In general, opinion of experts matters from intrinsic perspective only. But just because experts are specialized to narrow area of their private interest, they're not overmuch qualified in judging of their opinions in wider context - on the contrary, they tend to occupy their stances rather blindly - the more, the more they feel being an experts in given area. In this context the reading of articles The era of expert failure by Arnold Kling, Why experts are usually wrong by David H. Freeman and Why the experts missed the crash by Phill Tetlock (in Czech) may be useful not only for Lubos Motl.
Niels Bohr: "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field".
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Stigler's law of eponymy is a process proposed by University of Chicago statistics professor Stephen Stigler in his 1980 publication "Stigler’s law of eponymy". In its simplest and strongest form it says: "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.". Stigler attributes its discovery to sociologist Robert K. Merton (which makes the law self-referencing).
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Actually it's not so surprising, because people, who are thinking intuitively (and actually inventing stuffs) are rather bad in formalization or realization of their ideas - so they're not presenting their finding in a way, which is accepted by mainstream science, at least in the time, when this idea was originally proposed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_examples_of_Stigler%27s_law
Be wary of the righteous rationalist: We should reject Sam Harris's
claim that science can be a moral guidepost
There is an old paper by Luigi Foschini about the problem of interpretation of quantum physics which has raised a discussion about the effectiveness of science and its limits:
Is Science going through a critical stage? (PDF)
The bias for positive results is a complete shame - future scientists will laugh at us..
Here are two journals that publish null results, the second being more established than the first.
http://www.jasnh.com/
http://www.jnrbm.com/
current phenomenon of “bloggers” should be of serious concern to scientists
Scientists tend to publish positive, rather then negative articles (these denying existing theories the less)
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0010271
As the result, scientists tend to publish unoriginal research (with many references to earlier work), rather then new, potentially controversial research (with few references to earlier work).
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100813/full/news.2010.406.html
Why they're doing so? Because they're payed for references, not for the originality of research. As the result, the physicists are refuting to work on the topics, which don't play well with their existing theories and they tend to research topics, which are supporting them. The Wired article demonstrates it well for the case of cold fusion research:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion_pr.html
It's basically the same selfreinforcing mechanism, like this one disputed here:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-ut-professor-economic-inequality-self-reinforcing.html
Every large community postulates its own rules, which are enabling it to grow faster despite the rest of society. The laws developed politicians are primarily protecting the government, the principles of scientific work and grant system are following the interests of scientists, not the rest of society.
The current publication system is slowing down scientific innovation, but not only this.
1. It discourages the replication of results due to a lack of novelty, although replicability is considered to be a fundamental pillar of modern science.
2. Many journals tend not to publish papers which contradict previously published results, since this may question the editorial process. If controversial contributions are not rejected by the editorial desk, they are often stopped by the referees.
3. Most journals do not publish commentaries or methodological contributions which could point out weaknesses of current results and questions (“grand challenges”) which should be addressed.
4. It is almost impossible to publish negative results, i.e. studies that did not deliver the results one was looking for. However, describing a model or experiment that failed would avoid similarly fruitless attempts and could help to identify successful variants more quickly.
Trolls are like longitudinal underwater waves, forming annoying noise at the water surface, whereas the strictly formally thinking experts are like transverse waves spreading along water surface. At the distance these waves converge mutually, so that the every sufficiently farseeing genius is indistinguishable from cretin.
Frank Poe's law: "Any sufficiently fundamentalistic stance becomes indistinguishable from its parody" (examples)
Arthur E. Clarke's law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from medieval magic"
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
The Poe's law (in which every sufficiently fundamentalistic stance becomes indistinguishable from its parody) and/or Asimov's law (in which every sufficiently advanced theory or technology is indistinguishable from ancient medieval magic) are not accidental at all - but a theorems of AWT model.
For example, with increasing level of formalism the advanced theories of string theorists are becoming as fuzzy and untestable, like the incomprehensible implications of modern philosophers (Martin Heidegger). AWT just explains, why is it so and why both group of thinkers converge to the same outcome undeniably, although they're using completely different tools for it.
At the water surface the strictly causal background independent transverse waves (which are representing strictly formal approach here) are gradually becoming as fuzzy, as the underwater longitudinal waves (which are representing holistic approach of philosophers) and their spreading converges into fuzzy noise from sufficient distance from observer. This can serve as an illustrative physical model of the dichotomy in evolution of human understanding.
Interpreting Statements in Scientific Papers
Why anthropology is ‘true’ even if it is not ‘science’.
"The opposite of ‘science’ is not ‘nihilistic postmodernism’, it’s ‘an enormously huge range of forms of scholarship, many of which are completely and totally committed to accuracy and impartiality in the knowledge claims they make, thank you very much’."
The same applies to another area of science, for example physics, which is very dogmatic too, because of the lack of reliable data for verification. The symptomatic aspect of this intellectual crisis is, young scientists are becoming more conservative, then these elderly ones, because their conformist thinking is carrier driven.
Albert Einstein: "The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer".
Is there something wrong with the scientific method?
In 1977 Michael Mahoney found that journal reviewer evaluations depend on a paper’s conclusion, not just its methods:
75 journal reviewers were asked to referee manuscripts which described identical experimental procedures but which reported positive, negative, mixed, or no results. In addition to showing poor interrater agreement, reviewers were strongly biased against manuscripts which reported results contrary to their theoretical perspective.
It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology.
Abstract
An article on the "decline effect" in science. How research might initially favor grandiose claims only to latter discover they're unsubstantia
As cold fusion events demonstrate, modern science is ruled by conformity, not the search for scientific truth
"It all reminds me of the discovery of cold fusion in 1989 by Fleishmann and Pons, who were widely ridiculed by the arrogant hot fusion researchers who tried to destroy the credibility (and careers) of cold fusion researchers. After the very idea of "cold fusion" was attacked and demolished by these arrogant scientists, it soon returned under a new name: Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR).
LENR has now been verified as true by none other than the U.S. Navy -- along with hundreds of other researchers around the world (see link above). And yet, even today, the conventional scientific community still insists cold fusion doesn't exist and cold fusion researchers are frauds.
Time to democratise science + Sabine's comment
The incoming GOP majority has a new initiative called YouCut, which lets Americans propose government programs for termination. YouCut's first target was that notoriously bloated white elephant, the National Science Foundation.
In praise of scientific error
Excessive caution more damaging to science than mistakes
The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time.
Research at one American university found that those who finish are no cleverer than those who do not. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of money cause them to run out of steam.
Walter Russell Mead: The Crisis of the American Intellectual
Does Peer Review Work?
Peer review is important for professional scientific community, as it should prohibit earning money with complete BSs. But for truly innovative and independent scientists its just a brake of evolution, as Einstein already noted. BTW Most of string theory publications were presented just at ArXiv, simply because of lack of independent reviewers.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/43691
Peer review cannot work well under the situation, when the density of informations and the degree of specialization increases up to level, only experts which are very close to authors can judge their article in qualified way. It violates the anonymity of referees and their objectiveness undeniably. The problem is, scientific community needs to decide about grant and money flow faster, then the completely objective process could enable. In general, I'd recommend, the works of independent researchers shouldn't be a subject of peer review. Only if scientists need a money from the rest of community for their research, they should accept rules of this community. The more public money is involved into research, the more strict should be its rules for publication.
For example, I'm developing AWT in my free time, I don't require money of tax payers for it - so it's solely in my competence to decide, where and how I will present it. Of course, professional scientists don't like it, because of my dumping price policy, but this is a life. Every community needs a competition from outside, or it will degenerate in less or more distant future. Actually I'm helping to increase effectiveness of scientific work for my own money, thus helping whole civilization.
John Allen Paulos - The Decline Effect and Why Scientific 'Truth' So Often Turns Out Wrong.
In AWT (dense aether theory) this phenomena can be real emergent nature and it manifests like switching into dual opinion, when the density of facts increases certain level. It's analogous to dispersive spreading of waves at the water surface, which is switching its character with distance from longitudinal into transverse waves and back into longitudinal waves again. It corresponds the layered fractally nested character of Universe and observable reality.
For example, from terrestrial perspective the epicycle model of solar system appears relevant. With increasing scope this model has been replaced with heliocentric model but now the evolution of galactic arms can be described with epicycle model again. It's just the number of observable objects, which makes epicycle or heliocentric model more relevant.
After all, the acceptation/refusal of aether model is of the same emergent evolution. Before some time old Greeks believed in Aether, later (Newton) this concept has been replaced with concept of absolute space. In 19th century the aether based models were quite popular again, but they're were replaced later with relativity model of space-time. Now the aether model is returning into physics again with model of Higgs field, which is responsible for particle mass.
http://aetherwavetheory.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-ancient-physics-was-reborn.html
Universities are aggressively seeking federal dollars to build bigger and fancier laboratory facilities, and are not paying an equal amount of attention to teaching and nurturing the students who would fill them, scientists say in the articles.
Statistical Prediction Rules Out-Perform Expert Human Judgments
Maybe journalists cannot guess the scientific truth, but you can!
arXiv vs. snarXiv game
Nabokov Theory on Polyommatus Blue Butterflies Is Vindicated - well, just another example of peer-review process failure.
The Science of Right and Wrong
Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science: based on a review of the past data ... some of these claims are no longer valid and can delay understanding of contemporary women's underrepresentation.
"When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that all the dunces are in confederacy against him."
Jonathan Swift
When people can learn what others think, the wisdom of crowds may veer towards ignorance
Efimov states are example of anyons, which are still searched with mainstream physicists, because one half of physicists apparently doesn't understand, what the second one does...
www.livescience.com/9776-strange-physical-theory-proved-40-years.html
www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-acrobatics-anyons-elusive-fundamental-particle.html
Is modern physics rotting?
Crazy Research The U.S. Government Is Funding
An essay by Freeman Dyson on the missed opportunities in science: "The progress of both mathematics and physics has in the past been
seriously retarded by our unwillingness to listen to one another."
Naturalism as dogma is one more enemy of the scientific spirit, Do Physicists Make the World a Better Place?
Physicists could indeed make the world the better place, but they're failing to do so. Most of their activities is serving for physicists itself and they tend to ignore really useful findings (cold fusion, antigravity, room superconductivity, ZPE devices) on behalf of useless and even redundant concepts (Higgs boson, WIMPS, gravitational waves, string theory). They're driven with tendency to continue in research, rather than to reconcile their theories, as R. Wilson (a former boss of APS) pregantly expressed in his famous memo.
Therefore I'm not really sure, if physicists are really doing world better, than the people of other occupations (politicians, lawyers, people of big pharma companies), which are indeed important too, but overly motivated with interests of their own community
When math and science rule the school In his article “Dehumanized,” Mark Slouka argues that the US
education’s focus on math and science and the neglect of the humanities spell the demise of democracy. The American education’s “long running affair with math and science”
is “obsessive, exclusionary” and “altogether unhealthy.” And that is because the ways of science are “often dramatically anti-democratic.”
Albert Einstein: "The greatest obstacle to understanding reality is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." (Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit, 1901). Then he rejected the quantum mechanics.
It's no secret, the peer-review process is in crisis by now. I do perceive it as a structural problem of information explosion. Due the high specialization the peer-review cannot be anonymous anymore, which leads into formation of hidden coalitions and/or blind negativism at the case of competition. Because the mainstream science is payed from research from public money, it definitely needs the feedback to avoid open frauds. I just believe, this feedback must be more opened and public too. It will enable not only to check submitters, but their reviewers too. It would require, all informations must be published at preprint servers first to remove the priority problems. It would lead into lost of influence of mainstream journals, because most of information will be possible to find outside of them. Apparently, just the existence of these journals which guarantee the quality of peer-review process is the largest brake of its further improvement.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin (Feb. 1998) "When you're one step ahead of the crowd you're a genius. When you're two steps ahead, you're a crackpot."
reason versus utter crap (source)
Albert Einstein: Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. (Zdravý smysl je hromada předsudků, kterou hromadíme do osmnácti let.)
The Alternative-Science Respectability Checklist
"Also, one last thing. Don’t compare yourself to Galileo. You are not Galileo. Honestly, you’re not. Dude, seriously." Just because I'm not a Galileo, such comparison is available for me. If I would be a Galileo, I couldn't compare to myself.
We should warn against science journalism, a make-believe world where every story is a breakthrough and every upcoming result is an "answer."
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