Thread: Science vs Pseudoscience

Originally Posted by Stubear

Science: Comparing two or more similar things in an environment where the variables are known and posting an unbiased account of the results.

Science is watertight, clear, concise and backed up by empirical evidence that was generated using a fair and unbiased experiment.

Pseudoscience is fluff, smoke, mirrors, political spin or uses falsified evidence. I'm not saying its always wrong, but it is definately misleading and uses a bit of truth to cover a load of junk.

Science has a scientific process that it follows, pseudoscience doesnt.

By your definition of science, it sounds like a double blind taste test to determine which of two types of chocolate tastes better would be scientific. While the process may be scientific, I don't think the results are. Or I could compare the temperatures of two beakers of water by smelling them. I'm comparing them, I know the variables, and the test is unbiased. Is that science?

Why is science watertight? What about the process makes it so? How many scientific papers do you read that are clear and concise?

To say that science has a scientific process is quite circular. What are the criteria for a process to be scientific. For all you've said, though there is a start in your first section, there is very little definition. You've said what science is as the result of it following a "scientific process" - watertight, backed up, evidence based - but nothing about what defines something as scientific.

Originally Posted by khaos

Pseudoscience is practiced by philosophers, observing phenomena and theorizing models.

Like Einstein and all other theoretical physicists?

Originally Posted by Seraphim

After a quick trip through cyber-space in search of info on black holes, I came across the Hubble official site, which had some stuff on black holes.

OK, so the theory is that a black hole is a collapsed giant star, right?

But through the laws of conservation of matter, don't both the star and the resulting black hole both have to have the same mass? Just because it collapses, and gets smaller, does not therefore increase it's mass, and make it all of a suddden a different gravitational force. The gravity per unit area would certainly be higher, but the overall mass must still be the same. And on a cosmic scale, does it matter if the mass is a few thousands of miles in diameter, or the size of a loaf of bread, if the nearest object is x millions of miles away?



Another ψάρια-science topic (since it may fall niether ubnder science, nor psuedo-science, I'm making a third category: fishy science): the Big Bang and the expanding universe.

So, if the theory is that the universe was created all of a sudden in the Big Bang. What was there before? What is outside of the bubble of our expanding sphere of the known universe? Is science saying that there is such a thing as nothing? An absence of anything?

Black holes - when the volume decreases, objects are able to get much, much closer to the black hole, and that is where gravity increases dramatically. Yes, if you are 10 light years away there is no difference, but when you are just outside the event horizon there is a huge difference.

Big Bang Theory - while the theory may be largely incomplete, that does not make it non-scientific. The structure of the universe, cosmic background radiation, the expansion of the universe, and a number of other carefully documented phenomena can be explained through a theory such as the big bang theory. Is the theory correct? Maybe. Is it a scientific theory? Yes.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

The press headlines may say so, which sells papers, but I think the facts say differently:
Pseudo Black Hole Created in Lab - Yahoo! News



They have developed things that mimic certain aspects of black holes, they have not created mini black holes.

Black holes have been created in labs, and they are created in our atmosphere all the time as well. The black holes that I am speaking of fit the only important definition of a black hole, which is the ratio of mass to radius - namely the Schwarzchild radius.

Originally Posted by khaos

The big bang theory is obviously pseudo science! its definitely not been studied and no numbers ever agree. Its as classic an example as geocentricism. Scientists observe somethings and make a guess, then set out proving that guess, rather than investigating.

In what way is the big bang theory geocentric?

I'm sure there are scientists who are out there trying to prove the big bang theory, but there are lots of others seeking out alternate explanations.

Originally Posted by holli4pirating

Black holes have been created in labs, and they are created in our atmosphere all the time as well. The black holes that I am speaking of fit the only important definition of a black hole, which is the ratio of mass to radius - namely the Schwarzchild radius.

Can you please post a link for that? Sounds like a bit of theoretical hocus-pocus going on there....

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Can you please post a link for that? Sounds like a bit of theoretical hocus-pocus going on there....

Here's the first example google brought me to:

"Although theory predicts that microscopic black holes decay rapidly, even hypothetical stable black holes can be shown to be harmless by studying the consequences of their production by cosmic rays."

From The safety of the LHC

I searched Google with: black hole cosmic ray earth atmosphere

I'd make a video, but I'm not as cool as X.

Originally Posted by holli4pirating

Here's the first example google brought me to:

"Although theory predicts that microscopic black holes decay rapidly, even hypothetical stable black holes can be shown to be harmless by studying the consequences of their production by cosmic rays."

From The safety of the LHC

I searched Google with: black hole cosmic ray earth atmosphere

I'd make a video, but I'm not as cool as X.

It would seem that microscopic black holes only exist in theory, and that theory would also extend to say that they would rapidly decay. Not that they actually do exist.

Micro black holes are tiny hypothetical black holes, also called quantum mechanical black holes or mini black holes, for which quantum mechanical effects play an important role.^[1]

Wiki


Another interesting bit of propaganda in that link to the LHC:

Nature forms black holes when certain stars, much larger than our Sun, collapse on themselves at the end of their lives. They concentrate a very large amount of matter in a very small space. Speculations about microscopic black holes at the LHC refer to particles produced in the collisions of pairs of protons, each of which has an energy comparable to that of a mosquito in flight. Astronomical black holes are much heavier than anything that could be produced at the LHC.

They try to placate you by saying "look at these little protons....each has no more enrgy than a mosquito in flight..."

But in reality, they want to accelerate those cute little protons to close to the speed of light and smash them together, per another portion of their website:

Inside the accelerator, two beams of particles travel at close to the speed of light with very high energies before colliding with one another.

Well the definition of momentum is

p = mv

p= momentum
m= mass
v= velocity

When the velocity is as high as close to the speed of light (300,000,000 m/s) the mass of whatever you are moving at that velocity is really a rather insignificant part of the equation.

A weak analogy:
A bullet does not weigh very much, but when you accelerate it down the barrel of a gun, it aquires alot more *oomph* doesn't it?


Scientists play it "cute" with crap like that, just like we all do. But when they make a statement, it comes from Scientists "trust us".

Critical thinking must be applied to all fields.

I'm not saying anything against the LHC, or think it's a doomsday device.

But I do find it intereting the way they presented the information above. I think it illustrates rather well that scientists quite often "cook the books" to present the information how they want it to be seen.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

It would seem that microscopic black holes only exist in theory, and that theory would also extend to say that they would rapidly decay. Not that they actually do exist.

Very close to the truth. First let's remember that scientific theories are not the same as colloquial theories. They are based on the physical laws of the universe, so it's a little dishonest to say they 'only' exist in theory. It is truer to say they haven't been detected ... yet. Just like quarks were solidly theorised for many years before we were able to detect them.

Personally, I suspect that quantum singularities will be created before dark matter is directly observed.

Gravitational lensing has actually allowed cosmologists to make maps of dark matter in the universe!

Originally Posted by xman

Very close to the truth. First let's remember that scientific theories are not the same as colloquial theories. They are based on the physical laws of the universe, so it's a little dishonest to say they 'only' exist in theory. It is truer to say they haven't been detected ... yet. Just like quarks were solidly theorised for many years before we were able to detect them.

Personally, I suspect that quantum singularities will be created before dark matter is directly observed.

Gravitational lensing has actually allowed cosmologists to make maps of dark matter in the universe!

So, basically, microscopic black holes are on the same scientifically provable level as Russell's teapot.

It, and they, simply haven't been detected yet.

EDIT:

Forgot the Youtube link for the sake of veracity of truth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IlHgbOWj4o