4 ms·
This is an extremely important point. Since I was a grad student, there have been at least 5 monumental "findings" in physics: 1. A spinning top weighs less
by dhimes 7y ago
This is an extremely important point. Since I was a grad student, there have been at least 5 monumental "findings" in physics:
1. A spinning top weighs less if it spins one way than if it spins the other
2. A "fifth force," IIRC it was linked to baryons
3. The climate is warming, not (as people thought) cooling
4. Superconductivity can be achieved at high (liquid Ln2) temperatures
5. Fusion can be achieved at low (room) temperatures ("cold fusion").
6. Homeopathic properties of water
7. Faster-than-light travel of neutrinos
In each case there was a rush for confirmation- tons of excitement in the field, etc. Some were confirmed; some debunked; some remain controversial. I read somewhere that Google is working on cold fusion?
- adrianN 7y agoAFAIK at no point in time were there more publications predicting cooling than publications predicting warming. It was just the popsci media that almost exclusively predicted another ice age.
- dhimes 7y agoI wasn't old enough to have access to original journals (nor the ability to understand them) in the 1970s, but Science News was considered a trustworthy source, as was Scientific American, for the layman. EDIT: Frondo's link (sibling comment) points out how Science News got it wrong.
- Frondo 7y agoThank you. Yes. The "they said global cooling" myth needs to be retired. I did just a quick google search because it's 5am and I need to sleep soon, but this looks like a good history of the global cooling thing: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-gl...
- dhimes 7y agoThank you very much for that link. It even points to the magazine my 10 or 12 year old self took to be authoritative as getting it wrong! Next you're going to tell me there's no Easter Bunny!
- praptak 7y agoAnd its physics, where I believe that it is cheaper to try weird experiments. Even if the equipment costs are high, you can probably book 5 minutes on it to let a grad do something seemingly silly. In pharmacy even a simple trial on mice may take months, which translates to $$$. Not even mentioning how expensive (and hard to get approved) a trial on humans is. I can understand the desire to focus on the "promising" approaches while dismissing what looks like a distraction.
- dhimes 7y agoThe price of the experiment depends, of course, on the experiment. The point is there was an initial excitement as well as initial skepticism. Then there were investigations. The community eventually accepted the preponderance of evidence. To try to do an experiment now for faster-than-light neutrinos I would imagine would be hard, because everything we see seems to indicate that the speed of light is a hard limit (of course, there is a lot of stuff we can't see, at least directly...). But to convince people to fund an expensive experiment for it would be difficult because the framework that supports the idea that it can't happen is nice. It's as you say: once you have a basic working model it doesn't take conspiracy theory to see other avenues being blocked. The particular point the article makes, however, that journals reject articles because of no prior publications in good journals is infuriating. The article also mentions that funding has been limited; so hard choices had to be made. But it does seem curious that the cause was so widely believed before they could even make a solid diagnosis of the disease without an autopsy examination of the brain.
- qaq 7y agooperating cost of LHC is a billion per year.
- kaybe 7y ago7 is not fair, they explicitly asked for help to find the issue with their experiment. The media took it and ran.
- dhimes 7y agoI'm not blaming- I'm simply pointing to anomalous results, outside of the accepted paradigms. They weren't shunned for this result. If what they had found had been confirmed, others would be free to publish more theories/experiments along those lines. However, I would bet that it would be hard to publish a theory now that had faster-than-light propagation. Hi-Tc was verified and is well accepted (but the theory of SC overall is being revisited). The homeopathic properties of water was debunked by....James Randi. Cold fusion is a result that is interesting in that at least as of a few years ago there was still an active group of researchers- they even had a conference- but most scientists AFAIK don't believe the initial results and are highly skeptical of any way to create useful rates of fusion at room temperature.
- knzhou 7y agoDespite what you may hear in breathless news articles, there was no point at which a substantial number of physicists believed (1), (2), (4), (5), (6), or (7). In some cases it was basically 99% against. People weren't rushing to "confirm" these findings, as if they were true by default -- they were rushing to check them, which is extremely different.
- dhimes 7y agoLol. You're splitting hairs: confirm/check/verify all mean the same in this context. It was exciting, controversial and thrilling. I was there. Of course the default mode was skepticism. Even for (3). But you are fooling yourself if you don't think these things were the main topics of conversation. It had a lot to do with the reputations of the scientists involved. Fleishman and Pons were very well respected, for example, so while people question how they lived through the experiments (based on expected byproducts), they were pretty sure something new must be going on.