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Read the Baez blogs. Read the Discovery mag blog that shows that this is barely "NASA". It's really a few fringe scientists who have a reputation for hyping p

by crusso 12y ago

Read the Baez blogs. Read the Discovery mag blog that shows that this is barely "NASA". It's really a few fringe scientists who have a reputation for hyping pseudoscience. When they had a chance to look critically at their own experiments in their report, they spent effort and text hyping theoretical applications or something like that. They deserve some "go back and do it right this time, junior" criticism. I'd rather they not waste our tax dollars on this kind of nonsense.

snowwrestler 12y ago
I read them all, and I think you and Baez are making a mistake. Not on the science, on the style. When a person "invents" something that is obvious bullshit, and uses that as a means to milk money out of investors or consumers, that is fraudulent. Over the past 30 years a style of communication has been developed that uses sarcasm and outright mockery to attack these people. James Randi practically invented this style of communication, or at least greatly popularized it, and now it has been adopted by a number of science bloggers. Why, though? Because fraudsters are good at attracting attention, so to counter it, critics have to generate controversy. And there's no better way to generate controversy than to make things personal. In other words, it's done with a purpose. But over time that communications strategy has been warped by people who don't understand it. They think the idea is to personally attack and mock ANYONE who reports a surprising result. We saw it with the FTL neutrino results, we saw it with BICEP2, we see it all the time. It's a major problem. For one thing it trains non-scientists to auto-reject any scientific result that seems weird to them. For another thing it gives greater license to people who are not critiqueing science in good faith (like, say, Rush Limbaugh or Ken Cuccinelli) to attack scientists personally. It reduces its utility as a means of countering fraud, because people come to think that that is just how science communication is done. And it makes it harder to obtain sufficient funding to investigate areas of science that are not as well-known to the public. What's happening here is not attempted fraud. A team at NASA [1] that is specifically employed and funded to test out crazy ideas, tested out a crazy idea, and published their results. That's it. So, critique their methods and results? Yes. Critique the press coverage? Absolutely. Attack and mock the researchers? NO. Doing so is a fundamental mistake in communications strategy. And some of the critiques are even self-contradictory. For example you suggest that they should go back and do it right, but you also don't want them to spend tax dollars on it. Well, the quality of an investigation is directly affected by its level of funding. The NASA crazy ideas lab is minimally funded, so of course not every detail can be worked out. The researchers explicitly state this in their paper. [1] And yes, they are employees of NASA...saying "this is barely 'NASA'" is a nonsensical statement.

by crusso 12y ago

snowwrestler 12y ago

I read them all, and I think you and Baez are making a mistake. Not on the science, on the style. When a person "invents" something that is obvious bullshit, and uses that as a means to milk money out of investors or consumers, that is fraudulent. Over the past 30 years a style of communication has been developed that uses sarcasm and outright mockery to attack these people. James Randi practically invented this style of communication, or at least greatly popularized it, and now it has been adopted by a number of science bloggers. Why, though? Because fraudsters are good at attracting attention, so to counter it, critics have to generate controversy. And there's no better way to generate controversy than to make things personal. In other words, it's done with a purpose. But over time that communications strategy has been warped by people who don't understand it. They think the idea is to personally attack and mock ANYONE who reports a surprising result. We saw it with the FTL neutrino results, we saw it with BICEP2, we see it all the time. It's a major problem. For one thing it trains non-scientists to auto-reject any scientific result that seems weird to them. For another thing it gives greater license to people who are not critiqueing science in good faith (like, say, Rush Limbaugh or Ken Cuccinelli) to attack scientists personally. It reduces its utility as a means of countering fraud, because people come to think that that is just how science communication is done. And it makes it harder to obtain sufficient funding to investigate areas of science that are not as well-known to the public. What's happening here is not attempted fraud. A team at NASA [1] that is specifically employed and funded to test out crazy ideas, tested out a crazy idea, and published their results. That's it. So, critique their methods and results? Yes. Critique the press coverage? Absolutely. Attack and mock the researchers? NO. Doing so is a fundamental mistake in communications strategy. And some of the critiques are even self-contradictory. For example you suggest that they should go back and do it right, but you also don't want them to spend tax dollars on it. Well, the quality of an investigation is directly affected by its level of funding. The NASA crazy ideas lab is minimally funded, so of course not every detail can be worked out. The researchers explicitly state this in their paper. [1] And yes, they are employees of NASA...saying "this is barely 'NASA'" is a nonsensical statement.