3 ms·
> The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically ope
by generalizations 2y ago
> The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened.
> But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text.
"scientists"
They talked to the head of the vesuvius challenge, which is the actual project that figured out how to read the scrolls, the head of the library that holds the scrolls, and the guy who runs the xray machine. But the people who solved this weren't scientists. They were largely college kids.
This has a lot more interesting detail. https://scrollprize.org/ https://scrollprize.org/
- gkbrk 2y agoCollege kids can be scientists. Anyone doing science is a scientist. There are even middle-school kids doing science. Or random adults with non-STEM jobs collecting data as a hobby for Citizen Science. We should be careful not to gatekeep the words science or scientist. The more mad scientists we have throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks, the more things we can discover.
- generalizations 2y agoI absolutely agree, and the (possibly badly said) intention was to highlight that credit is not being given where credit is due. "scientists" being a way to obscure the actual people who pulled this off.
- moonlet 2y agoYup as long as it’s done in a scientific way and published under peer review doesn’t matter who did it - that’s the great thing about blind publication review in a lot of fields
- throwaway48476 2y agoExactly. Science is a process not an ideology.
- MadnessASAP 2y agoThe difference between screwing around and science is writing things down. - Abraham Lincoln (probably)
- hinkley 2y agoYou’re gonna be shocked to learn how many research papers the “primary author” is the faculty advisor, that the second author is a grad student who wrote the entire paper, and the professor only observed/inspired the project and proofread the paper.
- generalizations 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42985972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42985972
- timewizard 2y agoI completely agree. They even have a picture of the light source used to do the scans as if that's more important than the people who did the actual work. I can't understand the editorial bent in this article. I think editors believe scientists to be vaunted and inaccessible creatures that live in the rarefied climbs of "science mountain." Meanwhile it's just some kid down the block who would love to be interviewed by the BBC.
- adastra22 2y agoI'm pretty sure Luke has a lot more things to worry about right now than being interviewed by the BBC, lol.
- timewizard 2y agoThat's nice of you to decide that for him and for all the people who read that publication.
- adastra22 2y agoThe context missing here is that Luke is one of the principal analysts at DOGE, and the target of A LOT of mainstream media hit pieces over the last week.