“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[Richmond Clements]

And here's something else to get your hackles up (if you have any hackles left by now...)

9/11 Explosive Eyewitness Testimony: http://911blogger.com/news/2011-04-27/911-explosive-eyewitness-testimony

Goodness! people on the scene minutes after a building collapsed? It's lucky none of these eye witnesses where, I dunno, suffering from shock or anything are where able to describe exactly what happened.
Never mind the massive amount of forensic evidence since that contradicts any conspiracy, eh?

Dammit, I'm doing it again...

[TordelBack]

So, science is not aided by restriction of debate, so long as only sober experts get to do the debating?

When it comes to the business of actual difficult science, I'm sorry, but yes, that's exactly it.  I'm not qualified, and I haven't got the years it would require to cover the literature, and I'm not smart enough to make sense of the maths anyway, to engage in properly informed analysis of this type of material.  I'm just not that person.  All I can do is trust that those people that have made it their life's work, and more importantly the system that regulates their work, is up to the task - because I'm certainly not.  If you are, well fair play, get stuck in.  In my case, however, all I can do is form an opinion based on what I'm told at second or third hand, further based on a judgement of the reliability of those sources.  That opinion has feck all bearing on what researchers should or shouldn't present in a low-level research paper

Obviously it's proper for everyone to question how science is done, to question the biases, the personalities, the sources of funding, and how findings influence real-world policies and budgets - not to do so would be gross complacency.  But to question the specifics of the actual core science?  I think you have to be a specialist to do that, and that's the level of paper that your post referred to.  Dragging specific research papers into the realm of uniformed non-expert discussions is risky, because as 'climategate' showed most people are pig-fucking ignorant as to how science operates and prone to completely misinterpret on the basis of what the media spins in their direction. 

Papers need to present evidence that can inform debate at all levels, but including conjectures that one-note media sources can misinterpret into a rejection of anthropogenic climate change is counterproductive.  These aren't opinion columns in New Scientist, these are papers documenting primary research.  A policy that restricts them to that role allows them to be used to support or contradict any position as the evidence dictates.  It actually opens up their use, rather than restricts it to one partisan or another.

A quote from a character by a non-expert novelist: "Let the philosophers of science delude themselves to the contrary, physics was free of human taint, it described a world that would still exist if  men and women and all their sorrows did not." (Solar, Ian McEwan).  That's where we're at.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.

Richard Feynman

[vzzbux]

And here's something else to get your hackles up (if you have any hackles left by now...)

9/11 Explosive Eyewitness Testimony: http://911blogger.com/news/2011-04-27/911-explosive-eyewitness-testimony

In disasters like that there will be gas build up just taking a little spark to set it off, or even whole floors slamming against one another as the buildings collapse the impact will sound like an explosion.
How many times have you jumped out of your skin when a car back fires. Even in my job I have to have a gas tester clipped to my belt at all times to test for build up in the street networks.
As a kid I can even remember the amplification of my dads farts around the house when he was in the bath.




V

[JOE SOAP]

When 9/11 happened, my telly blew-up.

[COMMANDO FORCES]

I heard that Porsche was behind it all, thus making everyone think of buying one of their 911 models, subliminal messaging, it works!

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

I heard that Porsche was behind it all, thus making everyone think of buying one of their 911 models, subliminal messaging, it works!

Pish, it was their competitors at Fiat, trying to link 911s with death, thus adversely affecting the sales of the executive penal compensators.

Mind you those 911s were associated with death long before 2001.

[The Legendary Shark]

Goodness! people on the scene minutes after a building collapsed? It's lucky none of these eye witnesses where, I dunno, suffering from shock or anything are where able to describe exactly what happened.
Never mind the massive amount of forensic evidence since that contradicts any conspiracy, eh?

Dammit, I'm doing it again...

Indeed. It's just pure coincidence that many imagined similar secondary explosions and controlled-demolition-type "bang, bang, bang, bangs".

And, which massive amounts of forensic evidence do you mean? The selective evidence considered by the 9/11 Commission or NIST which failed to explain exactly why any of the three towers collapsed?

Oh Lordie, I'm off on one again as well  It's all moot anyway. At the moment I've seen no evidence that makes me confident that the official narrative of 9/11 is convincing and I guess you haven't seen anything that makes you think the official narrative isn't convincing. I do want to be wrong, though. I really want to think it was all the fault of human pettiness and human ineptitude and just plain coincidence rather than an elitist black-flag operation designed to make a profit and further a global Fascist agenda.

So, science is not aided by restriction of debate, so long as only sober experts get to do the debating?

When it comes to the business of actual difficult science, I'm sorry, but yes, that's exactly it...

I think I know where you're coming from here, and it's a position I have a great deal of respect for. We want our best scientists working on the most pressing problems, of course we do. We want them arguing with each other and reviewing each other and generally coming up with accurate data and answers. However, to exclude the rest of society from that process seems to me a very elitist and even dangerous thing to do. I reckon we should all have access to important climate change data and interpretations of that data. Why should we not be able to look at the arguments, perspectives and data of our scientists and debate it between ourselves as we are doing here? You don't need to understand every detail to have an opinion - whether that opinion be right or wrong.

Take the case of Ignaz Semmelweis, who discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. The argument between Semmelweis and his peers raged on largely in private (that is, between doctors). Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Some doctors were actually offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings.

Now, if the rest of society had been privy to this argument then simple statistics (hands washed v dead patients on a chart) may have brought doctors to the truth far earlier and saved many lives.

The more information that's available to as many people as possible, the better the chance that connections will be made or novel proposals generated. Yes, you'll get a lot of rubbish as well, but that's just par for the course and no reason to restrict access to scientific data or its interpretation.

[TordelBack]

The more information that's available to as many people as possible, the better the chance that connections will be made or novel proposals generated. Yes, you'll get a lot of rubbish as well, but that's just par for the course and no reason to restrict access to scientific data or its interpretation.

I'd never advocate restricting access to scientific data or its interpretation.  What I would do is assert that, as a layman, my view of data or interpretation is just not as valid as a professional specialist in that or a related field.  It's not elitism to ask that the man flying my plane is a qualified pilot and not just a passenger selected because he's expressed an interest, and some of the other passengers think he's got a better handle on this whole aileron business. What's the problem, why are they keeping all the cockpit action to themselves, what are they hiding?  Where public opinion affects the progress of essential science, that's exactly what happens.

Your 19th C anecdote is a good one, and highlights inertia of praxis in any aspect of life.  However this is not the same situation as the one  we were discussing - no-one is suppressing or ignoring or sidelining anyone's research.  The CERN papers are part of an effort to understand climate, and an influential part. 

[The Legendary Shark]

I'd never advocate restricting access to scientific data or its interpretation.

I apologise, I had no right to insinuate that. Sloppy of me.

I do think that a layman can be of help in data interpretation. In some cases, the conventional wisdom of scientists can be a straightjacket that the layman just doesn't have. Of course, conventional wisdom has its place - but then, so does unfettered imagination.

When I was at school I was told that it would be impossible to draw a scale picture of the solar system on an A4 sheet of paper. This "fact", no doubt established and tested by people far more intelligent and better educated than I will ever be, has vexed me for most of my life. A couple of years ago, however, the solution to this problem hit me. I think that I've found a way to put a scale model of the solar system on an A4 sheet of paper - although I can explain the idea and even illustrate it, I don't know exactly how to do it because my maths aren't nearly good enough. Also, there's really no point to having scale maps of solar systems on an A4 sheet of paper that I can think of. And it might not actually work as well as I imagine. All I'm saying is that if a poorly educated buffoon like me can have a brainwave, then anyone can.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

The more information that's available to as many people as possible, the better the chance that connections will be made or novel proposals generated. Yes, you'll get a lot of rubbish as well

E.G. Every science story the Daily Mail has ever run.

A common problem with the way most lay people interpret scientific data is this; Correlation=Causation. The MMR jabs links to Autism is a good example of this.

Just out of curiosity, Sharky, when you say a scale image of the solar system, do you mean out as far as Neptune, or right out to the edge of the Oort cloud?

[JOE SOAP]

When I was at school I was told that it would be impossible to draw a scale picture of the solar system on an A4 sheet of paper. This "fact", no doubt established and tested by people far more intelligent and better educated than I will ever be, has vexed me for most of my life. A couple of years ago, however, the solution to this problem hit me. I think that I've found a way to put a scale model of the solar system on an A4 sheet of paper - although I can explain the idea and even illustrate it, I don't know exactly how to do it because my maths aren't nearly good enough. Also, there's really no point to having scale maps of solar systems on an A4 sheet of paper that I can think of. And it might not actually work as well as I imagine. All I'm saying is that if a poorly educated buffoon like me can have a brainwave, then anyone can.

How 'bout just using a bigger sheet of paper?*





*Ed de Bono would be proud.

[The Legendary Shark]

Without the maths skills I don't really know - but I'm fairly confident you could get it to Neptune and optimistic that you could reach the farthest edge of the heliopause. Any maths geniuses want to look at the idea and share the glory/disappointment?? 

[I, Cosh]

How 'bout just using a bigger sheet of paper?*

He did say it had to be A4. A smaller scale would seem to be an obvious solution.

[JOE SOAP]

He did say it had to be A4.

He didn't ya know.