Radioactive Decay not a constant ?

[Betruger]

Yes, but that's only because people fail the simple basics of proper scientific criteria. Both on the scientists' side and the public's. The public going much further than a glancing check at the scientific soundness of everything they deal with would be unfeasible. I think there was a recent study made on the time cost of all users actualy reading software EULAs.. I think you can guess what sort of proportions were found

[rcain]

I like to put it this way,

Science is man's limited understanding of the universe that God created.

but that is a circular argument, since Man created 'god'. 'In the beginning was the word...' qed.

I don't think so...but I'm not here to argue if God exists. Not sure what you mean by "In the beginning was the word" word by the definition they, Jewish Hebrews of the time, gave it was to mean God.

precisely.

(though my precise thinking is more aligned with Nietze, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Foucault, Khun, others).

[tomclarke]

One of my closest friends at Cambidge was a very prostletising skeptic - determined to disprove as fraud any claims of supernatural activity.

I did not disagree with his conclusions - I found his emotional engagement with the subject disproportionate. I always thought his faith was skepticism - and sure enough he was evangelised and is now an equally adamant Christian (and just as good a physicist as he was then). He has a more constructive outlet for his faith now.

Thomas Henry Huxley (known mainly as "Darwin's Bulldog" though his contribution is larger than that) recognises the difficulty and importance of being a scientist:

But the longer I live, the more obvious it is to me that the most sacred act of a man's life is to say and to feel, 'I believe such and such to be true.' All the greatest rewards and all the heaviest penalties of existence cling about that act. The universe is one and the same throughout; and if the condition of my success in unraveling some little difficulty of anatomy or physiology is that I shall rigorously refuse to put faith in that which does not rest on sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great mysteries of existence will be laid open to me on other terms.... I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and hopes upon weaker convictions. I dare not if I would.

Most people arguing science, including most scientists, do not have his standard of rigour. They can be deceived by authoritative voices - or rubbish credible theories because they are not completely understood (evolution, global warming). Two opposite sides of the same coin.

People tend to believe what they want to believe - Huxley understood this of himself, and was a great scientist because he fought against it.


Best wishes, Tom

[rcain]

I think gblaze is right to the extent a lot of scientific claims are treated as gospel truth because they come from scientists rather than on their empirical merits.

Global warming is a good example of this. There's very little empirical basis for some of the claims being made, but a lot of people seem to evaluate those claims as 'Well, they're made by scientists, so they must be scientific, therefore they must be true."

Tell me gravity causes object to fall at 10 m/s/s and I can verify it empirically, myself. That's real science. (Obviously some things require sophisticated measurement devices, but the principle is the same: we can all measure the same effect.) So when you give me a projection based on the assertion that things fall at 10 m/s/s, I can say this is a very scientific projection and very likely to be accurate. When you throw a bunch of variables into a computer based on historical data and a lot of assumptions and very simplified treatments of very complex phenomena, and on that basis tell me we're all doomed because of rising CO2 levels, no one can say whether the conclusions are accurate as we don't have a spare Earth and 100 years to test them with. But many people are treating those conclusions as though they're as ironclad as the 10 m/s/s we can all measure.

i think you make some good points.

the same criticism can be leveled against any 'technical discipline' - economics for instance and even 'sacred' medicine to some extent.

the debate has gone out over here. consumers and producers may themselves be cynical, or they may not; they will do what whatever the law says. in any event, its particularly difficult to effectively endorse a 'public harm'.

some 'iron clad' state of affairs, was what was required for 'synchronized' carbon markets to operate, on the basis that 'something' eventually has to be done about pollution, so better create a mechanism to moderate it now. so, its (inherently) imperfect.

the American stance is an unwelcome distraction in this issue. China and India are of greatest common concern, then Europe, then the US.

it will be interesting to see how flexible/brittle this whole arrangement becomes under the economic cycle ahead.

to tomclarke: at last! someone has introduced Huxley. I am sure Orwell or either of the Wells's might also be wheeled-in at this juncture.

[Betruger]

Yes, but that's only because people fail the simple basics of proper scientific criteria. Both on the scientists' side and the public's. The public going much further than a glancing check at the scientific soundness of everything they deal with would be unfeasible. I think there was a recent study made on the time cost of all users actualy reading software EULAs.. I think you can guess what sort of proportions were found

And I didn't mean to fudge.. It's just that there's no significant difference, in practice, between someone who doesn't bother to check scientific integrity in detail when dealing with already proven track records, and someone who takes it for granted that science and scientists are always right and true. In the latter case, it's a conscious acknowledgement that something might be amiss, but unless detected (i.e. something unexpected happens e.g. the dowser you were sold doesn't seem to work after a long selling rap that made sense as far as you could tell), it's not worth looking for that needle in the haystack.