Is science under attack?

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volcboy

volcboy

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Australia's chief scientist Prof. Alan Finkel said yesterday that ""The Trump administration has mandated that scientific data published by the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] must undergo review by political appointees before they can be published...It is reminiscent of the censorship exerted by political officers in the old Soviet Union. Every military commander there had a political officer second-guessing his decisions."

Article here

In response to numerous moves by the Trump administration, particularly to allow oil and gas drilling in National Parks and to abolish the EPA, a March For Science is being organised for April 22nd in Washington DC, along with supporting gatherings worldwide, including Australian capital cities (https://marchforscienceaustralia.org/)

Is it true? Is science really under concerted attack? Has it got to the point that scientists have to take to the streets in order to defend and protect a philosophy that has transformed human societies for the past 400 years?
 
Abasi said:
In the US, it certainly is.
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In Australia, the appointment of Larry Marshall at the CSIRO and its subsequent defunding, along with the downgrading of science within the government (no more Science Minister since the first Abbott cabinet) suggests it may be more than just a US phenomenon. Not to mention the ongoing plethora of climate change denialists within ministerial ranks.
 

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https://www.ipcc.ch/news_and_events/docs/factsheets/FS_review_process.pdf

And didn't Finkel support the cuts to the CSIRO?
 
It's always been under attack.

Ebbs and flows, across time and around the world, in opposition to willfull ignorance.

Wiillfull ignorance is currently in front.

It's not an eternal battle. Eventually one will destroy the world.

Probably the latter, ironically through the use of the former.

And soon.
 
volcboy said:
Australia's chief scientist Prof. Alan Finkel said yesterday that ""The Trump administration has mandated that scientific data published by the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] must undergo review by political appointees before they can be published...It is reminiscent of the censorship exerted by political officers in the old Soviet Union. Every military commander there had a political officer second-guessing his decisions."

Article here

In response to numerous moves by the Trump administration, particularly to allow oil and gas drilling in National Parks and to abolish the EPA, a March For Science is being organised for April 22nd in Washington DC, along with supporting gatherings worldwide, including Australian capital cities (https://marchforscienceaustralia.org/)

Is it true? Is science really under concerted attack? Has it got to the point that scientists have to take to the streets in order to defend and protect a philosophy that has transformed human societies for the past 400 years?
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It's not just science that's under attack, it's truth. Science is after all the ultimate tool to investigate & understand the physical world, to discover the truth of our reality, so it is going to be attacked ruthlessly when it's findings don't fit in with various powerful groups. Creationists and the religious right mount vigorous attacks on evolution. The fossil fuel industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars denying the role of CO2 in AGW, the tobacco industry did the same about smoking and lung cancer, the latter shows it's nothing new. What is new is the willingness of a large and somewhat simple audience that buys their lies, and politicians who leverage them to gain power. Exhibit 1, the Orange Groper. The internet has an important role in enabling all this.
 
CD Xbow said:
It's not just science that's under attack, it's truth. Science is after all the ultimate tool to investigate & understand the physical world, to discover the truth of our reality
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No, it's not.

'The most common misunderstanding about science is that scientists seek and find truth. They don't, they make and test models. Making sense of anything means making models that can predict outcomes and accommodate observations. Truth is a model'.

Physicist, Neil Gershenfeld.
 
sorted said:
No, it's not.

'The most common misunderstanding about science is that scientists seek and find truth. They don't, they make and test models. Making sense of anything means making models that can predict outcomes and accommodate observations. Truth is a model'.

Physicist, Neil Gershenfeld.
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The models are tools to understand the world, ie move closer to the truth of our reality. For my own work I had to use an animal model of the serotergic syndrome in rats poisoned with 2 different antidepressants, that they interacted and caused the serotenergic syndrome, which at that time had killed a few people in Oz. The 'truth' was that we wanted to see if these drugs interacted and cause death, which we did. This was despite the fact that one of the companies, Roche (happy ex nazi funded organisation) had all this product data released publicly saying their drug didn't, except when we approached them it turned out they had all this private animal data suggesting the drug would interact with other commonly used antidepressant families. I was shocked. This was about 20 years ago, I am no longer so naive.

I'll digress a bit to point not only political motivated forces attack science, but one of the most corrupting, usually all about $$$$, is from within, big pharma, chemical combines and other powerful industries that employ scientists. Money corrupts.

Back to the story, using a model of serotonin receptor activity and then selecting a cheap, easily available drug, Cyproheptadine (periactin) with anti-serotonin (5HT1A) receptor activity we showed it basically saved all the rats that died in the previous experiment. Cyproheptadine has become the main anti-serotonin drug used to treat the serotonin syndrome in people. And we showed it also worked in the serotergic syndrome in ecstasy poisoning. So we used a few models, in differing ways, but at the end of the day it was to discover a 'truth', that these drugs together were dangerous, and that there was an effective treatment. So I'm afraid I would disagree with Dr Neil Gershenfeld.
 
CD Xbow said:
The models are tools to understand the world, ie move closer to the truth of our reality. For my own work I had to use an animal model of the serotergic syndrome in rats poisoned with 2 different antidepressants, that they interacted and caused the serotenergic syndrome, which at that time had killed a few people in Oz. The 'truth' was that we wanted to see if these drugs interacted and cause death, which we did. This was despite the fact that one of the companies, Roche (happy ex nazi funded organisation) had all this product data released publicly saying their drug didn't, except when we approached them it turned out they had all this private animal data suggesting the drug would interact with other commonly used antidepressant families. I was shocked. This was about 20 years ago, I am no longer so naive.

I'll digress a bit to point not only political motivated forces attack science, but one of the most corrupting, usually all about $$$$, is from within, big pharma, chemical combines and other powerful industries that employ scientists. Money corrupts.

Back to the story, using a model of serotonin receptor activity and then selecting a cheap, easily available drug, Cyproheptadine (periactin) with anti-serotonin (5HT1A) receptor activity we showed it basically saved all the rats that died in the previous experiment. Cyproheptadine has become the main anti-serotonin drug used to treat the serotonin syndrome in people. And we showed it also worked in the serotergic syndrome in ecstasy poisoning. So we used a few models, in differing ways, but at the end of the day it was to discover a 'truth', that these drugs together were dangerous, and that there was an effective treatment. So I'm afraid I would disagree with Dr Neil Gershenfeld.
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You didn't use an 'animal model'. You used real animals!
 
sorted said:
You didn't use an 'animal model'. You used real animals!
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Yes, real rats. The phrase is used not to imply or hide the use of an animal, rather it is used to describe an experimental setting, ie in an animal
(versus human, cell culture etc) and the model usually refers to modelling a human disease process.
 
Science unfortunately comes under attack all the time. In America, where creationists lobby to have influence over the education system, you end up with pseudo-scientific religious arguments interfering with scientific study and a willingness to overlook facts about our world for the sake of vague conspiracy theories (just look at the flat-earth nonsense).
 

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darth_timon said:
Science unfortunately comes under attack all the time. In America, where creationists lobby to have influence over the education system, you end up with pseudo-scientific religious arguments interfering with scientific study and a willingness to overlook facts about our world for the sake of vague conspiracy theories (just look at the flat-earth nonsense).
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But science is studying flat holographic universe itself,and multiverses. They're taking it very seriously.
There's lots of different types of religion,and there not all being taught in schools, And different parts of the world tend to follow different religions,while science is universal.
 
darthbards said:
But science is studying flat holographic universe itself,and multiverses. They're taking it very seriously.
There's lots of different types of religion,and there not all being taught in schools, And different parts of the world tend to follow different religions,while science is universal.
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Science is looking at the idea of a holographic universe as a fringe theory, not as a fact. There is a stark difference between the completely theoretical and ideas which can be tested. The use of religious ideas as scientific ones is inherently flawed, yet there is an ongoing effort to inject religion into science - just look at the creationist movement in the USA, which wants Christian creation theory taught alongside evolution.

If we go down that road, where does it end? Every religion has its own creation story. They are often incompatible with each other. Which one takes centre stage? The answer is that religious arguments and the pseudo-science they promote should be kept out of science lessons.
 
darthbards said:
But science is studying flat holographic universe itself,and multiverses. They're taking it very seriously.
There's lots of different types of religion,and there not all being taught in schools, And different parts of the world tend to follow different religions,while science is universal.
Click to expand...
Yeah, no they aren't.

A couple of scientists, for a lark, decided to see how many people would buy into any crack pot scheme they thought up. Now I don't know if this is true or not, but sounds more feasible than "They're taking it very seriously."

There were a couple of french twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanov, who wrote an article so utterly confusing and high level that referees accepted it without fully understanding. Highly regarded peer reviewed journals published it, before a physicist read it a said it was a hoax, jibberish, mumbo jumbo designed to prove how poor the peer reviewing process was. However this was later retracted when it was shown that the boys actually seemed to know what they were talking about. This 2D stuff sounds like the real McCoy jibberish article though.

The French Twins Affair is well documented and well worth the read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair
 
grumbleguts said:
Yeah, no they aren't.

A couple of scientists, for a lark, decided to see how many people would buy into any crack pot scheme they thought up. Now I don't know if this is true or not, but sounds more feasible than "They're taking it very seriously."

There were a couple of french twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanov, who wrote an article so utterly confusing and high level that referees accepted it without fully understanding. Highly regarded peer reviewed journals published it, before a physicist read it a said it was a hoax, jibberish, mumbo jumbo designed to prove how poor the peer reviewing process was. However this was later retracted when it was shown that the boys actually seemed to know what they were talking about. This 2D stuff sounds like the real McCoy jibberish article though.

The French Twins Affair is well documented and well worth the read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair
Click to expand...

ah yes...the old three-dimensional perturbative superrenormalizable quantum field theory (QFT), lark. Indeed my grand father told me that once over the camp fire. how we laughed

somehow i get the feeling on this football discussion board, not everyone that alludes to be an expert in
String theory, Quantum gravity, Apparent horizon infact is... nor of proper knowledge levels to correct Gerard 't Hooft or Susskind
 
Last edited:
Neil Degrasse Tyson raised an interesting point. The media often report on science like they would politics.

The report both sides, so if there is a scientific theory they go find someone with an opposing theory, they don't care if one is well documented and the other is just a hypothesis from one person.

They then give equal time to both ideas which to some gives them equal weight and relevance.

Add to that the fact that research needs funding and with funding comes agendas and contracts and rules. So you get someone's research suppressed by the people who paid for it and then if they are really lucky parts of it Cherry picked to say the complete opposite of what the findings were to suit the needs of the people funding the research.

This doesn't just happen with corporations this happens with governments.
 
boydshow said:
See it all the time with food/diet or health risks
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Would like to see them do it with really hard science, like physics.

Thank you NASA/ESA Scientist for that information about the new Webb Sattelite, but we must now turn to Barry, who believes the sky is a carpet painted by god.

What do you think of the new Webb Satellite Barry?
 
grumbleguts said:
Yeah, no they aren't.

A couple of scientists, for a lark, decided to see how many people would buy into any crack pot scheme they thought up. Now I don't know if this is true or not, but sounds more feasible than "They're taking it very seriously."

There were a couple of french twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanov, who wrote an article so utterly confusing and high level that referees accepted it without fully understanding. Highly regarded peer reviewed journals published it, before a physicist read it a said it was a hoax, jibberish, mumbo jumbo designed to prove how poor the peer reviewing process was. However this was later retracted when it was shown that the boys actually seemed to know what they were talking about. This 2D stuff sounds like the real McCoy jibberish article though.

The French Twins Affair is well documented and well worth the read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair
Click to expand...

Have you got any other links that aren't from s**t Wikipedia?


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app
 
Sandyjihna said:
Have you got any other links that aren't from s**t Wikipedia?


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app
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There is nothing wrong with wikipedia if the sources it cites check out, so what yu could have done, instead of bagging a site that is educating the world for free, is click on any one of the citations in the wiki link I posted or maybe used google, the fact is, you don't want to actually read anything asbout them, you just wanted to bag out wikipedia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/a...cists-cosmic-theory-creates-big-bang-its.html
 
grumbleguts said:
There is nothing wrong with wikipedia if the sources it cites check out, so what yu could have done, instead of bagging a site that is educating the world for free, is click on any one of the citations in the wiki link I posted or maybe used google, the fact is, you don't want to actually read anything asbout them, you just wanted to bag out wikipedia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/a...cists-cosmic-theory-creates-big-bang-its.html
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link but it probably could have come without the bad attitude, or whatever that is you're going on about. This is a discussion board you twit, and I was asking out of interest. BTW Wikipedia is s**t, and its odd that you would comment re: the fallacy of peer-review articles and then quote a Wikipedia page story as proof, which anyone at all can alter from what I understand.

Yes I could have looked it up myself, but seeing as you made the initial remark, maybe you knew where to look. Haha and after the spray you supplied a link anyway. Poser


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app
 
Sandyjihna said:
Thanks for the link but it probably could have come without the bad attitude, or whatever that is you're going on about. This is a discussion board you twit, and I was asking out of interest. BTW Wikipedia is s**t, and its odd that you would comment re: the fallacy of peer-review articles and then quote a Wikipedia page story as proof, which anyone at all can alter from what I understand.

Yes I could have looked it up myself, but seeing as you made the initial remark, maybe you knew where to look. Haha and after the spray you supplied a link anyway. Poser


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app
Click to expand...
The following are links to articles about the Bogdanov twins, ALL of them from the wikipedia article, MOST of them peer reviewed. You asked if there were any other links apart from wikipedia because it was s**t, meanwhile looking at a list of links/articles noone of which is a wikipedia one. You just wanted to say wikipedia was s**t. Everything I have ever published is peer reviewed, that doesn't mean I won't use wikipedia, it has a wealth of references which ARE peer reviewed. Try it some time, this time without the attitude.
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