science
Agree or Disagree?
• When cows fall asleep standing up, it is
easy (and fun!) to sneak up next to them
and tip them over.
• Birds eating rice thrown at weddings swell
up and die (even burst).
• Animals exposed to radioactive waste
mutate and turn into other types of animals.
Agree or Disagree?
• Earthworms come up onto the sidewalks after
heavy rain to avoid being drowned in their
underground tunnels.
• People licking toads have hallucinations.
• Lennon wrote better music than Tchaikovsky.
• Heaven is not in our solar system, but it is
somewhere in the universe.
Science involves…
• Using and extending the senses
• Observing and collecting
• Probing and testing
• Deductive hypothesis testing
• Inductive search for patterns
• Building increasingly accurate explanations based
on evidence
Good Science
Good Science is
• Consistent
• Parsimonious
• Empirically testable
• Progressive
• Retrogressive
• useful
Some Examples of Good Science
• Natural Selection
• DNA
• Thermodynamics
• Quanta
• Standard Model of Particle Physics
• Cosmology
• Relativity
Mendeleev and the Periodic
Table of Chemical Elements
Fleming and the serendipitous
discovery of the first antibiotic
Goodall and the willingness to
break with convention
The Scientific Method
• There is simply no fixed set of steps that
scientists always follow, no one path that
leads them unerringly to scientific
knowledge.
“The Scientific Method”
• An experiment is a test
used to determine if
there is evidence to
support a hypothesis
What is a hypothesis?
An hypothesis is a guess or prediction
about a phenomenon.
• Poly-water
• Cold fusion
• Bowen Technique
Intelligent Design
• Acupuncture
Some other kinds of
defective science
• junk science
•
How can you recognize
pseudoscience?
• Most scientific fields are the subjects of
intense research which result in the
continual expansion of knowledge in the
discipline.
• A pseudo-scientific field evolves very
little since it was first established. The
small amount of research and
experimentation that is carried out is
generally done more to justify the belief
than to extend it.
How can you recognize
pseudoscience?
• Scientists commonly seek out
counterexamples or findings that
appear to be inconsistent with accepted
theories.
• In pseudo-sciences, a challenge to
accepted dogma is often considered a
hostile act if not heresy, and leads to
bitter disputes or even schisms.
How can you recognize
pseudoscience?
• In science observations or data that are
not consistent with current scientific
understanding, once shown to be
credible, generate intense interest
among scientists and stimulate additional
studies.
• In a pseudoscience observations or data
that are not consistent with established
beliefs tend to be ignored or actively
suppressed.
How can you recognize
pseudoscience?
• Science is a process in which each principle
must be tested in the crucible of experience
and remains subject to being questioned or
rejected at any time.
• The major tenets and principles of
pseudoscience are often not falsifiable, and
are unlikely ever to be altered or shown to be
wrong.
Isreal Flying rabbis Fight Swine
Flu with Prayer,and Shofer
Israel - On Monday
morning an Arkia airlines
plane took off from Ben
Gurion Airport carrying
rabbis and Kabbalists and
flew over the country in a
flight aimed at preventing
the swine flu virus from
spreading in Israel through
prayers.
How can you recognize
pseudoscience?
• Scientific ideas and concepts must stand or fall
on their own merits, based on existing
knowledge and on evidence.
• Pseudoscientific concepts tend to be shaped by
individual egos and personalities, almost
always by individuals who are not in contact
with mainstream science. They often invoke
authority (a famous name, for example) for
support.
CARL SAGAN'S BALONEY DETECTION KIT
• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts
• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents
of all points of view.
• Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no
"authorities").
• Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that
caught your fancy.
• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.
• Quantify, wherever possible.
• If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.
• "Ochkam's razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally
well choose the simpler.
• Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to
be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others
duplicate the experiment and get the same result?
Boundary Detection Kit
Fairness Question:
If I were to ask the holders of
the claim or belief if they and
their beliefs were fairly
treated, how would they
respond?
Boundary Detection Kit
• Pseudo-Science or Not
Annals of Internal Medicine
• A Randomized Clinical Trial of Acupuncture
Compared with Sham Acupuncture in
Fibromyalgia
•
FDA
• FDA Removes Bar to Coverage Of
Acupuncture by Insurance; Needles Are
Classified as Medical DevicesThe
Washington Post | March 30, 1996| Rick
Weiss | Copyright
FDA
• The Food and Drug Administration
yesterday classified acupuncture needles as
medical devices for "general use" by trained
professionals.The agency did not go so far
as to state that acupuncture is effective for
any particular condition, an outcome many
acupuncturists had hoped for.
Cranks or Psudoscientist
• Cranks do not understand how the scientific
Process works.
• Cranks claim that they’re misunderstood.
• Cranks see themselves like Galileo
• Cranks tend to paranoia.
• Cranks see themselves as geniuses.
• Cranks regard their colleagues as blockheads.
• He feels persecuted.
• Attacks renowned scientists as Einstein.
• Speaks in made up jargon
Why Do Cranks Lack A
Knowledge Filter?
• Lack of training or out of date training
• A true believer
1. Power Towers
2. Cell Phone Safety
3. Ghosts
4. Nessie the loch Ness monster
Nano-scientist's Peer Review
• One of the most brilliant scientific
researchers of recent years stands accused of
committing an elaborate scientific fraud,
fooling many eminent experts.
•
• Bell's internal inquiry on Schoen was damning
Poly-
water
Water
Rousseau 57
DeBunking
• Denis Rousseau and Sergio Porto at USC
– Use Raman scattering for spectroscopy
– Condensate turns to black char
• Polywater should not do this
• Combination of Na, Cl, and SO4
– Proponents-contaminants in Rousseau’s but not theirs
– Rousseau uses infrared spectroscopy on sweat
Polywater
Sweat
Rousseau 57
Discussion and Conclusion
• Polywater as a Pathologic Science
– (Langmuir 1953)
2200
The Video Peak
Comparing Peaks
The APS Meeting
• Caltech: Steve Koonin and Nathan Lewis
• Questions about the Calorimetry
– Closed cell vs. Open cell
– Raw data?
• A lot of negative results.
Excess Heat
Retractions
• Georgia Tech – Temperature (not Neutrons)
• Texas A & M – Ungrounded thermistor (not
Excess Heat )
• Seattle – “Remind me how a mass spec
works again.” (not Tritium )
Nano-scientist's dark secret
• Analysis of his papers going back through previous years provided more
evidence of suspicious data.
• After its findings were released, Bell fired Schoen. Nature, the journal
which had published much of his work, retracted the suspect papers
triggering a huge amount of soul searching in the scientific community.
Boundary Detection Kit
• How Reliable is The Source of the claim?
• How does this fit with the real world and how it works?
p
n Deuterium
Two Pathways
D + D → p + 3H D + D →n + 3He
p p
p p n n
n n
n n p
p H
3 3
He n n
p p
Energy Of Fusion
• In the D + D → p + 3H reaction most of the
energy (3 MeV) is carried away by the
proton.
• In the D + D →n + 3He reaction the neutron
carries most of the energy (2.45 MeV).
The Cold Fusion Experiment
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go
mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one
by one.
Charles Mackay
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
1841
The Scramble to Confirm or
Refute
• Numerous physics and
chemistry labs began
experiments using the
limited information
available.
• Large scale efforts at MIT,
Los Alamos, Harwell,
Yale, and Caltech were
launched.
Confirmations
• Jones, et. al. (BYU Neutrons)
• Georgia Tech – Neutrons
• Texas A & M – Excess Heat
• Seattle – Tritium
• Small colleges and independent researchers
• Bob’s Discount House of Knowledge
Doubts
• Why are they still breathing?
– Heat vs. neutron output.
• Are the nuclei really any closer?
• Where are the control runs?
• What’s wrong with that peak?
– The MIT gang goes to the video replay.
Gamma-Rays
• The gamma-ray peak
as presented in the
first P & F paper
submitted to the
Journal of
Electroanalytical
Chemistry (JEC).
2200
The Video Peak
Comparing Peaks
The APS Meeting
• Caltech: Steve Koonin and Nathan Lewis
• Questions about the Calorimetry
– Closed cell vs. Open cell
– Raw data?
• A lot of negative results.
Excess Heat
Retractions
• Georgia Tech – Temperature (not Neutrons)
• Texas A & M – Ungrounded thermistor (not
Excess Heat )
• Seattle – “Remind me how a mass spec
works again.” (not Tritium )