@BrianK

For peer review to work, your peers must be a: unbiased, and b: sufficiently bright to actually understand the article. I don't really see how any system could be significantly better than peer review, it's rather the details of who gets selected to be your peers that is problematic.

I believe that is what the linked article also says. Peer review in itself isn't bad, but if a nobel laureate gets his papers rejected because noone can understand his concepts, then possibly said nobel laureate must acknowledge that he has a bit of a problem communicating his results.

Science shouldn't just be about convincing yourself that you've done something smart, it should be about proving to others that you've done something right. Yes, there's gonna be social and economical politics involved, but that's how science has always been done.

To paraphrase an old expression, it's not about what you know, but who you do.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Quote:

For peer review to work, your peers must be a: unbiased, and b: sufficiently bright to actually understand the article. I don't really see how any system could be significantly better than peer review, it's rather the details of who gets selected to be your peers that is problematic.

A fair summary that echos my thoughts. Thank you.

@BrianK

But it is the politics of peer review that makes it biased. Again, this was addressed by the article. There is also a heavy cost factor in the process, so again 'politics' because it favors big establishments that can afford the process.

I simply don't discount knowledge like the peer-review snobs. There are agendas in all camps, to favor the established one over another less established one seems to be what is consistently going on. Nobody wants to throw out text books that have been in print for 25 years, etc..

Finally, in today's fast-paced internet enabled society, it is only slowing down the acceptance of new science.

Even in college level classrooms, how often is *new* science taught? How much do the text books change year over year? To me schools of the present should only require E-Reader-type devices which would enable content to be updated quicker and lower costs. Yes, it kills the book publishing industry but their writings are already on the wall so to speak... And that's also part of the problem... Rather than the book publishing industry inventing/producing e-readers it's mostly tech companies so you have a system of lobbyists in place that will fight this change..

The dinosaurs need to evolve or die.

Last edited by Lou on 21-Jul-2011 at 08:31 PM.

@Lou

Quote:

But it is the politics of peer review that makes it biased. Again, this was addressed by the article

And what was not addressed in the article were the problems of the other systems. Self published lacks politics. How do you get the word out without politic ? You can't. Which means it's likely to be over looked. And certainly any publication of any sort is no guarantee of validity. Like/Dislike -- well if you hate politics this idea just injected steriods into politics. The article stated these occur but didn't indicate that they were any less problematic and nor was there any indication that they produce better results.

Peer-reviewed is evil. Yeah whatever. Check our Popper and Kuhn to learn some more about scientific paradigm shifts. They do happen.

Quote:

Even in college level classrooms, how often is *new* science taught? How much do the text books change year over year?

Don't know what your colligate background is but I'll talk to mine. New science was taught all the time. College professors introduced materials which supplemented the text books. They challenged us to find the material that suppored or denied ideas discussed.

As for changing text books there's a whole industry built around this idea. About every 3 years the books went out of print and had new information. Which results in students having a difficult time selling their book back. A paradigm shift of the portions you talk about would be a gold mine for the print industry. They'd flock to it, not away.

Quote:

To me schools of the present should only require E-Reader-type devices

Sure and publishers love that stuff. Eliminates the used marketplace. This ensures they can still charge the students hundreds of dollars while eliminating printing, storage, return, shipping, and labor costs. So certainly they can easily include new material. It's called a new edition and that kills the used market for the book returning profits to the publisher. This idea of yours that text books don't have updates for 25 years does not reflect reality. Again the teachers can and often do supplement the text books material.

Take a look at a semi-recent paradigm shift. Plate Tectonics. Most of the science happened in the late 50s. It takes time to process, afterall validation is highly important. 1965 is year earmarked as the point of the paradigm shift. Text books printed the change soon after. It wasn't the decades you falsely claim. Why? They wanted to make money. A new printing, especially with a redacted and replaced chapter, makes money. It's that simple.

Quote:

Rather than the book publishing industry inventing/producing e-readers it's mostly tech companies

I see no reason why the publication industry should be demanded to make an e-book reader. They work with words not bits. Instead the tech industry makes the device and the print industry makes the content. I can imagine the headache if every publisher had their own flavor of reading device.

Last edited by BrianK on 22-Jul-2011 at 01:16 PM.
Last edited by BrianK on 22-Jul-2011 at 05:55 AM.

@BrianK

Writers produce content. Publishers put that content on media.

@Lou

Quote:

Writers produce content. Publishers put that content on media.

Textbook writers I include as part of the textbook publishing industry. The authors make money too as more of their books are sold.

What happens to textbooks in a paradigm shift? They get stale. Stale doesn't sell. If the writer refuses to include the shifted paradigm there's competition right along side that will. The refusing author's sales decreases and dwindles away. The book doesn't stay in publishing for 25 years because the different author and different book is better at the science. And we see the paradigm shift continues simply without the older author that refuses the new science. He goes broke as the new guy makes money.

This stagnation you believe to exist simply doesn't. Kuhn and Popper do some reading. These are fairly significant works in the understanding of how science works in the modern world.

Last edited by BrianK on 23-Jul-2011 at 01:25 AM.

LHC evidence points to Higgs Boson's existence

@Lou

Quote:

I simply don't discount knowledge like the peer-review snobs. There are agendas in all camps, to favor the established one over another less established one seems to be what is consistently going on. Nobody wants to throw out text books that have been in print for 25 years, etc..

You don't know what you're talking about.

For a start, a '25 year old' textbook very rarely stays in print in its original form for that long. There's this wondrous magic known as 'edition' that allows newer print runs to be kept up-to-date, thanks to periodic rewrites. Most of my texts are second or third editions of works originally published in the late nineties to early 2000s. They have forewords describing the changes made in each edition. Simple.

We don't usually bother with the really old textbooks, though, apart from as historical curiosities, because they'll mostly predate a major paradigm shift, as BrianK has tried to explain to you. In my field, that might be the plate tectonics idea. But its no different anywhere else - every scientist in every field would like nothing more than to overthrow the old orthodoxy and have the new theory named after them.

Quote:

Finally, in today's fast-paced internet enabled society, it is only slowing down the acceptance of new science.

Rubbish. The internet speeds the process of collaboration across national borders, creating a richer ecosystem in which ideas must compete for survival. They compete in the arena of peer-review.

In the modern world, it is much more difficult for bunk to survive due to political patronage. Consider the Lysenkoism of Stalinist Russia compared with today's scientific ecosystem. Lysenko appealed to Stalin's political ideology, claiming Darwinian theory was too deterministic and hence incompatible with socialist thought. As a result, Lysenko enjoyed such patronage as having all his scientific critics sent to the gulag. For Stalin, empirical evidence was less important than the story the theory told.

Does this sound familiar?

Quote:

Even in college level classrooms, how often is *new* science taught? How much do the text books change year over year? To me schools of the present should only require E-Reader-type devices which would enable content to be updated quicker and lower costs.

That would depend entirely on which one you go to. But regardless, you seem disparaging of anything slightly old. Tell me, did you ever hear the phrase 'standing on the shoulders of giants'? You would plunge science into an eternal wikipedia-style edit war, with no appreciation for where our current understanding comes from.

And you've got to know where you've come from, because if you don't, you can't really understand where you are now. And if you don't know where you are now, you can't know where you're going to. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.

Quote:

Yes, it kills the book publishing industry but their writings are already on the wall so to speak... And that's also part of the problem... Rather than the book publishing industry inventing/producing e-readers it's mostly tech companies so you have a system of lobbyists in place that will fight this change..

Bull. I don't know about the situation where you live, but where I am, the major high-street bookseller is the main vendor of e-book readers. And the publishers? They love e-books! Do you know why? Because you can sell an e-book for 3/4 the price of a paper copy, but with none of the printing costs. Free money. The publishers and booksellers serve as gatekeepers, and the internet has as much need of gatekeepers as the world always has. See 'App Store' for details.

No big conspiracy to retard science here.

Last edited by T-J on 25-Jul-2011 at 02:55 AM.
Last edited by T-J on 25-Jul-2011 at 02:46 AM.
Last edited by T-J on 25-Jul-2011 at 02:45 AM.

@T-J

Nope, never.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

Never, I say!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Podkletnov

Last edited by Lou on 26-Jul-2011 at 05:23 AM.

@Lou

That cold fusion experiment seems simple enough that if you really want to prove it's working you should build one and heat your home with it.

http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=16_17_69&products_id=135
http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=60

There you go.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y356PNQw-mM

@Lou

No Lou, that's just another whacko youtube video. The reason why Podkletnov and Znidarsic are not part of modern science is because neither of them can prove their fantastic claims. The reason why they are a laughing stock is because rather than designing experiments to prove their claims, they spin ever more ludicrous tales of persecution and conspiracy against them, to avoid having to face the fact that they haven't got any evidence for their pet idea.

You think cold fusion is possible with a bit of palladium and some deuterium? You do it, then. Until then, I'll believe the many, many repeat experiments that found no evidence for this 'excess heat' your cranks describe.

Anyway, that video talks about how Newton's classical physics was right and that quantum is 'a lie'. How do you reconcile that with your previous statements about Newton being wrong? Doublethink, I suppose.


There's still no conspiracy to retard science here. Actually, Lou, the only conspiracy to retard science that I can name off the top of my head comes from one of your favourite sources - the Creationists.

Funny thing, they also don't like peer-review. I wonder if anyone can see a pattern emerging here?

Last edited by T-J on 26-Jul-2011 at 11:06 PM.
Last edited by T-J on 26-Jul-2011 at 10:43 PM.

@T-J

This particular red herring got dragged out at the end of May when Lou posted a link to "prove" that EM was responsible for maintaining the orbits of the planets and moons. He is, of course attempting to dress it up as something new, but it is still the same tired old mix of misrepresentations that keeps getting trotted out for no better reason than that it contradicts all demonstrable logic.
My answer to this particular fantasy was posted back in June

Quote:

You think cold fusion is possible with a bit of palladium and some deuterium?

Even if it was possible, what would be the point? We are not so overloaded with deuterium, and so short of helium that we need to simply convert one to the other. The prime reason that we are trying to start fusion reactions is as a source of heat energy, so that we can go back to the nineteenth century. Steam powered electricity generators!
The maximum claimed (but not demonstrated or proved) output from the sequence of videos linked to was 750W.

_________________
When in trouble, fear or doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

@T-J

Quote:

T-J wrote: @Lou No Lou, that's just another whacko youtube video. The reason why Podkletnov and Znidarsic are not part of modern science is because neither of them can prove their fantastic claims. The reason why they are a laughing stock is because rather than designing experiments to prove their claims, they spin ever more ludicrous tales of persecution and conspiracy against them, to avoid having to face the fact that they haven't got any evidence for their pet idea. You think cold fusion is possible with a bit of palladium and some deuterium? You do it, then. Until then, I'll believe the many, many repeat experiments that found no evidence for this 'excess heat' your cranks describe. Anyway, that video talks about how Newton's classical physics was right and that quantum is 'a lie'. How do you reconcile that with your previous statements about Newton being wrong? Doublethink, I suppose. There's still no conspiracy to retard science here. Actually, Lou, the only conspiracy to retard science that I can name off the top of my head comes from one of your favourite sources - the Creationists. Funny thing, they also don't like peer-review. I wonder if anyone can see a pattern emerging here?

Way to overlook everything.
They released what they did because others were about to as well and there is, afterall, greed involved in science. By doing so they have the rights to patents.

Yes, greed, who would have thunk it!
Those are two examples of greed and back-stabbing.
So your science is not as pure and rosey as you make it out to be.

So, no conspiracy, just greed and natural human nature like anything else.

@Lou

Ok. NOW you lost me. Are you saying Podkletnov and Znidarsic are the ones suppressing the technology or are they the victims of the suppressing?

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@BrianK

Quote:

LHC evidence points to Higgs Boson's existence

In related news Fermilab might have quarks of Higgs Boson identified . Seems two recent experiements lend more evidence of gravity.

@Lou

Quote:

They released what they did because others were about to as well and there is, afterall, greed involved in science. By doing so they have the rights to patents.

Scientists are of course greedy. The goal for scientists is to create something that's your own. And what could be even more exciting for a scientist than to cause a paradigm shift because we now have significantly better knowledge in the operations of the universe? Greed flies in your face of the idea that scientists just play it safe and only back the status quo.

@BrianK

Quote:

Seems two recent experiments lend more evidence of gravity.

In certain quarters these experiments will be seen as totally irrelevant. The results are based on statistical significance, and even if the results do eventually exceed the 5 sigma threshold (1.7 million to 1) probability is not science, and only applies to dice, because Lou says so.

Quote:

Probability is not accurate. It's not 'science'. Probability is your evidence and your evidence is a guess.

Quote:

Quote: The other point that you keep missing is that large samples and numbers tend towards to the mean, not the extreme. That's not guarranteed with radio-active decay. With dice, yes, with decay, no.

_________________
When in trouble, fear or doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

@BrianK

Quote:

BrianK wrote: @Lou Quote: They released what they did because others were about to as well and there is, afterall, greed involved in science. By doing so they have the rights to patents. Scientists are of course greedy. The goal for scientists is to create something that's your own. And what could be even more exciting for a scientist than to cause a paradigm shift because we now have significantly better knowledge in the operations of the universe? Greed flies in your face of the idea that scientists just play it safe and only back the status quo.

No, it doesn't fly in my face, it flies in the face of the peer-review system.

Let's say I'm reviewing something that was worked on for 10 years by a scientist and it works 50% of the time. I discredit it. I notice a flaw and then publish my own results that work 100% of the time. Who really did all the work?

@Nimrod

Quote:

Nimrod wrote: @BrianK Quote: Seems two recent experiments lend more evidence of gravity. In certain quarters these experiments will be seen as totally irrelevant. The results are based on statistical significance, and even if the results do eventually exceed the 5 sigma threshold (1.7 million to 1) probability is not science, and only applies to dice, because Lou says so. Quote: Probability is not accurate. It's not 'science'. Probability is your evidence and your evidence is a guess. Quote: [quote] The other point that you keep missing is that large samples and numbers tend towards to the mean, not the extreme. That's not guarranteed with radio-active decay. With dice, yes, with decay, no.

[/quote]
I'm glad you're making progress!

In the meantime, I know you love equations so tell me what you think of these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahRJW6JViQ0&feature=related