Odds Are Stacked When Science Tries to Debate Pseudoscience

The New York Times ^ | April 30, 2002 | Lawrence Krauss

[steve-b]

By the time Classical Greek culture reached its peak, the tales of the Olympian gods were not taken seriously as an explanation of the universe by the intellectual classes. Instead, they gravitated toward philosophies such as Stoicism and Epicurianism, which tended to address themselves to the question of how people should conduct themselves in an essentially mechanistic universe.

[f.Christian]

"Anti-reason crowd--heroes"...

ok 'patrick henry galileo' has the world--country in orbit around a mud hole--cemetery--graveyard---evolution...

because you say--think--reason so!

[wattsmag2]

What I want to know is this. If one were to be able to travel back in time, say a year, how could they possibly end up at the same point on the earth? After all, think of the distance that point on Earth would move in a year as it rotates, orbits the sun, orbits within the star cluster which orbits around the galactic axis, which moves through intergalactic space? Boggles the mind.

[Physicist]

Doesn't make any sense. If you don't know how the spacecraft will be propelled how can you make any statement about the amount of on-board fuel required to speed it up to near the speed of light?

He meant the minimum amount of on-board fuel. You can't do better than converting it to pure energy according to E=mc² (but of course you must also conserve momentum, so you're doomed to lose another factor of two right there). You're of course welcome to do worse than that, and carry much more fuel.

[PatrickHenry]

If one were to be able to travel back in time, say a year, how could they possibly end up at the same point on the earth?

My time-traveling friends assure me that this is not a problem. We stay with the Earth as we all move into the future; and they say they do likewise as they move into the past. Something about chrono-gravetics, but it's over my head.

[Ahban]

Patrick, Thanks for calling it like you see it, even though we have been friendly rivals on some threads. Let me make my case a bit further with the Lurkmeister....

Double L

If you had said "Math" instead of science I might agree with you. Please list the SCIENCE ideas that the Greeks were right about as a result of experiments that they had conducted. They were wrong about everything! One reason why it took so long for the scientific method to triumph even in the Christian west is that the church held to Greek ideas as their own for far too long!

The Greeks did not experiment much. They just sat around and hypothesized. They seldom (except with math related stuff, at which they were superb) went beyond step two of the Scientific Method. That is all the non-science crowd does today. Archimedes Principle is the only example I can think of where an experiment was actually conducted.

[Physicist]

Never once do they entertain the thought that maybe UFO's are extra-DIMENSIONAL. In which case, impossible aerobatics, defying of the laws of physics, light-speed limitations, distance to "home base" lack of physical evidence, etc etc, don't even come into play.

And never once do the UFO cultists entertain the thought that maybe UFO's are figments of man's imagination. In which case, there are no limits on their behavior at all.

[f.Christian]

It's also amazing that anyone would subject himself to the abuse that's inevitable from the anti-reason crowd. He's a genuine hero to put up with that.

57 posted on 5/6/02 4:34 PM Hawaii-Aleutian by PatrickHenry

Please explain yourself...you come across as patricia henry hearse/sla in video bank robbery loop outta the evo-closet/cave publicly for only a few days!

You need to be deprogrammed---try some alternative thinking(reality)!

[wattsmag2]

Momentum in reverse?

[Physicist]

Please list the SCIENCE ideas that the Greeks were right about as a result of experiments that they had conducted.

Archimedes' principle...remember the bathtub? Another Greek, I believe it was Eratosthenes, accurately calculated the size of the Earth based on solar observations. The Greeks knew how thick to make their columns, and how close together to place them; they learned that through trial and costly error.

[medved]

It always struck me funny that a number of the first claims we read about UFOs date from right around 1946 - 47. At that time a lot of people flying around in piston-engined aircraft would have been seeing jets go by them for the first time...

[Physicist]

Archimedes Principle is the only example I can think of where an experiment was actually conducted.

Of course you did remember the bathtub. My bad.

[PatrickHenry]

The Greeks did not experiment much. They just sat around and hypothesized.

That's mostly true. One reason I've seen for their failure to actually test anything is that as educated elitists in a slave-holding society the philosophers thought that such things were beneath them. If that's a serious factor, then experimental science (as opposed to "crafts" like engineering, architecture and shipbuilding) wouldn't get going until physical work became respectable among the elites. Galileo tinkered, as did Newton, and Ben Franklin. Well, there's Jefferson, with a keen interest in science and a slave owner, so I don't know if this idea will travel very far.

[AndrewC]

maybe UFO's are figments of man's imagination.

SETI at home must not think so.

[AndrewC]

I had better add.. said dryly (lest someone misunderstand my jab)

[Physicist]

SETI at home must not think so.

You must be thinking of the "SETI at home" project where farmers and Trekkies sit in their back yards scanning the skies for alien spacecraft. SETI@Home, by contrast, does not look for UFO's.

[Physicist]

I had better add.. said dryly (lest someone misunderstand my jab)

D'oh! Second time in one thread I put my foot in my mouth by not reading ahead. Time for bed.

[HighWheeler]

"Never once do they entertain the thought that maybe UFO's are extra-DIMENSIONAL. In which case, impossible aerobatics, defying of the laws of physics, light-speed limitations, distance to "home base" lack of physical evidence, etc etc, don't even come into play."

Now you are cracking me up. You just made the same mistake. Your extra-dimensional assumption is impossible to prove, yet you have a whole laundry list of definitions and characteristics to describe something you have never seen, nor have a shred of proof that it even exists.

The reason UFO "debunkers" always refer to UFOs as ex-terr is because the debate of the alternative is so boring, and your version is pure fantasy.

[AndrewC]

D'oh! Second time in one thread I put my foot in my mouth by not reading ahead. Time for bed.

LGM and alien ships notwithstanding, there are really UFO's in the literal sense. Here is an interesting one in the form of real media

Click on the picture for the media

[Doctor Stochastic]

Observations are totally false because bias--subjectivity remains unexamined---discussed...

Showing the close correlation between the religious and the post-modern deconstructionists. Observation is rejected. Actually, bias and subjectivity are examined closely by scientists. To say otherwise is to show ignorance of how science is done.