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We haven’t killed 90% of all plankton

• ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
  > We haven’t killed 90% of all plankton But have killed the ability to tell propaganda from facts in 90% of people.
• mikece 4y ago
  Is it just me or is there a growing appeal to science coupled with a decreasing literacy in science?
  • newaccount2021 4y ago
  • wccrawford 4y ago
    It's not just an "appeal", it's a "belief". Not based in fact or logic but in faith. They seem to think that if scientists said it, it must be real, and anyone that tries to say otherwise is just wrong.
    • potta_coffee 4y ago
      Media propaganda promoting that view of "science" isn't helping much.
    • Xeoncross 4y ago
      We crave an authority that will give us knowledge and control of the unknown. Even bad information gives us a small sense of power and security.
    • haunter 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
    • happytoexplain 4y ago
      I think this observation is mostly overblown. I'm sure some people "worship" science to an irrational degree, whatever that means in each case, but it seems like in most cases what we're seeing is actually this: If you see two opposing opinions, and one is ostensibly derived in whole or in part by science, and the other isn't, then, prior to further information or extenuating circumstances, it makes sense to defer to the latter when making decisions or forming opinions. That doesn't mean you are sure it is correct, it means you are sure it is more likely to be correct than the alternative, which is far more reasonable. It might look like people are picking the ostensibly-science-backed choice with unthinking faith, when the majority of them are simply making the more statistically likely choice given the information available. In most cases, it's impossible to tell the difference, and this gives rise to a lot of political rhetoric that exploits that ambiguity.
      • 300bps 4y ago
        I think it’s more political. If you agree with the political conclusion of a study then it’s science. If you disagree then it’s fake news.
        • dragonwriter 4y ago
          To the extent a study has a political conclusion, it's not science, but relatively few really do. (Some have conclusions that policy entrepreneurs find useful to support a political agenda, either because of what they actually say or because of what people can be deceived into understanding them to say, but that's a different thing than actually having a political conclusion.)
          • GenerocUsername 4y ago
            Is Plankton dying political? You would not think so but it definitely is. Republicans would be quick to dismiss the article assuming it is another attack in economic success, global warming etc... Democrats would be quick to point to the article as support for reasons to support progressive policies. Literally everything is political today
    • bvirb 4y ago
      In my experience I think it usually comes from a mistaken idea that all fields of science are equally predictive, which I think comes from a popular misconception that "science" = "physics". I think we colloquially get drawn into thinking that science-as-in-physics is the same thing as science-as-in-biology is the same thing as science-as-in-economics, especially when it comes to what they all mean by "fact" and "proven". Media then takes advantage of this general misunderstanding to make "weather facts" sound like they are just as concrete as "fundamental physics facts" because it gets more attention. Then we find ourselves arguing about climate science with the same level of self-assured veracity we might argue about billiard balls on an ideal surface in a vacuum.
  • igorkraw 4y ago
    I'd say it's more that there is an increasing desire for science and science literacy, but those are expensive public goods that our current system has limited incentive to provide. That leaves the window open to interest groups and marketers do bad science or push pseudoscience that simply imitates the form and makes people feel informed and fact based again. So science literacy is slowly increasing, but the amount of bullshit masquerading as science to nudge you to buy more Camel cigarettes or vote whatever policy the charlatan wants to push is increasing a lot faster
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • nonameiguess 4y ago
    I highly doubt it and don't think you'd be able to quantify this claim. Poor science literacy is one thing, but the idea that producers or consumers of popular media were more scientifically literate in the past doesn't pass a basic sanity check. People were less formally educated, the resources to become informally educated were less accessible, the general push for statistical literacy and data-driven approaches to anything at all largely didn't begin until 10-15 years ago. Where would this greater scientific literacy of the past have come from?
    • robertlagrant 4y ago
      Those concepts are too vague to draw conclusions from. If producers had higher bars for scientific/statistical literacy, and reasoned, unbiased reporting, then that's all you need for it to have been better in the past. And in this particular case, even a less well known publication's lies can go around the world via social media sharing before the truth gets its boots on.
  • bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    I remember Nietzsche had an argument that due to the success of Science that new things would be structured as if they were scientific, for example, that if a new religion arose it would pretend to be a form of Science. But that of course there are many things that cannot be scientific and these things would have to pretend to be while actually not being. As such Science would be subverted by the followers of its own success. This memory is about 25-30 years old, so not sure how accurate it is.
    • bigodbiel 4y ago
      Not surprised, during Nietzsche’s time we had the rise of Spiritism, which presented itself as a “science” first and philosophical doctrine second.
      • pessimizer 4y ago
        Also see Marxism (not the economics part, but the "history" and the "scientific socialism" part) and Scientology.
      • swayvil 4y ago
        Even the Dalai Lama is on board with that sentiment. If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view. He is well aware which side of the bread the butter's on. That said, the scientific method is not without its gargantuan biases and filters. It looks through a pinhole.
    • CamperBob2 4y ago
      Interesting, sounds like a possible influence on L. Ron Hubbard if nothing else.
    • 8bitsrule 4y ago
      Many, many people are forced/have chosen to 'believe' in science. (Just as, in the past, they 'believed in' whatever the prevailing orthodoxy was... with or without gods.) Being dogmatic is the easier path for those without the time/access. Of course, professing 'belief' doesnt confer actual knowledge about that faith. EG. anyone who's ever said that science 'proved' something or other. If this misstatement about phytoplankton is misleading (gee I hope so), if it gets people to start carrying that canary into the mines, that's a positive outcome. We probably aren't aware of all of the tipping points.
  • sliken 4y ago
    Definitely seeing a trend in decreased literacy in science. Voters are more easily manipulated, and proposed legislation increasingly has a misleading title and not enough voters can understand the details. Things like the Florida governor banning state use of the term "Global Warming", as if that's going to fix the problems Florida faces. Or maybe the view that the USA government shouldn't back 30 year mortgages for places expected to be unusable in 30 years. I had a little taste of this when my city's schools decided to kill off a major academic program based on a "peer reviewed publication". Parents were shocked, layoffs were made, the decision was made after normal meeting hours when the video recording was off. People asked for more clarification. Turns out a parent wrote up an opinion piece that boiled down to, if their kid didn't get in, they wanted the program gone. They showed it to a friend (the peer) who liked it. They thought that counted a "peer reviewed publication" and thought it was justification for killing off AIM/Gate, despite the success of the program and minimal cost (the AIM/Gate classes had the same teacher/student ratios). Another sad case was a new development that set aside some land to make room for burrowing owls, after a year or two that land was sold to developers. The reason? They didn't think any owls actually lived there, it didn't occur to them that you'd only see the owls at night. I walked the perimeter every night with my dog and would often see the owls on fence posts.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • oneoff786 4y ago
    So are you claiming that the 90% claim is indicative of decreasing literacy or the rebuttal?
    • xeromal 4y ago
      I think moreso that people took the 90% headline to heart, me included, is a sign that we're less skeptical than we should be.
      • oneoff786 4y ago
        Sure we should be skeptical. We should also be skeptical of this rebuttal though. The main claim that this blogger uses before calling the article rubbish is that it had a sample size of 500. This is a good sample size. It vastly weakens the credibility of the blogger to imply this is insufficient. It’s really problematic to have a reaction decrying the decline of literacy because some blogger said something was bad. If there is a decline of literacy, it ought to start with the blogger and the Hn poster here. Scientific literacy is and always has been low. Armchair experts decrying its decline is just ironic.
        • xeromal 4y ago
          I was mainly going off this. David Johns, head of the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey, describes it as "a literal drop in the ocean." Johns would know—the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey has been running since 1958 and has accumulated more than 265,000 samples. The Continuous Plankton Survey has indeed cataloged a loss of plankton over the years—but nothing close to the 90 percent loss claimed by Dryden. "We have noticed long-term changes—northerly movements of plankton species as surface water warms, changes in seasonality in some taxa, invasives, etc.," Johns told Ars by email
          • oneoff786 4y ago
            Well johns’ framing is poor. Or at least the blogger’s presentation of it is. The drop in the ocean comment is wrong. That’s not how stats works. You may want to argue that your samples have superior collection methods, but don’t attack the size. What’s worse, as far as I can tell the actual preprint doesn’t make the 90% claim. It’s referring to the risk of loss from ocean acidification in the next 20 years. As far as I can tell it’s just bad science naive bloggers and journalists all around plus armchair experts criticizing each other. If anyone is going to talk about skepticism and scientific literacy, step one should be ignoring pop summaries in the news. https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=327083003119119021018031110024026107026015032006043044006100065007099118090003116065017028043099109098119077067082103110094121024055038007038115100123112112064098095010081020002014091000070125111100115118093000030119093014026074126004081025022113102123&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=327083003119119...
  • edmcnulty101 4y ago
    People are right to trust science more than opinion. However the media amplifies bad science to capitalize on narratives and make money. Good news media is supposed to put things through a critical lens and explain to people things are currently a theory or just a small subset of a bigger picture... but they media has become click bait and unreliable. They will take the tiniest shred of evidence and use that to make some wildly sensational claim.
  • StevePerkins 4y ago
    A lot of people forget that science is "a process", rather than "a priesthood". There are plenty of grifters, cult leaders, and crazed street preachers benefiting from this.
  • la64710 4y ago
    I think the number of folks turning away from science or appreciating a scientific thought process or in simple terms logical thinking is increasing in this country. You cannot expect folks who look down on education or “educated folks” in general to appreciate the benefits of a scientific thought process. They might be in fact more prone to accepting disinformation and conspiracy theories that aligns with their worldview than listening to scientific facts that doesn’t align with their world view and accepting those scientific facts.
• yonixw 4y ago
  Is there any centralized place for all peer reviewed articles? As a programmer (and not as an academic person), I have no idea how to check if an article was peer reviewed or had harsh response from academic sources. I wish it was like npmjs.com who provides me an audit tool for their Nodejs packages in the same npm CLI.
  • hprotagonist 4y ago
    There isn't, at all, and there never will be. It's on you to go sniff the butt of the journal that publishes a research article and see if they're legit. You're also on the hook for seeing if there have been any retractions, letters of concern, articles in reply, and who if anyone cited the thing you're reading. Some journals offer tools specific to themselves to help you with some of this, and there are a few non-journal services that can help you get some of this information across journals (google scholar, pubmed, etc...) but they're scattershot and discipline specific.
    • yonixw 4y ago
      Why not, though? After all, I'm sure a large university like MIT has a lot to gain from a site like this that promotes them to the top of the list as someone who publishes genuine papers.
      • hprotagonist 4y ago
        They will be, and are, merely one among many. What grants MIT the authority to be The One Source Of Truth? Why? Who compels it?
        • hnfong 4y ago
          Obviously the fruits of all human knowledge should be on a blockchain....
      • jhbadger 4y ago
        Although there are some journals that are "open access" and encourage mirroring their papers, most are not so and consider mirroring their articles to be piracy -- so until copyright law is reformed, there can never be a (legal) repository of the scientific literature, although projects like Sci-Hub exist just as things like Pirate Bay do.
• pvaldes 4y ago
  What? they didn't really counted all the plankton in the ocean? Scientists are shocked Google: principles of ecology: "distribution in mosaic"
• MBCook 4y ago
  At this point I believe almost 0% of “science” news I see. This headline so so insanely outrageous I knew it had to be wrong. Between pre-prints, overly enthusiastic press releases, and reporters who often don’t have the slightest clue what they’re talking about it’s not worth it. I’m not surprised an ever increasing portion of the public doesn’t believe in science. We’re practically conditioning them not to.
  • puffoflogic 4y ago
    > an ever increasing portion of the public doesn’t believe in science It's incredibly myopic to state first that you don't believe in the science news you hear, and yet somehow you (a) believe the news you hear about how much of the public believes in science, which itself would appear to be [social] science news, and (b) have apparently discounted the probability that the public just like you doesn't believe in science news. Really, it's not myopic, it's xenophobic and bigoted.
    • dunefox 4y ago
      Xenophobic and bigoted? Where are you getting that from? Certainly not from the grandparent. Did you just want to use big words?
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • shitpostbot 4y ago
  • not2b 4y ago
    Ars Technica is pretty good, partly because so many of their writers are experts with advanced degrees.
    • MBCook 4y ago
      I agree. They’re a site I trust much more than a random news site, and this isn’t the first “No, incredibly stupid science thing isn’t true” piece they’ve had to write lately. Re-reading my comment it may be unclear what I meant. So to state it plainly it was the original claim I knew was bunk.
• malwarebytess 4y ago
  • joshstrange 4y ago
    The pessimist in me says it's because people want to cling to anything that lets them say "See, I knew it wasn't a big deal, I/we don't need to change our behavior", especially when it comes to climate change. I've seen this first-hand from relatives who are very quick to talk about "see the science wasn't right in this 1 instance" while ignoring everything that doesn't fit their world view. That said, I'd argue the "news" agencies really should be the ones held to some account for printing whatever they are told (be it from scientists, the police, and everyone in between. Don't get me started on "printing" tweets as facts or wide-spread opinion). Also the "news" agencies love this kind of thing, they get to double dip all while acting holier than thou and taking no responsibility for the BS they put out.
    • HillRat 4y ago
      Also, the claims made are so sweepingly apocalyptic -- we're all going to be dead in a few decades! -- that they're going to trigger not only the usual climate-skeptic suspects, but also those who are genuinely concerned about climate change. The magnitude of the crisis we're stumbling into is hard to fathom, but these sorts of claims are arguably counterproductive in that they could just cause many people to give up out of the assumption that it's too late to save the global food web.
  • xeromal 4y ago
    I think it's because we all know the reprecutions of losing our plankton. That's a doomsday scenario and at 90% loss, that means our oceans should die off very quickly.
• Bang2Bay 4y ago
  The author of this paper finally states: " Dryden and his co-authors do identify atmospheric CO2 as the driver of ocean acidification, which they warn will result in the loss of 80–90 percent of all marine life by 2045." Which essentially negates his own claim that the other article is rubbish. The current article is more rubbish than the original that author wants to critique.
  • robertlagrant 4y ago
    A predicted 80-90% loss in 23 years is not the same as a 90% loss now.
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    • riffic 4y ago
      on a geological time scale, it might as well be.
      • robertlagrant 4y ago
        I'm going to use this at standup tomorrow when someone asks if my ticket is close to being done.
  • rgbrenner 4y ago
    Dryden is the same person who made the "90%" loss claim. The key part of that paragraph is this part: he has appeared to blame the problem on microplastics Because Dryden owns Dryden Aqua, a water treatment/filtration company. And its interesting that he makes bold claims like these, and places the blame on something he stands to benefit from, assigning lesser blame on what we know is likely the larger impact on plankton loss (global warming).
• vehementi 4y ago
  > Five hundred data points collected from 13 vessels sounds impressive, but David Johns, head of the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey, describes it as "a literal drop in the ocean." Johns would know—the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey has been running since 1958 and has accumulated more than 265,000 samples. That uh isn't how stats works. 500 data points is a significant amount if they were being taken in a proper (randomized) manner. Maybe Johns is being taken out of context (i.e. his point might be that the sampling methodology was poor) but this too sounds like BS.
  • HillRat 4y ago
    The problem is that the ocean is not amenable to random sampling in the same way that, say, Twitter accounts are; phytoplankton are going to be differentially-distributed depending on where in the euphotic zone you're sampling, which latitudes, distance to land, time of year, and so on, which is why longitudinal biodiversity studies are carried out in specific areas. It's vanishingly unlikely that 500 water samples of unknown provenance (and I'm curious why they weren't sampling using the standard method of towed plankton nets) can demonstrate a global extinction event of all plankton, though it could indicate a loss of biodiversity in certain areas. God knows we're working hard to empty out our oceans, but I'm not sure that this paper demonstrates what they claim.
    • chomp 4y ago
      > and I'm curious why they weren't sampling using the standard method of towed plankton nets Because the GOES Foundation use volunteer yachts to collect the data: https://www.goesfoundation.com/citizen-science-project/ https://www.goesfoundation.com/citizen-science-project/ >Twice a day, (if possible) we want you to take a 0.5 litre of sea water, put it through a GOES filter (developed by Dr.Jesus Ramon Barriuso Diez), count plankton, microplastics (fibres and beads) and any other particles which are over 20 microns. I believe they went with this method because it's easier for non-scientists to contribute to their study. They mention nets, but you're right in being suspicious in the method of collection. It does not seem like it uses best practices.
      • 4y ago
• Balvarez 4y ago
  Well I'm glad to see a refute a day later. Much better than nothing
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  A lot of this is about shifting ecosystems. For example, less ice in the Arctic could actually increase zooplankton abundance in that region, although warming waters also tend to result in smaller-sized zooplankton. Think soupy northern seas vs. clear tropical seas. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/climate-drives-change-arctic-food-web https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/climate-drives-... > "“Loss of sea ice and sea ice algae will change the timing and the amount of production that goes into high-quality food. Everything might happen earlier. There might be a longer plankton season with more abundant plankton and some studies have suggested this may benefit the ecosystem,” said Kimmel. “The region is warming and it remains to be seen how the ecosystem will ultimately respond.”" Media unfortunately runs one-sided clickbait, apparently because they think this brings more views and engagement. In-depth analysis and nuance isn't very popular, particularly when there are several opposed parties with agendas involved.
• cosmiccatnap 4y ago
  In practice...we have. The idea that our behaviour will somehow drastically improve is pretty optimistic to put it mildly. In practice, it is almost a statistical inevitability that we will continue to overpopulate at this point and in that way there is nothing hyperbolic about the statement that, more than likely, they are as good as dead.
• leroman 4y ago
  The other day I was arguing with anti-vaxer people I know on FB.. Upon checking their FB profiles (as I like to do to try to understand these people better) I saw they were also denying that there is actually a heat wave in Europe and it's actually all a big scam to keep us all scared, apparently it's the next thing for the media after they have used up Covid for this role.. This institutional disdain is all engulfing by this point, and unfortunately being used more and more by politicians and any party that is morally bankrupts enough and finds a way to exploit this. Is there anything we (as in people who believe in science and still have some institutional belief) should be doing to help science/media/institutions get their shit together?
  • swayvil 4y ago
    • beepbooptheory 4y ago
      As different, presumably, to the gp, I commend you for being level headed and compassionate, even with people you disagree with, and especially around such big topics. That kind of universal kindness and empathy doesn't grow on trees, and takes sometimes hard work; I can tell by your tone you are like that and it gives me hope for our future. Thanks, truly. Im not sure what 'chortle' is?
      • swayvil 4y ago
        It's like guffaw except with extra phlegm.
    • leroman 4y ago
      It's unfortunate you see it this way.. Actually, I recommend you do the same. This has helped me to- - find them more humain when I see these people in family gatherings and other life events - find that we have some other ideological intersection (vegan, promoting donation to help animals etc..) It's very easy to de-humanize someone on the internet, this has helped me to understand these are real people, and not "bots" who are paid to say things I find hard to believe anyone could believe in..
• UncleOxidant 4y ago
  No, but we're working on it... Seriously, if 90% of plankton had been killed off there would be some very noticeable effects. Something like 50% of our oxygen is generated by phytoplankton. (50% is probably the floor - I see some estimates going up to around 70%) And plankton of all types is at the bottom of the food chain - if 90% disappeared there would be mass starvation in our oceans.
• sporkland 4y ago
  But we did kill 90% of Electrical Engineers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32142711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32142711
• betwixthewires 4y ago
  Well the headline did it's job, it scared the shit out of everyone that bought it. And even when they find out it was bullshit, there will still be a residual state of slightly heightened fear, just a little more on top of what we've been fed for decades.
  • Johnny555 4y ago
    even when they find out it was bullshit, there will still be a residual state of slightly heightened fear But also more skeptical of even legitimate science.
  • pygy_ 4y ago
    The real figure, half a decade ago, was a loss of 50% over 70 years which is already very scary when you know that it constitutes 50 to 70% of the photosynthesis capacity of our world, and thus the ability to remove CO2 from the environment. AFAIK, the trend hasn’t changed.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• footlose_3815 4y ago
  [dead]
• somewhereoutth 4y ago
  But don't worry, we'll get there!!
• itachi137 4y ago
• birracerveza 4y ago
  Oh, good thing it hasn't happened yet then, that means we can worry about it later while we focus on p r o f i t s.