The Sick State of Todays Science

[darkbeaver]

15 February 2009
It’s Time for Change


But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
—Hilaire Belloc

Tumultuous times like these encourage questioning of long-held convictions. Our predicament seems the result of complacent reliance on consensus and a failure of commonsense. But for adventurous, practical souls it is a time of opportunity—a time ripe for change.


>> Click on image to enlarge.

The American people have voted for change in this time of financial and political turmoil. The world is seeking new answers and renewed confidence in their leaders. It is easy to forget that it is only a few months since there was blind faith in experts who were telling us that our global financial systems were sound. “Trust the economists, they are the experts.” We give Nobel Prizes to such people and now find that their mathematical science doesn’t apply to the real world. They, and we, have suffered a historic reality check.

However, what is not readily accepted in this age of the “cult of the expert” is that the same problem applies to all the sciences. The training of experts is so narrow and specialized that, as George Bernard Shaw wrote, “No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.” Perhaps that is why no university on this planet offers a course that seamlessly sews the specialties together into a broad interdisciplinary canvas. The pieces don’t match up. The idiots cannot even converse!

This disconnect has allowed a surprising depth of ignorance to hide at the heart of our science. We have a gravitational cosmology that trumpets an understanding of the history of the universe back to the first nanosecond. Yet we do not understand gravity!! We have merely a mathematical description of what it does using words that have no real meaning—like “space-time” and an assumption of universality. Meanwhile the dismissal of the fundamental role of the powerful electric force in cosmology borders on pathological.

Entrenched science is constantly bolstered by sensational speculative announcements of “facts.” But wildly imaginative constructs such as "dark matter," "dark energy" and “black holes” are fictitious, not factual. Notwithstanding, pronouncements about the big bang have become a quasi-religious ideology, or scientism.

>> Dr. Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) is best known for his provocative book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, a nominee for the National Book Award in 1978.

"These scientisms, as I shall call them, are clusters of scientific ideas which come together and almost surprise themselves into creeds of belief, scientific mythologies…. And they share with religions many of their most obvious characteristics: a rational splendor that explains everything, a charismatic leader or succession of leaders who are highly visible and beyond criticism, certain gestures of idea and rituals of interpretation, and a requirement of total commitment. In return the adherent receives what the religions had once given him more universally: a world view, a hierarchy of importances, and an auguring place where he may find out what to do and think, in short, a total explanation of man. And this totality is obtained not by actually explaining everything, but by an encasement of its activity, a severe and absolute restriction of attention, such that everything that is not explained is not in view."
— Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

It is an evident truism that history repeats itself. Why? One of the reasons is that historiography—the processes by which knowledge of the past, recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted—is not required reading in most university courses. Nor is epistemology, a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. What little historical understanding we are given tends to be distorted by a Darwinian perspective, which presents our present state as the culmination of a long upward struggle from ignorance into the light of understanding. Whereas, as Arthur Koestler characterized it, “The revolutions in the history of science are successful escapes from blind alleys.” The blind alleys have become much longer and the escape more difficult since science became government-funded and institutionalised. Our universities have been tirelessly extending blind alleys for a century since the advent of “modern physics.”

“As these institutions founder in metaphysical emptiness, their words as dead leaves, all the texts and icons are there in their midst, waiting to have life breathed back into them.”
—John Carroll, The Western Dreaming.

As Carroll put it, “A culture is its sacred stories.” Our scientific culture has its sacred icons and stories. Bertrand Russell wrote of the increasing power of scientific experts and th
It’s Time for Change

 

[CDNBear]

So DB...Do you believe todays Scientists are just this side of Charletons?

 

[darkbeaver]

So DB...Do you believe todays Scientists are just this side of Charletons?

No thier not criminals they're just stupid isolated eggheads who've specialized to such an extent that they can't communicate between thier various schools of official theology.

 

[darkbeaver]

Dr. Randell Mills and Blacklight Power

The following is based partially on a Dow Jones story written by Erik Baard: U.S. GRANTS PATENT ON HYDROGEN ENERGY SOURCE Source: New York (Dow Jones)

U.S. Patent 6,024,935 has been granted to Dr. Randell Mills and his company, BlackLight Power, Inc. The patent is unusually large with 60 pages and 499 claims. The patent is for Lower-Energy Hydrogen Methods and Structure.
Dr. Randell Mills discovered in early 1989 that the hydrogen atom could be collapsed below its ground state and give up significant amounts of energy.
At first, it was thought that he had a new form of cold fusion.
However, in an early paper he showed that his discovery was indeed a new form of energy from the collapse of the hydrogen atom (which he calls hydrinos). Mills early report showed as much as 1,000 times as much energy out as input energy. This excellent amount of thermal energy was attributed to the catalytic reactions that provide a receptor for the energy emitted when the hydrogen collapses. The newsletter Fusion Facts named Dr. Mills as Scientist of the year for his work.
It has been a long struggle to get acceptance by the patent office for this excellent work of Dr. Mills. To obtain acceptance, Dr. Mills arranged for the following:

1. An independent verification by Johannes Conrads, Institute for Low Temperature Plasma Physics at the Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald, Germany.
2. Had articles peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in both Fusion Technology and the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy.
3. Presented his findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

One of the most compelling reasons (to this writer) to believe that this is an important new-energy technology is because Dr. Robert Park (a so-called spokesman for the American Physical Society) stated, "I am shocked that they issued a patent on this! This indicates that the troubles at the patent office continue."
Parks likened the process to "a perpetual motion machine."

Brigid Quinn, replying to Park for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said, "We do not give patents on perpetual motion machines. That this patent was granted means it met the criteria that it is new, useful, and non-obvio
The Tom Bearden Website

This is the hydrogen breakthrough denied by the eggheads as discussed by the science priests in the OP.

 

[CDNBear]

I wonder if that's why they fouled up on this global warming myth?

 

[hermanntrude]

I don't understand patent law at all, but I do understand the second law of thermodynamics.

 

[Outta here]

Avro - cut it out. Bear, don't feed 'em.

 

[Tonington]

DB, do you really believe all of that? That in order to be a specialist, you have to be an idiot? That is so laughable. While the article tells you that there is not a single university that offers a course that seamlessly sews specialties into one interdisciplinary canvas, why would you expect otherwise? How are you going to teach enzyme kinetics without the student first understanding enzyme substrates? How do you teach enzyme substrates without first teaching protein structure? How do you teach protein structure without first teaching levels of protein organization? How do you teach quaternary protein structures without teaching amino acid r-groups? Eventually this line of questioning brings you back through Organic Chemistry and one or multiple introductory chemistry classes, as well as biology offerings.

The problem is you run out of time. There is an awful lot of theory going on there. You shouldn't just memorize what happens when you have valine at position number 6 in the beta helix in hemoglobin as opposed to glutamic acid (the normal amino acid in that position). You should understand that this error results in a conformational change in the hemoglobin due to the hydrophobic nature of the valine r-group, and there is an inpocket folding of the chain, and now the hemoglobin molecules will polymerize. Eventually this can lead to blocked capillaries and the cells lyse, the person loses oxygen carrying capacity. It's sickle cell anemia. You could just memorize what causes the disease, but understanding the theory is the whole point, and it leads to insight for other biochemical problems, as well as possible solutions.

There is only a finite amount of time in the classroom, and to try to pull all of the chemistry and biology together in one course "biochemistry" is not possible. It's no different for other disciplines.

 

[Avro]

I wonder if that's why they fouled up on this global warming myth?

No, It's because they haven't been able to convey the realities of Global warming to people who may be a touch slow when it comes to science for whatever reason.

Post edited to protect the weak.

 

[Outta here]

Avro, you've had umpteen opportunities to return to this community and conduct yourself with some civility towards the other members here. We're not asking you again. Take it elsewhere, you're not welcome here anymore.

 

[hermanntrude]

the debate that DB has started is a valid one, but I would like to ask all posters to try and remain civil and objective.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

I think DB's already set the tone, with that scornful thread title and remarks like "they're just stupid isolated eggheads."

 

[barney]

To specialize or not to specialize: in nature, specialization results in an inability to adapt when the environment changes. In our society, I don't see how to avoid it entirely but 'specialists' could really take a few to understand the rest of their respective areas. It's not good to be brilliant in one area and clueless in all others (assuming brilliance doesn't require more well-rounded knowledge).

Then there's science cults where scientists want to believe something is so real bad that they will do whatever is necessary to make sure everybody else does too.

Then there are the sell-outs who will distort facts in favour of private interests (with the sub-category of gutless ones that just follow even when they know better).

 

[lebirchan]

Irving Langmuir and Atomic Hydrogen

It is with pleasure I have studied the progress made by BlackLight Power Inc. The technology and setup they use resembles very much the setup which is described in the abstract fom the book by Nicholas Moller "Irving Langmuir and the Atomic Hydrogen". Irving Langmuir was a senior scientist at General Electric in the 1920' and 30'. He was the inventer of the tungsten Light Bulb and he received the Nobel Prize in 1932. Langmuir used tunsten as the catalyst rather than a Renay Nickel variant used by BlackLight power. Langmuir was a close friend of Niels Bohr an other Nobel Prize winner,who evaluated the process which like BLP use water as fuel once the process has been started. I do not want to discuss the theory behind the two processes but only the setup in the experiments and the results observed.
I believe the validation performed by Professor Peter Jansson at Rowan University is very sound especially when compared with the experiments performed by Langmuir given the different catalyst used.

I would very much appriciate any comments once they have studied the process described in the abstracts from the above book written by Nicholas Moller.

Lebirchan

 

[Cannuck]

I think DB's already set the tone, with that scornful thread title and remarks like "they're just stupid isolated eggheads."

They're not all stupid. Just the ones he doesn't believe.

Mills has managed to raise millions in venture capital so if Blacklight has anything, we will see it. I won't hold my breath.

 

[darkbeaver]

DB, do you really believe all of that? That in order to be a specialist, you have to be an idiot? That is so laughable.


Yes it is laughable but it's not what was said.
“No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.”
As in idiot savant perhaps. You are not necessarily an idiot if you specialize.
The words aren't mine Tonington but yes I believe every word of it, the effect described in the article is real it is a recognized problem accross the board. You point out very well the complexities of individual interdisiplinary training and the near impossibility of producing suitable numbers of polyvolant people. That is however not the base of the debate today nor is it the problem, it is the separation of disiplines into specialist camps that has created the problems of cross communications. It is understood that this has retarded human developement
in the last hundred years to a very great degree and that this retardation has been by design. The cross disiplinary discussion and work must be cultivated and undertaken without exception. You can if you research a bit find exactly the same problems with todays economic crisis and cultural crisis, that imposed divison has served power very well. It's not hard to understand that nothing threatens the wealth paradigm and lives, not even science. I know you're not a big believer in conspiracy, but you have some time yet to familiarize yourself with the practice.

 

[Tonington]

My post was pointing out why you can't produce a single course that seeks to boil many disciplines in science down to one concentrated offering. It's not possible, because there is no unified theory of everything. It would be nice if we could distill it down to one course, my debt load would be far less burdensome for starters. I don't believe it's a pragmatic solution to shoot for. More like a wish.

If you look at interdisciplinary studies that appear in refereed journals, you will notice that quite a few of those et al. papers are that way because they incorporate specialists from different disciplines (and even intradisciplinary) to work on a common problem. There is nothing wrong with that approach. In fact having more eyes and more ears looking and listening is much better than one know-it-all proceeding at the behest of other opinions and hypotheses.

Conspiracy in my view is a cop out. It's very easy to focus blame onto some archetype for the ills in society. Whether that be social injustice, economic malfeasance, incalculable acts of violence, or the favour of one theory over another.

If these conspircaies could actually forward some concrete solutions, to real problems, I'd be willing to entertain them. Until that time it is paranoid nitpicking.

 

[Tyr]

I wonder if that's why they fouled up on this global warming myth?

...and how did they do that? Scientific explanation only please

 

[Tyr]

No thier not criminals they're just stupid isolated eggheads who've specialized to such an extent that they can't communicate between thier various schools of official theology.

Typically people who would call a "scientist" an "egghead" are those that have a poor understanding of Science to begin with and yearn throughout their intellectually unencumbered life to be.......

....a Scientist aka "The Closet Scientist"

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Some real science:


Quantum Weirdness
An Analogy from the Time of Newton

What Einstein called “spooky action-at-a-distance” in quantum physics has similarities to the “action-at-a-distance” that bothered people in Newton’s time. It deserves the same fate.
PAUL QUINCEY
Paul Quincey is a physicist at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom. E-mail: paul.quincey [at] npl.co.uk. Some related articles can be found at Quantum physics with the benefit of hindsight.

“Anybody who's not bothered by Newtonian gravity has to have rocks in his head.”​

The above is not a genuine quotation, but I hope you will agree that it is a fair summary of the original, made over three hundred years ago: “That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else . . . is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.”

This quotation highlights the controversy that surrounded Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, put forth in his astonishing book Principia, published in 1687. His theory says that anything with mass exerts an attractive force on anything else with mass, depending only on the masses and their separation in a very simple way. Through virtuoso mathematics, Newton showed how this force accounts precisely for the known motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea.

His book does not attempt to explain how this “action-at-a-distance” actually works—indeed Newton makes a point in Principia of saying that he would not speculate on this. He used the Latin phrase “hypotheses non fingo,” which can be loosely translated as “shut up and calculate.”

You might think that the quotation mentioned earlier came from one of the many philosophical critics of Newtonian gravity, perhaps Newton’s great German contemporary and rival Gottfried von Leibniz, but you would be wrong—the words were written by Newton himself. Newton was very bothered by the issue of how a planet could “know” about the sun’s gravitational pull without something physically giving it a nudge, and he tried hard to invent a plausible mechanism. One such mechanism he proposed was a fluid that fills all space—the ether—which is somehow sucked toward the sun, tending to carry the planets with it and thus keep them in orbit instead of flying off. Needless to say, this idea does not stand up to scrutiny, which is why Newton wisely left it out of Principia.

In fact, Newton and Leibniz had very similar views on the plausibility of gravity as a force without a mechanical agent. As Leibniz put it: “if [gravity] transpires without any mechanism . . . then it is a senseless occult quality, which is so very occult that it can never be cleared up, even though a Spirit, not to say God himself, were endeavoring to explain it.”

Why are these quaint problems from the ancient history of physics worth mentioning? There are two related reasons. First, the borderlands of scientific knowledge have always contained some ideas considered virtually supernatural at the time, and it is instructive to see with hindsight how such ideas are ultimately accepted or rejected by mainstream science. Second, there are illuminating parallels between gravity and quantum theory that may help us come to terms with the current philosophical difficulties surrounding quantum theory.


The rest of the article can be found at Quantum Weirdness