Speculative Science

gf beranek

Old Schooler
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
14,807
Location
God's country, North Coast
Over the years Terri and I have subscribed to a number of different scientific periodicals. Geared to the layman's level of understanding. Nonetheless some of the research funded and featured in those periodicals leaves me in pure wonder. Is it really science?

Sabine Hossenfelder's commentary brings some relief. It starts slow but gets good.


Sabine Hossenfelder

 
Sabine is good but she's an acquired taste. I didn't care for her style when I first found her videos but I ended up enjoying her immensely.

To answer your question; sometimes it's less about science and more about funding, headlines, and publication.
 
Last edited:
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #3
Thank you, Mellow! Your opinion mirrors my own about Sabine and the issues she raises over some of the science going on today.

More people should follow her lead, I feel.
 
I think I would prefer to read her articles rather than listen to her. The accent is difficult for me to translate into words my brain recognizes. I have to focus so hard on understanding each word that I lose the whole discussion.
 
Her accent is weird. I looked her up on wikipedia and found she's German. Doesn't sound like it to me. I'll check more out though. I don't know that I 100% agree with her critique, but it was a good presentation, and I'm interested in hearing more.
 
Gerry, what were the periodicals you subscribed to? Curious because most published works at some point cause the glaze over effect on me. Perhaps you found some interesting stuff. Pure, peer reviewed research is generally pretty dry stuff. About one notch better (?) than undergrad, masters or phd theses. Although there are occasionally good nuggets out there.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #7
"Earth" we subscribed to that periodical for over 10 years at least. Mostly geology, but a lot of other earth related sciences are presented. Real Layman science. Scientific America? They send us samples trying to get us to subscribe, but I'm not going that deep into it.

Earth stopped publishing a couple years ago. Now we subscribe to ScienceNews. It's not much different, really. Fact, if you switched covers you wouldn't know the difference between the two periodicals.

There's enough good tidbits to satisfy most people, enough to keep the subscription active, but a lot of the studies, I feel, full into the realm of speculative science, and it's the reason I posted the video. I wanted to see what others had to say about it.

Isn't the James Web Telescope supposed to go up this year, in November? 10 billion dollars and 25 years of development. The tech today exceeds the original design and purpose of the device. It's ridiculous. Still I can't wait to see what wonders it stands to bring. I love science. But 10 billion? The original bid in 1996 was 500 million. Someone screwed the pooch on this one bad. That's science I guess.
 
I consider myself a scientists. I am amazed by how much "scientists" mot only make a question (in the scientific process, this is the "problem") and then propose a hypothesis, methods for proving/disproving the hypothesis, and then they set out with the sole purpose of proving their hypothesis. This is utter nonsense as you should set out to get the most objective data possible and then see if it supports or disproves a hypothesis. The purpose of the scientific process is to find the truth, not to prove a point.

The other axe I have to grind and one I will pursue is the ethical use of statistics. That is absolutely gone in our world today. For example, if there are 5 covid cases in my county and then there is another case, what the "scientists" should be saying is "cases increase from 4 to 5" instead of "25% increase in cases...."

Of course my other favorite is the automatic assumption by "scientists" that correlation=causation
 
Ok, I'm weighing in here simply because Gerry's interest tends to makes the topic worthwhile.

I watched Gerry's vid and tried to watch a couple others of hers, and so far, I feel exactly like Skwerl:

The accent is difficult for me to translate into words my brain recognizes. I have to focus so hard on understanding each word that I lose the whole discussion.

So, I can say I tried but she didn't click for me.

Which reminds me of a take I have on physics articles for laymen- I tend to be generally interested in physics topics and basically every time I read or watch such an article/vid, it definetly doesn't explain it such that I have a better understanding. So over time, I click on fewer of them, ftr, lol
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #10
As lectures of science go I could cite a list of speakers whose accents deter me from enjoying their videos. Some, like Sabine's, I struggle through to understand, as I'm sure you have, just to gather the full point view being presented. There's some really good stuff out there. Some of it you got to bear though.
 
Back
Top