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The Science Delusion: has science become dogmatic?

mhardy6647

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This may be a little OT, but I remember my father who was PhD Organic Chemist mentioning a colleague of his who attempted to take 1 mole of Sodium and combine it with 1 mole of Chlorine to get 1 mole of Sodium Chloride, i.e. Salt and could never get it to come out exactly.

Obviously the Law of Chemistry and Physics were changing every time he did his experiment.:facepalm:
Indeed. He should've had a fair amount of chlorine left over, since chlorine gas is diatomic. :rolleyes:

Na + 1/2Cl2 → NaCl

Pro tip -- way easier to make NaCl from NaOH and HCl ;)

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majingotan

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Indeed. He should've had a fair amount of chlorine left over, since chlorine gas is diatomic. :rolleyes:

Na + 1/2Cl2 → NaCl

Pro tip -- way easier to make NaCl from NaOH and HCl ;)

View attachment 66314

You do need to dehydrate the solution to get the anhydrous salt. You don't even need to do this, just evaporate seawater to get your NaCl(s)
 

tmtomh

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@Putter all models suck. The issue as I see it is the local expert picked one which was an outlier to make some kind of a point or sensationalize the issue. By the way, we are being asked to change our lives and economy based on the predictions of certain other models unrelated to COVID-19, if you get my drift. Perhaps those are garbage too.

Ron, @jhaider doesn't have it in for you. The issue is that you're making self-serving and contradictory claims. You say "all models suck," but you're clearly and evidently only interested in criticizing a model that says the pandemic will be quite bad. You are conspicuously silent on the fact that the IHME model, which has provably and repeatedly understated the scope and seriousness of the pandemic, also "sucks."

If you truly believed that all models suck, then you would neither have nor claim any basis upon which to evaluate whether or not public health measures are excessive or appropriate. But you clearly think that the measures are excessive and the pandemic is being "sensationalized." The facts - not predictive models, but the actual facts - show that the pandemic is not being sensationalized by virologists, public-health officials, or medical professionals. (Some media stories, yes - but the media always will have sensationalistic stories about any topic.)

COVID is far deadlier than flu. In three months it's killed 105,000 Americans. In an entire year the worst flu in the last decade had a fraction of that number (the more common, larger flu-death number is a CDC estimate - a "model," which is not based on confirmed deaths and includes pneumonia deaths with zero evidence of flu). COVID is also far more contagious than flu. The public-health measures being put into place are not based on mere models - they're based on well-documented past epidemics with roughly similar pathogens, and the measures to prevent or slow down or reduce a pandemic are well-known. There is little controversy about them.
 
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A.West

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You really have it in for me. If you don't get it, you flunked the test.
I totally get your drift. The world is increasingly being taken over by "experts" who bring the scariest models, and gain power, despite having lousy forecasting records. I see it in my field and others. I'd rather see the world governed by durable principles than by technocratic experts given great power.
 

kevinh

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Our current understanding has difficulty with Complex Chaotic Systems. With Computer Models the number of degrees of freedom and variables cannot be modeled with computers.
 

jae

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Science can also be affected by personalities and internal politics. A few decades of "Fat makes you fat!" seem to have been pretty much wrong, and the sugar that replaced it a literal killer. I was reading where one scientist was blaming sugar back in the IIRC late 70s, but another fellow who had championed "fat makes you fat" was louder and more savvy with the politics of science (=how hypotheses are regarded and how funding is allocated).

This is a good example to illustrate that context and strong understanding of scientific concepts do matter, and it is an incomplete or deficient understanding that mostly causes misinformation. It is the people who understand incompletely (including scientists) that also have some sort of social influence that causes those ideas to propagate. The reality is that both fat and sugar will make one fat, we've known this for hundreds of years anecdotally and scientifically for around a century. The relative amount of each that will make one fat or contribute to making one fat depends on the quantity ingested, understanding of the biological mechanisms involved with their metabolism, and individual factors based on the subject's biology, which again is largely quantifiable and predictable to a certain degree. People are generally obsessed with looking at or implicating one thing as a culprit, when in reality most problems and solutions in the natural world are multivariate.
 

Sergei

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The reality is that both fat and sugar will make one fat, we've known this for hundreds of years anecdotally and scientifically for around a century. The relative amount of each that will make one fat or contribute to making one fat depends on the quantity ingested, understanding of the biological mechanisms involved with their metabolism, and individual factors based on the subject's biology, which again is largely quantifiable and predictable to a certain degree. People are generally obsessed with looking at or implicating one thing as a culprit, when in reality most problems and solutions in the natural world are multivariate.

Or univariate, but less trackable. In this case, a more precise statement would be that disbalance of calories ingested vs calories spent affects the amount of fat deposits. Wrong, yet easier to act on concepts have their appeal ...
 

Sergei

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As a tiny example, the last paper I wrote before leaving the field used observations of the abundance of elements produced in first hour or so after the big bang ... We were definitely not dogmatic

I'm not familiar with Rupert Sheldrake's theories, yet I consider unsatisfactory the current state of scientific affairs, which requires postulating the Big Bang. It resembles ancient dogmas describing creation of then-known universes.

The universe we can perceive today is so much wider than the ones people imagined 10000, 1000, or even 100 years ago. What will it be 100, 1000, and 10000 years in the future?

So, what really was the Big Bang? Some kind of matter/energy/space/time transition from a higher-dimensional membrane? Start of a simulation "program" running on a "computer" built by some higher-dimensional species?
 

LeftCoastTim

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My clock is running a model. Its model is that n number of revolutions of something (gears or electrical signals) result in the Sun being at the same place in the sky the next day.

I run on a model. If I make this post, there is a chance that people will read it and click the "Like" button.

Our mind and body are running many models of lots of things, some we are conscious of, others not. For example, our understanding of our immune system is a model of a biochemical system that itself is modeling injury and disease.

Therefore, "knowledge" is just a set of models.

The great thing about the "scientific process" (note I did not say Science), is that it tries to quantify the difference between the model and the reality (or measurement). In its own definition, a better model is the one that reduces this difference.

Do I find an atomic clock to be more useful than a mechanical one? Probably not. But atomic clocks can give us GPS, which is useful.

Oh, and lastly, civilizations have learned that better models win wars. Which is also a model. (It's turtles all the way down).

:)
 
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tuga

tuga

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I totally get your drift. The world is increasingly being taken over by "experts" who bring the scariest models, and gain power, despite having lousy forecasting records. I see it in my field and others. I'd rather see the world governed by durable principles than by technocratic experts given great power.

Are you referring to the UK Government choice of a scientific model which best favoured its political/economical agenda?

I’m an epidemiologist. When I heard about Britain’s ‘herd immunity’ coronavirus plan, I thought it was satire
William Hanage

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...st-britain-herd-immunity-coronavirus-covid-19

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Ron Texas

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Ron, @jhaider doesn't have it in for you. The issue is that you're making self-serving and contradictory claims. You say "all models suck," but you're clearly and evidently only interested in criticizing a model that says the pandemic will be quite bad. You are conspicuously silent on the fact that the IHME model, which has provably and repeatedly understated the scope and seriousness of the pandemic, also "sucks."

You expended a lot of effort to say nothing, and flunked the test too.
 

SIY

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I'm not familiar with Rupert Sheldrake's theories, yet I consider unsatisfactory the current state of scientific affairs, which requires postulating the Big Bang.

This turns out not to be the case.
 

Wombat

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You expended a lot of effort to say nothing, and flunked the test too.

What test is that? Please don't consider this question to be a personal attack.
 

pkane

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I'm not familiar with Rupert Sheldrake's theories, yet I consider unsatisfactory the current state of scientific affairs, which requires postulating the Big Bang. It resembles ancient dogmas describing creation of then-known universes.

The universe we can perceive today is so much wider than the ones people imagined 10000, 1000, or even 100 years ago. What will it be 100, 1000, and 10000 years in the future?

So, what really was the Big Bang? Some kind of matter/energy/space/time transition from a higher-dimensional membrane? Start of a simulation "program" running on a "computer" built by some higher-dimensional species?

Sorry, but Big Bang isn’t postulated. It’s a theory based on multiple, confirmed observations. As a theory it has some predictive powers that are also used to validate it. Just because you consider it unsatisfactory doesn’t make it any less valid. Come up with real evidence against it, and then we can talk. The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you :)
 

Robin L

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I totally get your drift. The world is increasingly being taken over by "experts" who bring the scariest models, and gain power, despite having lousy forecasting records. I see it in my field and others. I'd rather see the world governed by durable principles than by technocratic experts given great power.
No, the world is being taken over by propaganda. Those with the means see to it that it gets into print or on the internet and make sure that their message gets out. Many who claim to be experts are not. But the messages that get out are produced by those who have the means, the will and the desire to get their message across. Science has nothing to do with the case. Science is about something else entirely.
 
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