Bazza Posted May 20, 2017 Author Report Share Posted May 20, 2017 No worries. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted May 23, 2017 Report Share Posted May 23, 2017 Listening to Vangelis' Heaven and Hell while grading final exams today. Seemed oddly appropriate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted May 24, 2017 Report Share Posted May 24, 2017 Alice Cooper's School's Out is also a favorite. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted May 31, 2017 Report Share Posted May 31, 2017 Right now, my favorite song relating to school would be "The Sounds of Silence". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted May 31, 2017 Author Report Share Posted May 31, 2017 Good call Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted May 31, 2017 Author Report Share Posted May 31, 2017 "Mysteriously, almost everyone who describes themselves as a "free thinker" have almost exactly the same ideas." ~ Existential Comics Pariah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted May 31, 2017 Report Share Posted May 31, 2017 "I'm right and everyone else is an eejit." Pariah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 1, 2017 Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 "Mysteriously, almost everyone who describes themselves as a "free thinker" have almost exactly the same ideas." ~ Existential Comics And the same problem: how to get paid for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted June 1, 2017 Author Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 Become a peer reviewer. Everyone else has the ideas, you just do peer review to confirm/validate them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 1, 2017 Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 ... That's an overly simplistic view of peer review. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted June 1, 2017 Author Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 I'm an overly simplistic person. (Also I don't know what is involved. Care too elucidate?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 1, 2017 Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 Well, I can only speak with certainty about my own field and closely related ones. No clue what it might be in rather different disciplines. First, make sure it hasn't appeared before, either from this author or others. Subtly different but allied: what related results have appeared before on this topic, and can/does this work improve on those (confirm, contradict, eliminate alternate possibilities, ...)? Why hasn't this result appeared before, i.e., what's new here? Then make sure that this work is properly placed in context of what has come before. What's the current state of knowledge and informed speculation now? Why is this work relevant? Next, check the methods. Do they make sense? Can they reasonably be expected to produce the claimed result? Are they in accord with what other workers in the field have done, or clear extensions of those? Are other requisite basic data current? Is there some hidden circular logic that more or less ensures the result independent of actual measurements? Examine the uncertainty in the results, both statistical (the easy part) and systematic (much harder, but at least as important)? Are the overall levels of certainty plausible for the data and methods? Is there a solid discussion of systematic effects, and reason to believe that the result is safely not spurious? Are the results relevant to the questions presented in the introduction? Or is some other effect more important than the stated discussion? Then there's questions about the actual results and conclusions. Do those make sense? Does the result actually bear in favor of the conclusion drawn, and how strong is the leverage on the question? Is it actually worth publishing? Much more, but dinner calls... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted June 1, 2017 Author Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 Cheers. Sounds similar to quality assurance, to get it to a high standard, and eliminate anything that might hold it back: typos, elementary mathematical errors, errors in logic (ie circular reasoning, post hoc ergo propter hoc), etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted June 1, 2017 Author Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 A while ago I made a connection between apophatic theology and scientific falsifaction, but the more I look into it, the more the two are dissimilar. I have a good introductory book on apophatic theology, but am mostly out of my depth with scientific falsification. Can you describe the later if it is not to difficult? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted June 1, 2017 Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 Read up on Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann for an example. (We had this drilled into us at University, since it happened at my alma mater and in my department.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted June 1, 2017 Author Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 It that an incident, an event, a co-authored book, or would Wikipedia do? Edit: so Cold Fusion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 1, 2017 Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 Cheers. Sounds similar to quality assurance, to get it to a high standard, and eliminate anything that might hold it back: typos, elementary mathematical errors, errors in logic (ie circular reasoning, post hoc ergo propter hoc), etc. Referees aren't necessarily typo catchers (they see papers in typescript form, not final galley form) but they should go over equations etc. with extreme diligence because few people can catch errors there. But referees also serve without public recognition, and without compensation. It is a service to the community. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 1, 2017 Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 I actually view the cold fusion episode as a prominent if painful example of how the peer review process, and science in general, works. Yes, lots of shouting, brouhaha, egos, and so on, no doubt painful for those near the event. (The episode happened early in my second postdoc, and the Physics Department (I was in Astronomy, separate department) followed it closely.) In the end, though, no one believes in cold fusion. It was interesting, and it made for a drastic spike in spot palladium prices, but by a decade later ... shrug. Another sexy idea that didn't work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted June 1, 2017 Author Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 Cheers for this Cancer. You're da man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted June 1, 2017 Author Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 Speaking of cold fusion and what science is: PHYSICISTS CAN’T AGREE ON WHAT SCIENCE EVEN MEANS ANYMORE https://www.wired.com/2017/05/physicists-cant-agree-science-even-means-anymore/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 1, 2017 Report Share Posted June 1, 2017 It that an incident, an event, a co-authored book, or would Wikipedia do? Edit: so Cold Fusion. Another famous case from the turn of the 20th Century was N Rays, for which the Wikipedia article will do. In effect, Blondlot deluded himself into believing an effect that did not actually exist. While no one could reproduce Blondlot's results (and so there was wide skepticism), Wood's demonstration in Blondlot's lab -- providing an independent test that was badly needed -- was all but brutal, and put paid to the whole thing almost immediately. Blondlot was not a fabricator, but he didn't have adequate tests of his findings. I also recommend Feynman's Cargo Cult Science commencement address. He casts his net wider than science, but he was speaking in a time when lots of ... questionable popular phenomena ... were reaching for the aura of scientific plausibility, and was striving to smack down the more obvious drivel as being, well, drivel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted June 5, 2017 Author Report Share Posted June 5, 2017 Cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted June 7, 2017 Author Report Share Posted June 7, 2017 Didn't know this was an option. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted June 7, 2017 Author Report Share Posted June 7, 2017 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted June 7, 2017 Report Share Posted June 7, 2017 "I think of myself more as Dr. Evil without the megalomania." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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