← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Petr
Thread ID: 19987 | Posts: 34 | Started: 2005-09-03
2005-09-03 23:59 | User Profile
[I]I am amazed by these statistics...[/I]
[url]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7915[/url]
[FONT=Arial][SIZE=5]Most scientific papers are probably wrong[/SIZE] [SIZE=3] [B]02:00 30 August 2005 NewScientist.com news service
Kurt Kleiner [/B]
[B]Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true[/B].
John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false. But even large, well-designed studies are not always right, meaning that scientists and the public have to be wary of reported findings.
[B]"We should accept that most research findings will be refuted. Some will be replicated and validated. The replication process is more important than the first discovery," Ioannidis says.[/B]
In the paper, Ioannidis does not show that any particular findings are false. Instead, he shows statistically how the many obstacles to getting research findings right combine to make most published research wrong.
[B]Massaged conclusions[/B]
Traditionally a study is said to be "statistically significant" if the odds are only 1 in 20 that the result could be pure chance. But in a complicated field where there are many potential hypotheses to sift through - such as whether a particular gene influences a particular disease - it is easy to reach false conclusions using this standard. If you test 20 false hypotheses, one of them is likely to show up as true, on average.
Odds get even worse for studies that are too small, studies that find small effects (for example, a drug that works for only 10% of patients), or studies where the protocol and endpoints are poorly defined, allowing researchers to massage their conclusions after the fact.
Surprisingly, Ioannidis says another predictor of false findings is if a field is "hot", with many teams feeling pressure to beat the others to statistically significant findings.
But Solomon Snyder, senior editor at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, US, says most working scientists understand the limitations of published research.
"When I read the literature, I'm not reading it to find proof like a textbook. I'm reading to get ideas. So even if something is wrong with the paper, if they have the kernel of a novel idea, that's something to think about," he says.[/SIZE]
[I]Journal reference: Public Library of Science Medicine (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)[/I][/FONT]
2005-09-04 00:31 | User Profile
If review by peers and reproducing experiments provide for 50% correctness, what can one say about middle-eastern tales written down by zhids?
2005-09-04 01:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]If review by peers and reproducing experiments provide for 50% correctness, what can one say about middle-eastern tales written down by zhids?[/QUOTE]
St. Luke was not a 'zhid'.
Face the facts, mr. No other book in history has been the subject of as much rigorous scientific study and analysis as has The Holy Bible, a collection of books written by numerous men over several thousand years. Nothing even comes close.
With regards to reproducing experiments and the major event of all Scripture, namely Christ's resurrection, the point is that it cannot and will not be reproduced. If it could, it wouldn't be worth much. That one event alone gives testament to the limitations of science and points the way to something higher.
2005-09-04 04:19 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]If review by peers and reproducing experiments provide for 50% correctness, what can one say about middle-eastern tales written down by zhids?[/QUOTE]:lol: You were just telling us how the Bible and Christianity couldn't compete against infallible scientific research. Now science, instead of being too infallible for you to trust religion, is too fallible.
Your thought processes are caught in another "Do loop" I'm afraid. You need to think out of the box.
2005-09-04 04:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]Face the facts, mr. No other book in history has been the subject of as much rigorous scientific study and analysis as has The Holy Bible, a collection of books written by numerous men over several thousand years. Nothing even comes close.[/QUOTE]I don't know where you're getting your information from, but the Bible conflicts with known scientific fact in almost every conceivable manner. Here's a sample:
[url]http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html[/url]
One example:
Isaiah 13:10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. The writer of this verse thought that the moon gives off its own light. He thought wrong.
Another:
Mark 4:31 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth. Jesus didn't realize that the mustard seed is NOT the smallest seed in the earth. As pointed out at the above link, the smallest seeds belong to certain kinds of tropical orchids.
The Bible reads precisely as it would be expected to if it were written by primitive people with extremely limited knowledge of how nature works. It's mythology, pure and simple.
As for the above article, it hardly represents an indictment of the scientific method. Science is self-correcting over time. If you don't think it gets results in the long run, ask yourselves if treatment of disease is better now than it was 300 years ago, or if airplanes are better now than in the past. Ask yourselves if lasers, brain surgery, and the plasma etching of microstructures came to exist by people praying for them. And does that computer on your desk generally do what it's supposed to? How do you explain the fact that it does what it's been designed to do, time and time again, until something electrical or mechanical in there wears out (or unless there's a materials/manufacturing defect)?
This just underscores another difference between the scientific community and religious dogmatists: the latter never admit when they're wrong, while the former learn from their mistakes.
2005-09-04 05:17 | User Profile
I knew some dumb bible-thumper was going to fall for the claimed 50% and try to make some conclusions :closedeye
Papers have new results that sometimes get (quickly) discredited. That's precisely the nature of science that everything gets scrutinized and fluff discarded. That's why your "intelligent design" theory is relegated to the garbage bin.
Yeah, science is all wrong. Turn off your computer and go communicate via stone tablets.
2005-09-04 08:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]Yeah, science is all wrong.
Who said that?
Turn off your computer and go communicate via stone tablets.[/QUOTE]
Only after you go pick fleas to eat out of your wife's fur, monkey boy.
[img]http://www.landofthelost.com/images/chaka.jpg[/img]
2005-09-04 08:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angler]This just underscores another difference between the scientific community and religious dogmatists: the latter never admit when they're wrong, while the former learn from their mistakes.[/QUOTE]
:lol:
If that's the best you got Angler, you better go back to the well.
Maybe you can call on Herb:caiphas:Silverman and the [url=http://www.secular.org/]SCA [/url] for some help.
2005-09-04 16:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angler]The Bible reads precisely as it would be expected to if it were written by primitive people with extremely limited knowledge of how nature works. It's mythology, pure and simple.
You read too much into the verses you provide for examples. The KJV adds "her" to the verse of the moon shining. But, even if "her" is a literal and correct translation, why would it be wrong just because the light is reflected? You probably regularly refer to moon light yourself, yet you don't mean that he moon originally produces the light. And, the mustered seed, Jesus was talking about the local farm crops. Jesus didn't say the whole Earth, He was talking about the seeds they sow in the ground.
Do you have any idea how much plain wrong beliefs about nature there was in Bible times? If over half of the scientific papers written today are probably wrong, imagine how many people were wrong about so many things back then. Yet, the Bible doesn't include any scientific claims that are clearly false in the light of modern knowledge that those claims are universally rejected. There are disputes, like the Evolutio/Creaition, but Evolutionists still batting zero creating life or providing even one example of the accumulation of a series of mutations resulting in increased sophistication and fitness within a species?
This just underscores another difference between the scientific community and religious dogmatists: the latter never admit when they're wrong, while the former learn from their mistakes.[/QUOTE]
Can you admit you might be wrong about Evolution.
2005-09-04 16:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]Most scientific papers are probably wrong[/SIZE][/QUOTE]
Actually, this isn't so surprising when you think about it.
Remember the warning label on saccharine because mice given saccharine caused cancer? The studies on breast implants that lead to them being banned? All studies attempting to link homosexuality to genes. They're all wrong.
Most of them are even highly doubtful from just an examinatio of the study itself. In the case of sacchrine, those mice were given doses thousands of times higher than any human would consume. Using that same method, those researchers could even haved proved that even any essentual nutrient is deadly.
There are thousands of college professors, aka scientists, in this country who are required to produce research papers. Out of either their personal bias or out of a desire to have productive findings, they crank out thousands of worthless papers every year.
2005-09-04 17:14 | User Profile
[QUOTE]You read too much into the verses you provide for examples. The KJV adds "her" to the verse of the moon shining. But, even if "her" is a literal and correct translation, why would it be wrong just because the light is reflected? You probably regularly refer to moon light yourself, yet you don't mean that he moon originally produces the light.[/QUOTE]
One need not be a believer to understand that the KJ Bible is one of the great - probably [B]the [/B] great work of literature - from which countless examples of Western art and letters, major, minor and in between, have sprung from. Holding it to a strict scientific measure of accountability is foolish.
Why do Bible stories and parables ring down the ages over hundreds of generations and continue to comfort and inspire people? Because their artistry and allegorical simplicity are clearly grasped and made applicable to people in any era or any culture. That type of universality is the province of art and not science - at least, not science as we currently know it, which dealswith a different genus of universal application: the laws governing the physical world, their nature and their causes. Perhaps the last 5000 years...and the next...are a long voyage of first, the division, and then the reconjoining of religion and science - and none of us are here long enough, or are ever wise enough, to measure the gap widening or closing. Who knows? But to judge a parable (or a koan, for that matter) by the standards of a mathematical formula is ridiculous and proves nothing.
2005-09-04 18:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]If that's the best you got Angler, you better go back to the well. The "best I've got" is only an entire universe of scientific evidence that proves that the Bible is mythology. But that's not enough for those who "believe because it is absurd." How do you reason with people who reject reason itself?
The Bible, with its 6000-year-old flat earth, could not be more scientifically inaccurate.
Maybe you can call on Herb:caiphas:Silverman and the [url=http://www.secular.org/]SCA [/url] for some help.[/QUOTE]As opposed to praying to the Jewish tribal God Yahweh? LOL
2005-09-04 18:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]You read too much into the verses you provide for examples. The KJV adds "her" to the verse of the moon shining. But, even if "her" is a literal and correct translation, why would it be wrong just because the light is reflected? You probably regularly refer to moon light yourself, yet you don't mean that he moon originally produces the light. And, the mustered seed, Jesus was talking about the local farm crops. Jesus didn't say the whole Earth, He was talking about the seeds they sow in the ground. Nearly any statement can be corrected after the fact by adding extra "implied" information as you have done here.
Do you have any idea how much plain wrong beliefs about nature there was in Bible times? If over half of the scientific papers written today are probably wrong, imagine how many people were wrong about so many things back then. Yet, the Bible doesn't include any scientific claims that are clearly false in the light of modern knowledge that those claims are universally rejected. Sure it does. For one thing, the Bible implies a flat, 6000-year-old earth. Both characteristics are 100% physically impossible. Please see the above link for more examples (such as the firmament, floodgates, millions upon millions of species loaded onto a single boat in one day, etc.).
There are disputes, like the Evolutio/Creaition, but Evolutionists still batting zero creating life or providing even one example of the accumulation of a series of mutations resulting in increased sophistication and fitness within a species? Evolutionists haven't created life yet, but they have done the latter countless times. They have even observed speciation. Refer to talkorigins for examples.
Can you admit you might be wrong about Evolution.[/QUOTE]Absolutely, but first I have to see evidence against it that overrides all the evidence for it. For examples of how evolution could be refuted, I again refer you to talkorigins.
2005-09-04 18:28 | User Profile
[COLOR=DarkRed][FONT=Arial][B][I] - "As opposed to praying to the Jewish tribal God Yahweh?"[/I][/B][/FONT][/COLOR]
Why do you guys keep referring to YHWH as "Jewish tribal god," when He promised already to Abraham that "[I]And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed[/I]." (Genesis 22:18) If that isn't an universalistic notion, then what is?
Petr
2005-09-04 18:42 | User Profile
[COLOR=DarkRed][FONT=Arial][B][I] - "The Bible reads precisely as it would be expected to if it were written by primitive people with extremely limited knowledge of how nature works."[/I][/B][/FONT][/COLOR]
You are wrong. For example, (like Blaise Pascal already pointed out) Bible teaches that the number of stars is huge:
[COLOR=Blue][B]Genesis 22:17:
"That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed [U]as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is upon the seashore[/U]"[/B][/COLOR]
This is [B]not[/B] what Greco-Roman scholars like Ptolemy thought - they opined that the overall number of stars was something like 2,500 and actually mocked Christians for believing in countless stars!
The Bible also teaches (unlike pagan philosophers) that this universe has not been eternal, and many, if not most, modern cosmologists tend to agree.
Here is more stuff: [FONT=Book Antiqua][SIZE=4] "Accurate Biblical Descriptions of Scientific Principles"[/SIZE][/FONT]
[url]http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/sciencebible.html[/url]
Like this, the principle of entropy (the decay of this universe):
[COLOR=RoyalBlue][B]"In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end. (Psalms 102:25-27)"[/B][/COLOR]
Petr
2005-09-04 20:14 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angler]Sure it does. For one thing, the Bible implies a flat, 6000-year-old earth. Both characteristics are 100% physically impossible. Please see the above link for more examples (such as the firmament, floodgates, millions upon millions of species loaded onto a single boat in one day, etc.).
The page you linked to takes many things that are acts of God (e.g. healings) or are clearly non-literal (e.g. stars falling from the sky) and misrepresents them as examples of ignorance of nature.
Your examples, "such as the firmament, floodgates, millions upon millions of species loaded onto a single boat in one day, etc." the Bible doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. The firmament isn't a solid sheet. The context doesn't allow for it. God names the firmament heaven (sky). The stars are in the firmament (not below, hanging from it). The ark didn't have millions of species and the Bible doesn't say it did.
Evolutionists haven't created life yet, but they have done the latter countless times. They have even observed speciation. Refer to talkorigins for examples.
Haven't we been through this a bunch of times? Evolutionists have never produced even a single example of Evolution, the accumulation of a number of mutations resulting in increased fitness and sophistication of a species. Speciation is not Evolution, at least not any relevant Evolution.
Absolutely, but first I have to see evidence against it that overrides all the evidence for it. For examples of how evolution could be refuted, I again refer you to talkorigins.[/QUOTE]
Oh yes, for Evolution to be wrong, all sorts of impossible, or unlikely, things would have to be true. Evolution couldn't be wrong just because that's not how nature works.
2005-09-05 10:14 | User Profile
"How Can All Those Scientists Be Wrong? The idea that evolution may be false is a difficult idea for many people to accept, particularly when a lot of well-educated, smart people, and well-respected organizations say it is true. How can it be that so many people are so wrong? Most people are taught in school, and from television shows and museums, that evolution explains our universe and all living things, and that evolution is a proven fact. They have not been told about the problems with the theory of evolution, nor have they been given the opportunity to study the concept of "special creation" as a legitimate alternative. Much of the confusion around the concept of "evolution" is that this word is commonly used to describe two very different things: Micro-evolution refers to the fact that living things have a built-in variability which allows them to adapt to small changes in the environment. When scientists say that evolution is a proven fact, they mean that micro-evolution is a proven fact. No creation scientist disputes this. Indeed, this ability to adapt would be expected as a part of "good design". Textbook examples of "evolution in action" almost always describe this type of small change, such as the "peppered moth" story, or the development of resistance to pesticides. What is happening in these cases is not the creation of something new, but merely the emphasis of an already existing trait. Macro-evolution refers to the type of change which has created people from hydrogen gas. Evolutionists say that large scale change is possible because we have seen small scale change in action. However, the flaw in this reasoning is that living systems have limits beyond which no further change can take place. Some other considerations include: Much of day to day scientific activity ("practical science") does not directly depend upon evolutionary assumptions, and so progress is made. Scientific fields of study have become very narrow. A scientist can believe that the evidence for evolution is found in "some other field", even if it is not obviously seen in his own. Since scientists know that other scientists believe in evolution, they believe it also, even though they may not know much about the details themselves. Scientists want to have an answer for everything, and so the "best" theory is the accepted theory, regardless of its absolute merits. Non-naturalistic ideas (like special creation) are regarded as outside the scope of scientific study. Can we equate "what is true" only with "what can be seen and measured"? Is the physical dimension "all there is"? Many scientists have been taught to believe that religious and scientific beliefs are separate things which should be kept separate. However, many of the well-known scientists of the past (such as Louis Pasteur, Issac Newton, and Michael Faraday, among many others) operated with their religious and scientific ideas working together. "
2005-09-05 10:18 | User Profile
Scientists admit: we were wrong about 'E'
Experts who gave a dramatic warning that ecstasy led to brain damage based their study on a huge blunder, reports health editor Jo Revill
Sunday September 7, 2003 The Observer
It was billed as the one of the most dramatic warnings the world has ever received over the dangers of ecstasy. A study from one of America's leading universities concluded that taking the drug for just one evening could leave clubbers with irreversible brain damage, and trigger the onset of Parkinson's disease. The study, published in the eminent journal Science last September, had an immediate impact. Doctors and anti-drug crusaders spoke of a 'neurological time bomb' facing the young. Others suggested that taking one of the tablets was the equivalent of playing Russian roulette with the brain, and demanded tighter 'anti-rave' laws to deal with it.
But today, scientists are facing up to the humiliation of admitting that the stark results they reported in the study were not a breakthrough but a terrible, humiliating blunder.
The study was based on the fact that laboratory monkeys and baboons had a severe reaction to the drug when it was injected in small doses. But it emerged this weekend that the vials of liquid did not contain ecstasy. Instead, the animals received a dose of methamphetamine, or speed - a drug widely known to affect the body's dopamine system. The tubes had somehow been mislabelled by the supplier.
In this week's Science, the scientists will publish a retraction of their original study, reigniting the row over the role of those who investigate ecstasy, as well as the real risks or benefits of the drug.
In academic circles, the mistake is a severe embarrassment to Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, which attracts millions of dollars of research funding from both government and companies. Questions are already being asked about whether the lead researcher, George Ricaurte, was inherently biased against the drug.
The mistake only came to light when follow-up tests gave conflicting results. The original study reported how two out of 10 animals died quickly after their second or third dose. Six weeks later, the dopamine levels in the surviving animals were down by 65 per cent, leading Ricaurte and his colleagues to conclude that it could provoke the onset of Parkinson's, which is linked to a loss of dopamine-producing cells.
He said at the time: 'It is possible that some of the more recent cases of suspected young-onset Parkinson's disease might be related, but that this link has not been recognised.'
When the study was published last September, a chorus of experts saw it as evidence of drug damage. Professor Colin Blakemore of Oxford University, soon to be the new head of the Medical Research Council, said it provided further evidence that 'ecstasy can be toxic to nerve cells'.
Dr Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal, went as far as to describe taking ecstasy as playing 'Russian roulette' with brain function.
He added: 'This study showed that even very occasional use can have long-lasting effects on many different brain systems. It sends an important message to young people - don't experiment with your brain.'
Yesterday, Ricaurte was attempting to put a brave face on the calamity. He is under attack from all sides, and has already been accused of rushing his study into print because Congress was looking at a bill known as the Anti-Rave Act, which would punish club owners who knew that drugs such as ecstasy were being used on their premises.
Ricaurte has denied political bias. He said yesterday that his laboratory made 'a simple human error', adding: 'We're scientists, not chemists.' Asked why the vials of liquid were not checked before being used on the animals, he replied: 'We're not chemists. We get hundreds of chemicals here - it's not customary to check them.'
It is unusual for Science to have to publish a retraction, but that is exactly the right thing to do, according to Joe Collier, professor of medicines policy at St George's Hospital Medical School.
'People must realise that mistakes are made, even by scientists,' said Collier. 'It is embarrassing - a lot of self-questioning will be going on over there - but it's important we learn from this.'
Over the past five years, controversy has raged about the real dangers of ecstasy, a drug which is taken by around a million clubbers in Britain every weekend.
Some studies have suggested that ecstasy has no long-term impact on the levels of the hormone serotonin in the brain, while others have suggested that it leaves clubbers feeling depressed and unable to concentrate.
The controversy is not likely to go away quickly while the scientists themselves are caught up in such a political and academic minefield.
[url]http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1037007,00.html[/url]
2005-09-05 10:24 | User Profile
Scientists find errors in global warming data By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY Fri Aug 12, 7:32 AM ET
Satellite and weather-balloon research released Friday removes a last bastion of scientific doubt about global warming, researchers say.
Surface temperatures have shown small but steady increases since the 1970s, but the tropics had shown little atmospheric heating - and even some cooling. Now, after sleuthing reported in three papers released by the journal Science, revisions have been made to that atmospheric data.
Climate expert Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, lead author of one of the papers, says that those fairly steady measurements in the tropics have been a key argument "among people asking, 'Why should I believe this global warming hocus-pocus?' "
After examining the satellite data, collected since 1979 by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellites, Carl Mears and Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, Calif., found that the satellites had drifted in orbit, throwing off the timing of temperature measures. Essentially, the satellites were increasingly reporting nighttime temperatures as daytime ones, leading to a false cooling trend. The team also found a math error in the calculations.
"Our hats are off to (them). They found a real source of error," says atmospheric scientist John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, whose team produced the lower temperature estimates.
When examining the balloon data, Yale University researchers found that heating from tropical sunlight was skewing the temperatures reported by sensors, making nights look as warm as days.
Once corrected, the satellite and balloon temperatures align with other surface and upper-atmosphere measures, as well as climate change models, Santer says.
Global warming's pace over the past 30 years has actually been quite slow, a total increase of about 1 degree Fahrenheit. It is predicted to accelerate in this century.
Mark Herlong of the George C. Marshall Institute declined to comment. The group, financed by the petroleum industry, has used the data disparities to dispute the views of global-warming activists. In recent years, however, the institute has softened its public statements, acknowledging that the planet is indeed getting warmer but still maintaining that the change is happening so slowly that the impact is minimal.
[url]http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/scientistsfinderrorsinglobalwarmingdata%3B_ylt=AjTOCO3tVlsLGs2C7WR_mcQDW7oF%3B_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl[/url]
Climate change: Menace or myth? 12 February 2005 NewScientist.com news service
The human impact on climateON 16 FEBRUARY, the Kyoto protocol comes into force. Whether you see this as a triumph of international cooperation or a case of too little, too late, there is no doubt that it was only made possible by decades of dedicated work by climate scientists. Yet as these same researchers celebrate their most notable achievement, their work is being denigrated as never before.
The hostile criticism is coming from sceptics who question the reality of climate change. Critics have always been around, but in recent months their voices have become increasingly prominent and influential. One British newspaper called climate change a "global fraud" based on "left-wing, anti-American, anti-west ideology". A London-based think tank described the UK's chief scientific adviser, David King, as "an embarrassment" for believing that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism. And the bestselling author Michael Crichton, in his much publicised new novel State of Fear, portrays global warming as an evil plot perpetrated by environmental extremists.
If the sceptics are to be believed, the evidence for global warming is full of holes and the field is riven with argument and uncertainty. The apparent scientific consensus over global warming only exists, they say, because it is enforced by a scientific establishment riding the gravy train, aided and abetted by governments keen to play the politics of fear. It's easy to dismiss such claims as politically motivated and with no basis in fact - especially as the majority of sceptics are economists, business people or politicians, not scientists (see "Meet the sceptics"). But there are nagging doubts. Could the sceptics be onto something? Are we, after all, being taken for a ride?
This is perhaps the most crucial scientific question of the 21st century. The winning side in the climate debate will shape economic, political and technological developments for years, even centuries, to come. With so much at stake, it is crucial that the right side wins. But which side is right? What is the evidence that human activity is warming the world, and how reliable is it?
First, the basic physics. It is beyond doubt that certain gases in the atmosphere, most importantly water vapour and carbon dioxide, trap infrared radiation emitted by the Earth's surface and so have a greenhouse effect. This in itself is no bad thing. Indeed, without them the planet would freeze. There is also no doubt that human activity is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, and that this has caused a sustained year-on-year rise in CO2 concentrations. For almost 60 years, measurements at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii have charted this rise, and it is largely uncontested that today's concentrations are about 35 per cent above pre-industrial levels (see Graph).
The effect this has on the planet is also measurable. In 2000, researchers based at Imperial College London examined satellite data covering almost three decades to plot changes in the amount of infrared radiation escaping from the atmosphere into space - an indirect measure of how much heat is being trapped. In the part of the infrared spectrum trapped by CO2 - wavelengths between 13 and 19 micrometres - they found that between 1970 and 1997 less and less radiation was escaping. They concluded that the increasing quantity of atmospheric CO2 was trapping energy that used to escape, and storing it in the atmosphere as heat. The results for the other greenhouse gases were similar.
These uncontested facts are enough to establish that "anthropogenic" greenhouse gas emissions are tending to make the atmosphere warmer. What's more, there is little doubt that the climate is changing right now. Temperature records from around the world going back 150 years suggest that 19 of the 20 warmest years - measured in terms of average global temperature, which takes account of all available thermometer data - have occurred since 1980, and that four of these occurred in the past seven years (see Graph).
The only serious question mark over this record is the possibility that measurements have been biased by the growth of cities near the sites where temperatures are measured, as cities retain more heat than rural areas. But some new research suggests there is no such bias. David Parker of the UK's Met Office divided the historical temperature data into two sets: one taken in calm weather and the other in windy weather. He reasoned that any effect due to nearby cities would be more pronounced in calm conditions, when the wind could not disperse the heat. There was no difference.
It is at this point, however, that uncertainty starts to creep in. Take the grand claim made by some climate researchers that the 1990s were the warmest decade in the warmest century of the past millennium. This claim is embodied in the famous "hockey stick" curve, produced by Michael Mann of the University of Virginia in 1998, based on "proxy" records of past temperature, such as air bubbles in ice cores and growth rings in tree and coral. (see "Hotly contested") Sceptics have attacked the findings over poor methodology used, and their criticism has been confirmed by climate modellers, who have recently recognised that such proxy studies systematically underestimate past variability. As one Met Office scientist put it: "We cannot make claims as to the 1990s being the warmest decade."
There is also room for uncertainty in inferences drawn from the rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The warming itself is real enough, but that doesn't necessarily mean that human activity is to blame. Sceptics say that the warming could be natural, and again they have a point. It is now recognised that up to 40 per cent of the climatic variation since 1890 is probably due to two natural phenomena. The first is solar cycles, which influence the amount of radiation reaching the Earth, and some scientist have argued that increased solar activity can account for most of the warming of the past 150 years. The second is the changing frequency of volcanic eruptions, which produce airborne particles that can shade and hence cool the planet for a year or more. This does not mean, however, that the sceptics can claim victory, as no known natural effects can explain the 0.5 ðC warming seen in the past 30 years. In fact, natural changes alone would have caused a marginal global cooling (see Graph).
More... [url]http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg18524861.400[/url]
2005-09-05 15:36 | User Profile
[QUOTE]It was billed as the one of the most dramatic warnings the world has ever received over the dangers of ecstasy. A study from one of America's leading universities concluded that taking the drug for just one evening could leave clubbers with irreversible brain damage, and trigger the onset of Parkinson's disease. The study, published in the eminent journal Science last September, had an immediate impact. Doctors and anti-drug crusaders spoke of a 'neurological time bomb' facing the young. Others suggested that taking one of the tablets was the equivalent of playing Russian roulette with the brain, and demanded tighter 'anti-rave' laws to deal with it.
But today, scientists are facing up to the humiliation of admitting that the stark results they reported in the study were not a breakthrough but a terrible, humiliating blunder. [/QUOTE]
Thanks, Gabby!
I've never tried Ecstasy - but now that I've got the all-clear..!
2005-09-06 17:19 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angler] Jesus didn't realize that the mustard seed is NOT the smallest seed in the earth. As pointed out at the above link, the smallest seeds belong to certain kinds of tropical orchids.
The Bible reads precisely as it would be expected to if it were written by primitive people with extremely limited knowledge of how nature works. It's mythology, pure and simple. [/QUOTE]Your conclusion on that point does not follow your premise, partly because you choose to ignore contextual conversation. If orchid seeds were not common in Jesus' time and place, why would He refer to a seed with which his audience is not generally familiar? So, the smallest seed, in a comparison easliy understood by an audience of laymen, would easily be the mustard seed.
As well argue that one would insist that in the Bible Jesus point out that man can fly, since some time down the road some men did figure out how to fly: in 1903, and to glide, some years before, and to balloon, nearly a century before.
So splitting hairs over "seed size" strikes me as a bad way to try and support your point.
AE
2005-09-06 18:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]One need not be a believer to understand that the KJ Bible is one of the great - probably [B]the [/B] great work of literature - from which countless examples of Western art and letters, major, minor and in between, have sprung from. Holding it to a strict scientific measure of accountability is foolish.
Why do Bible stories and parables ring down the ages over hundreds of generations and continue to comfort and inspire people? Because their artistry and allegorical simplicity are clearly grasped and made applicable to people in any era or any culture. That type of universality is the province of art and not science - at least, not science as we currently know it, which dealswith a different genus of universal application: the laws governing the physical world, their nature and their causes. Perhaps the last 5000 years...and the next...are a long voyage of first, the division, and then the reconjoining of religion and science - and none of us are here long enough, or are ever wise enough, to measure the gap widening or closing. Who knows? But to judge a parable (or a koan, for that matter) by the standards of a mathematical formula is ridiculous and proves nothing.[/QUOTE]If this argument continues, much goodwill will be destroyed. The issue of religion has done too much to split many on this board.
I quote from my book: [QUOTE]The sage of Baltimore Henry Mencken described the Bible as unquestionably the most beautiful book in the world even allowing for the barbarities of the Old Testament and the silly theology of the New. Unlike Freud, but writing after World War II, Mr. Mencken thought Jews as commonly encountered as predominantly unpleasant, and noted that everywhere they seemed to be disliked. This dislike was not based on their religion, but on their uncouth manners and their curious lack of tact. He granted them their extraordinary capacity to offend goyim, and not infrequently these affronts would engender brutal wars. Yet he continued to describe Jews as the foremost dreamers of the Western world and its greatest poets[B].[1][/B] Earlier in his prewar edition Mencken had been caustic to the extent of describing them as plausibly being the most unpleasant race ever heard of. The type most commonly encountered lacked traits of the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease and confidence. They had vanity with no pride, ostentation with no taste and learning with no wisdom. Mr. Mencken accused them of wasting their fortitude on childish objects and of using charity as a form of display[B].[2] [/B]
American philosopher George Santayana had written of travelling through Italy with a Jewish friend from Harvard and seeing monk novitiates in a rural area. His friend with his modern Jewish standards had dismissed the young yokels as mere beasts. Santayana observed the modern Jew recognized verbal intelligence, but not simple spirit. He did not admit anything freer or deeper than literature, science or commerce. The Jew judged the earth the promised land, suggesting the millennium, the triumph of God in the human world. Swine, epicureans, and monks, not being legally edible, were deemed useless for that purpose, and worse positively unclean. The God of the Jews lived in the mountains and winds. Their reality was His reality. His life and wishes were to be traced through science, commerce and literature. Jews lived with the thought that beliefs long thought dead would be revealed through their efforts to direct human history and prepare man for the glory of Zion. This noble purpose overwhelmed them, and they could not understand why vast numbers of mankind rejected them and their beliefs. A God resulting from the end or good of happiness of mankind insulted them as it would demand they recognize He would dwell in the monk or the beast rather than commerce, science or literature[B].[3][/B] The great survivor of Hitler's Germany, Rabbi Leo Baeck, had written a polemic sharply rejecting Christianity which he saw as possessing a "romantic" tradition of abstract spirit longing for redemption while his Judaism had the concrete spirit of working for improvement in the world[B].[4][/B]
The psychiatrist Menninger commented astutely on why Jews had so much difficulty among the citizenry of Europe. The Roman church and its subsequent development had swung away from the monotheism of the Jews to the earlier polytheism of the gods of the Greeks and Romans. Jews for relief had to seek aid from the Protestant Christians of England and the United States. The Protestant Reformation had marked a swing back to the monotheism of the Jews and had adopted some of the hostility of the Jews toward the Church of Rome. In America the fundamentalists with their insistence on literalism have become the biggest allies of the Jews, even though the Hebrews despise them. These fundamentalists paradoxically convinced that a truly omniscient God would have written the Bible in English rather than Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic or lesser languages have languished in their scholarship, but have continued to believe in their ability to divine the writings. Some 200 years prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, Viscount Bolingbroke, esteemed man of the English Enlightenment, commented on the claim by Jews to the Holy Land. To justify the cruelties Joshua perpetrated against the Canaanites ancient prophecies were quoted. The pronounced curses contradicted all English negotiations of order and justice. Bolingbroke thought the patriarch drunk, and that no man in his senses could pass such a sentence or use such language. The sacred books of the Bible documented that the Israelites never had entire, and scarcely ever peaceable, possession of the Holy Land. Of their powerful neighbors, the Assyrians, scarcely a thought was expended. The contents of the Bible gave a chaotic imperfect account of the history of the time. No writer but a Jew could attribute to divine providence the accomplishment of such a prediction of their regaining the Holy Land, nor make the Supreme Being the executor of such a curse[B].[5][/B] Unfortunately, in the America of today no spiritual seed of Bolingbroke can be found.
2005-09-06 18:56 | User Profile
[COLOR=Red][FONT=Arial][B][I] - "Some 200 years prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, Viscount Bolingbroke, esteemed man of the English Enlightenment, commented on the claim by Jews to the Holy Land. To justify the cruelties Joshua perpetrated against the Canaanites ancient prophecies were quoted. The pronounced curses contradicted all English negotiations of order and justice."[/I][/B][/FONT][/COLOR]
I wonder if Bolingbroke, Mr. Goody-two-shoes that he apparently was, had also been ready to condemn the way that Englishmen took over North America from Indians?
Puritans saw themselves as new Israelites and called Indians as "New Canaanites" that they were justified to conquer and sometimes butcher.
Petr
2005-09-06 23:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]I wonder if Bolingbroke, [B][I]Mr. Goody-two-shoes that he apparently was[/I][/B], had also been ready to condemn the way that Englishmen took over North America from Indians? Petr[/QUOTE]Bolingbroke was accused of many things, but that trite expression was not one of his reported sins. Your immature comments are a drag on civilized discourse and this board.
2005-09-07 04:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]Who said that?
Only after you go pick fleas to eat out of your wife's fur, monkey boy.
[img]http://www.landofthelost.com/images/chaka.jpg[/img][/QUOTE]
AAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!
:yes: :yes: :yes:
2005-09-07 04:19 | User Profile
Monkey boys are in Astrodome.
I have evolved enough, thanks to evolution :smoke:
2005-09-07 07:54 | User Profile
[COLOR=Navy][FONT=Arial][B][I] - "Bolingbroke was accused of many things, but that trite expression was not one of his reported sins." [/I][/B][/FONT][/COLOR]
He was a goody-two-shoes in the sense that he faked moral outrage towards the actions of ancient Israelites, a common phenomenon among "enlightenment" [I]philosophes[/I] who otherwise preached moral relativism.
Similarly, witness how many "might is right" Nazis of the 20th century found time to gush over oh-how-viciously-cruel the conquest of Joshua was. Hypocrisy, there's no other word for it.
Petr
2005-09-08 16:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr][COLOR=Navy][FONT=Arial][B][I] - "Bolingbroke was accused of many things, but that trite expression was not one of his reported sins." [/I][/B][/FONT][/COLOR]
He was a goody-two-shoes in the sense that he faked moral outrage towards the actions of ancient Israelites, a common phenomenon among "enlightenment" [I]philosophes[/I] who otherwise preached moral relativism. Petr[/QUOTE]Any man who could write as below was a learned man. You could learn much from reading him. [QUOTE]Allow me to make, as I go along, a short reflection or two on this prophecy, and the completion of it, as they stand recorded in the Pentateuch, out of many that might be made. The terms of the prophecy then are hot very clear: and the curse pronounced in it contradicts all our notions of order and of justice. One is tempted to think, that the patriarch was still drunk; and that no man in his senses could hold such language, or pass such a sentence. Certain it is, that no writer but a Jew could impute to the economy of Divine Providence the accomplishment of such a prediction, nor make the Supreme Being the executor of such a curse.[/QUOTE]He was not an adherent to the Jewish interpretation of history which plagues the West to this day.
2005-09-08 17:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=edward gibbon]Any man who could write as below was a learned man. You could learn much from reading him. He was not an adherent to the Jewish interpretation of history which plagues the West to this day.[/QUOTE]
Odd then that [url=http://www.bartleby.com/65/st/StJohn-H.html]Bartleby[/url] references him as an "unstable profligate", "generally distrusted" and "much admired by (zionist jew) Benjamin Disraeli."
2005-10-05 05:36 | User Profile
I am an Australian Scientist and know how true that New Scientist article is. An Australian Scientist has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for the invention of the theory that an organism Helicobacter is the cause of stomach ulcers. He is of course wrong. Most people are infected by this organism yet they do not get ulcers, nor are uninfected people exempt. It has been shown that this organism is a harmless commensal which in fact helps to protect us from dangerous organisms. Nor is the previous scientific theory that stress is the cause true. The true cause is deficiency in the mineral selenium, but you will never get a Nobel Prize for discovering anything true. And on the question of the party drug "E", what is true, but not made known to the public, is that this drug along with all these drugs of abuse shuts down the immune system and is the true cause of AIDS - not a harmless "virus". The whole purpose of Science is to confuse and misinform the public so they cannot think straight and so become perfect slave fodder. Keith
2005-10-05 09:17 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Keith Rex]I am an Australian Scientist and know how true that New Scientist article is. An Australian Scientist has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for the invention of the theory that an organism Helicobacter is the cause of stomach ulcers. He is of course wrong. Most people are infected by this organism yet they do not get ulcers, nor are uninfected people exempt. It has been shown that this organism is a harmless commensal which in fact helps to protect us from dangerous organisms. Nor is the previous scientific theory that stress is the cause true. The true cause is deficiency in the mineral selenium, but you will never get a Nobel Prize for discovering anything true.[/QUOTE]This is an interesting theory. Do you have any links/evidence to substantiate it?
How do you explain the decrease in stomach cancer since the 1950s in industrialised countries such as Britain and Japan, correlated with improved water sanitation (and thus lower rates of heliobacter infection)? Has the amount of selenium in our diet increased?
2005-10-05 09:20 | User Profile
To address the main post, it wouldn't matter if 90% of scientific papers were wrong. The point is that scientific papers are open to review and criticism, and the incorrect ones eventually get weeded out through peer review and experimental replication. Even if only 10% or even 1% get discarded for each iteration through this cycle, it is still a superior basis for arriving at knowledege about the material world than static, revealed truth.
2005-10-05 14:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]...it is still a superior basis for arriving at knowledege about the material world than static, revealed truth.[/QUOTE]
What 'static, revealed truth' provides detailed physiological information on butterflies, for example?
Of course it's a different story if you're talking about the origins of the 'material' and/or how we conceptualize it in the first place.
I'm not sure what you're stating here, double-R Pee.
2005-10-05 18:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]What 'static, revealed truth' provides detailed physiological information on butterflies, for example?
Of course it's a different story if you're talking about the origins of the 'material' and/or how we conceptualize it in the first place.
I'm not sure what you're stating here, double-R Pee.[/QUOTE]TR, I'm saying "horses for courses", basically.