be more honest. Science or the concept is fine - but before it rips the mat from under your feet - question it? It used to be a physical reality. It used to be you were your DNA. It used to be that the moon had no atmoshpere. Etc. Etc. They keep moving the goalposts and people say learning is continual? But to be so fast as to make (what we are to assume) is an assumption in the first place - isn't science to begin with. And then we remember! Science is just an intellectual idea. We supposedly thought it up as a method of deduction and reasoning. Society isn't set up in a way, however, that rewards failure and that puts a lot of pressure on scientists etc and that means people require more and more faith - especially when you deal with so much theory. Until it merges into religion and a religion that costs people are awful lot of money. Now, what possible reason do people have to be anti-science? Science is however dangerous in the wrong hands, especially when they mislead you or lie to you.
So in my mind people have to discern the difference between what is the truth and are we being led OR is our reality being influenced by things that are promoted in media (books,magazines, news papers, radio, tv etc) ? Is it a coincidence that much of todays narrative was in early science fiction? The problem is when people get educated to a degree they get prideful. Which creates a split and then what is the incentive or someone with a degree say, to listen to someone that in their eyes - is uneducated? I think people just need to be more honest. Science or the concept is fine - but before it rips the mat from under your feet - question it? It used to be a physical reality. It used to be you were your DNA. It used to be that the moon had no atmoshpere. Etc. Etc. They keep moving the goalposts and people say learning is continual? But to be so fast as to make (what we are to assume) is an assumption in the first place - isn't science to begin with. And then we remember! Science is just an intellectual idea. We supposedly thought it up as a method of deduction and reasoning. Society isn't set up in a way, however, that rewards failure and that puts a lot of pressure on scientists etc and that means people require more and more faith - especially when you deal with so much theory. Until it merges into religion and a religion that costs people are awful lot of money. Now, what possible reason do people have to be anti-science? Science is however dangerous in the wrong hands, especially when they mislead you or lie to you.Sorry that I can't follow your post, ask questions to clarify for me and comment. But I'm most sorry to hear your BIL has cancer and do hope he survives. See also my unsolicited advice in the last paragraph and i.e. the link.
My questions:
Did this doctor say that the hospital does no cancer research at all or no research in the specific type of cancer your BIL has?
Is he the same doctor who treated your mother?
What's the gain or win of this doctor not telling you the truth? How does he make money by not treating your BIL?
Why do you think in Europe hospitals, doctors and big pharma don't win with cancer, and how does all that lead to your statement 'if is any cure I truly believe we would know'?
Please don't be offended but you come across as 99% of patients or relatives of patients do. They have zero insights into oncology and medical research. This isn't to blame you at all, it's not knowledge we pick up from our parents and it isn't taught in school. How could you know? You can't. But I'd like to encourage you to learn a bit about it before making such bold accusations. If you want to, I'm happy to take your questions and answer to my best knowledge.
I want to put two things out straight away:
Cancer isn't cancer. It is a very broad helicopter-like term for very different diseases. Mesothelioma (I assume that's what your mother had) gets treated very differently than other types of cancer (I assume your BIL has some kind of colorectal cancer?). Breast cancer isn't even breast cancer. You have very different characteristics of these cancer cells and therefore need testing which type of breast cancer it is to pick the right treatment to tackle it. The stage of cancer is also important to know and decides on the treatment strategy. That's applicable across the spectrum of cancer BTW. Unfortunately, some types of cancers and stages of cancers cannot be successfully treated these days.
Cancer research as all medical research is very regulated, and for very good reasons. It is also very expensive, time- and labor-intense. Therefore, you will find out that not all hospitals participate, let alone initiate all sorts of research, no matter how good or ambitious the doctors are.
My bit of advice:
If your BIL wants to enroll in a study and doesn't trust his doctor that there's no available, check out https://clinicaltrials.gov/. Use the links in the 'For Patients and Families' box to find out if there are studies near him.
However, you'd need to know exactly the type of cancer your BIL has, the medical term physicians use. Also the stage and how he has been treated for it by now if applicable. Search for studies that are open and still enroll patients.
Hope that helps. Best wishes to him and your sister!
Edit: There are other ways to find open studies but I find CT.gov to be convenient to navigate for patients while providing a wealth of information.
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Science is the very reason all our tech work to be fair. Your computer wouldn't work if people hadn't decided to study electrical circuits, semiconductor technology, magnets and so on in excruciating detail. GPS wouldn't work very well without taken the theory of relativity into account. Science is the very reason we've managed to get to 7.5 billion people on this planet (for better or for worse) through chemical processing, understanding of anatomy and pathology etc.Science is just a method and the further away we go, the more you need to be critical because it is not an even playing field. The only place science can effect you is in your head and maybe it filters down elsewhere
The people most critical of science are the scientists. In my experience scientists love nothing more than being more right than other scientists.
In my experience, the person most critical of science is @BringNaniBack
Top scientist, him. Got his post doctorate from Geocities University.
@PedroMendez great explanations btw. Noce to wake up to reading this sort of topics.
Thanks Brian
Interesting stuff. It's a big subject, what part did you specialise in?
thanks
non of it.
economics. I love science so and try to read a lot about theses issues in my free-time. I started to get into the basics of physics (e.g. classic mechanics; Classical electromagnetism; general relativity; basics of quantum mechanics), so at least I can understand what other people are talking about even so that there is usually a point where parts of the Math is just getting too confusing for me.No wonder the economy is gone down the tubesthanks
non of it.
I think the logic floated is that treatment of cancer would mean that oncologists become redundant. Cures can be simply prescribed by GPs. Obviously nonsense but that's a theory
There is another theory that people don't want to increase the mortality rates due to overpopulation and the fear that overpopulation can cause extinction of human beings.
The problem with that book is that is was just a popular interpretation of science that took real science and ran with it. As is usual with many such books it gets more and more speculative to tell a good story and sell copies. In the end their conclusions are largely unsupported or at best exaggerations of some of the evidence over other evidence. A good read but very poor science (and in fact largely not science). There are loads of other examples of this including books I love like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Queen:_Sex_and_the_Evolution_of_Human_Nature which takes well established and fascinating "facts" and runs with them particularly in the later chapters when applied to human behavior and sexual selection which are attractive ideas that fit many of the facts but are largely speculative. Still a great read.
I suppose the real issue is that education is becoming more and more job training and less and less about critical thinking which is perhaps why we are seeing such a rise in bullshit like anti-vaxers and homeopathy and other harmful silliness. This also makes popular science dangerous as people aren't equipped to read and understand a text and in particular people are unable to differentiate when something is speculative but based on evidence from a simple recounting of the current understanding.
Frustrates the hit out of me.
Although not as much as the argument from incredulity that Colbert trotted out to Gervais.
Most of the claims of the bell-curve were supported by the APA paper that evaluated the book in 95/96. As far as I can tell (as someone who didn’t read the book), most of the claims are fairly mainstream and true. Maybe the authors overstated the aspect of race/ heritability and didn’t include all nuances(the details of nature vs. nurture are still very much up for grabs). Yet hardly anyone does that even in scientific papers. Much of the criticism was hardly well argued either. For example: People criticized him with stuff like the “Theory of multiple intelligences”, which is pretty much debunked.
I am sure there are enough valid points against the book, like against any book that deals with issues that are not entirely settled. Much of the responses to “the bell curve” were simply motivated by how difficult the subject is and not by its academic merits.
I am sure there are enough valid points against the book, like against any book that deals with issues that are not entirely settled. Much of the responses to “the bell curve” were simply motivated by how difficult the subject is and not by its academic merits.
I've read the book and agree with you. The research behind it was sound and their interpretation of this research was reasonable. The conclusions are obviously open to challenge and I think they might have been a little provocative with some of their claims. It's generally all fairly reasonable and well argued though.
What's interesting is that in the two decades since there's been no really convincing data generated by anyone which would debunk the author's thesis. Which makes the hysteria and witch hunt it kicked off all seem deeply irrational.
We all understand that humans physical abilities are too a large degree influenced by genes. I’ll never become a professional athlete or model regardless of how much I work out. But: the influence of physical talent on personal success is somewhat limited in modern societies (excluding minor sectors like professional athletes). That statement is already false, because physics/looks do play an important role. Yet it is easy to pretend, that other factors are more important, so we can just downplay the physical aspect.
Giving up the notion that we start on a fairly level playing field when it comes to cognitive abilities is not something that we are ready to do. It does point towards a very unfair/nasty reality, especially when the importance of intelligence is increasing. *you are in the bottom x% => you’ll face an uphill battle all your life* is not a nice message. It would be much fairer and easier, if intelligence would be only influenced by “nurture”. The fact that intelligence is not a visible feature helps us to maintain this illusion (nature vs. nurture is not at all settled, so hopefully the impact of genes is as small as possible).
All of that is already pretty problematic without discussing race. Once ethnicity gets thrown into the mix, it becomes almost impossible to talk about it. To be fair: It is not entirely clear why scientists should focus on this fairly arbitrary criteria. It adds very little, when talking about the ethical and political implications of the “gene-lottery”. Still, it doesn’t make sense to demonize someone because he mentions it; Murray isn’t particularly fixated on it in the first place. Facts stay facts even if they are uncomfortable.