4 ms·

One of my profs told the class (NucE) that after the cold fusion announcement, people would come around the department to furtively ask for heavy water and such

by mng2 11y ago

One of my profs told the class (NucE) that after the cold fusion announcement, people would come around the department to furtively ask for heavy water and such. So you can bet that smart people aren't going to pass up the opportunity to confirm what would be a major scientific discovery.

Retra 11y ago
That is one of my arguments against homeopathy: We've got a world full of bright young medical students looking for cheap and easy research to do that will lead to positive results. If they haven't proven homeopathy effective, it's because it isn't.
- jdjdps 11y ago
  Oh no no. Thats not how it works at all. People only look in places where they expect to find things. Thats why we dont rub sticks together all day when building a nuclear reactor. Its also why it can take centuries to correct mistaken scientific conclusions. While I fully expect homeopathy to be bunk, if it is not then I would not be surprised that it has not been scientifically verified. Market forces/darwian selection/distributed search algorithms that we tend to find in the real world are not finding global minimums, only local minimum. This makes it tricky to construct arguments of the form, well if we havent found a solution of form x then x must be impossible within frame y.
- Confusion 11y ago
  There is no cheap and easy research in medicine when it comes to showing that some substance heals people, which is what if often comes down to, because the actual mechanism is unknown. You can't show something as simple as aspirine 'works' by setting up a lab experiment without test subjects. And as soon as you involve those, it becomes legally complex, expensive, time consuming and hard. You simply can't compare medical experiments to physics experiments. A physics experiment can be set up to be extremely controlled. If you observe some effect, the number of things it could be due to is very small. A medical experiment requires people with all their messiness and possibly confounding variables. If you observe some effect, there are zounds of possible explanations. Controlling for all of them requires many test subjects. That makes it expensive, time consuming and hard. Even a medical experiment on human cells in a petri dish is infinitely more complex than a physics experiment, in terms of variables involved.
  - Intermernet 11y ago
    I understand what you're saying, and agree with you on general terms, but this argument doesn't apply to homeopathy. Homeopathy doesn't claim that "some substance heals people". It claims (according to Wikipedia [1]) "a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people will cure similar symptoms in sick people". It's fundamentally flawed, and despite revisionist practitioners, has not yet managed to raise it's head above "pseudoscience" status. It shouldn't really be mentioned in the same sentence as research that is actually trying to determine if a substance has an effect, even if that research is flawed. Said research and homeopathy aren't really playing on the same field. It's like calling religion a science. It's based on a premise that can't be questioned without throwing out the entire idea. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

by mng2 11y ago

Retra 11y ago

That is one of my arguments against homeopathy: We've got a world full of bright young medical students looking for cheap and easy research to do that will lead to positive results. If they haven't proven homeopathy effective, it's because it isn't.

jdjdps 11y ago
Oh no no. Thats not how it works at all. People only look in places where they expect to find things. Thats why we dont rub sticks together all day when building a nuclear reactor. Its also why it can take centuries to correct mistaken scientific conclusions. While I fully expect homeopathy to be bunk, if it is not then I would not be surprised that it has not been scientifically verified. Market forces/darwian selection/distributed search algorithms that we tend to find in the real world are not finding global minimums, only local minimum. This makes it tricky to construct arguments of the form, well if we havent found a solution of form x then x must be impossible within frame y.
Confusion 11y ago
There is no cheap and easy research in medicine when it comes to showing that some substance heals people, which is what if often comes down to, because the actual mechanism is unknown. You can't show something as simple as aspirine 'works' by setting up a lab experiment without test subjects. And as soon as you involve those, it becomes legally complex, expensive, time consuming and hard. You simply can't compare medical experiments to physics experiments. A physics experiment can be set up to be extremely controlled. If you observe some effect, the number of things it could be due to is very small. A medical experiment requires people with all their messiness and possibly confounding variables. If you observe some effect, there are zounds of possible explanations. Controlling for all of them requires many test subjects. That makes it expensive, time consuming and hard. Even a medical experiment on human cells in a petri dish is infinitely more complex than a physics experiment, in terms of variables involved.
- Intermernet 11y ago
  I understand what you're saying, and agree with you on general terms, but this argument doesn't apply to homeopathy. Homeopathy doesn't claim that "some substance heals people". It claims (according to Wikipedia [1]) "a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people will cure similar symptoms in sick people". It's fundamentally flawed, and despite revisionist practitioners, has not yet managed to raise it's head above "pseudoscience" status. It shouldn't really be mentioned in the same sentence as research that is actually trying to determine if a substance has an effect, even if that research is flawed. Said research and homeopathy aren't really playing on the same field. It's like calling religion a science. It's based on a premise that can't be questioned without throwing out the entire idea. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]