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Nautilus has an interesting rundown on how scientific fraud happens and what could possibly be done to correct it written in comic book form. It's a fun little read and oh so true.
The book that it is based on, Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth, is worth reading as well.
Stuart Ritchie is a Lecturer in the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King's College London. His new book, Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth, explains the ideas in this comic, by Zach Weinersmith, in more detail, telling shocking stories of scientific error and misconduct. It also proposes an abundance of ideas for how to rescue science from its current malaise.
How many Soylentils here are in academia? Have you felt the pressure of "publish or perish"?
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday August 01 2020, @11:03PM (7 children)
What the hell is "settled science"? Science is never settled.
But thank you for giving us a pretty good demonstration what damage the public school system can do to a human mind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2020, @04:47AM (6 children)
I'll let you lead the debate on the Unsettled State of Physics. Go.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday August 03 2020, @01:22PM (5 children)
In physics, as in any science, we know what we know until we learn something that explains the things we observe better. For the longest time, we expected a planet to be inside the orbit of Mercury, simply due to how its orbit was behaving. There should have been some mass that makes it behave like it does, because without, it should not behave like it does. A planet Vulcan [wikipedia.org] was hypothezised, some claimed to have observed it but, as we do know now, of course they didnt.
Only when relativity was discovered and how it affects gravity, and how the sun's gravity well is the reason for Mercury's orbital oddities, we finally could put this to rest. For now.
Today, we observe that the universe doesn't behave like it should. It expands not as the matter that we observe would allow it to. In comes dark matter, and when that didn't suffice, dark energy. Does it exist? Or is it another Vulcan? Something that we expect because it's how we could explain what we observe within the reference frame of the model we consider "true". Maybe we will discover something in the future that suddenly explains the expansion oddities in a new way. Much like relativity did for another gravity phenomenon.
So no, physics is not "settled". We have an understanding of how it works, and for nearly all observed phenomena, it works pretty well. There are fringe cases, though, where it does not adequately explain what we observe.
But we're working on it.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Bot on Monday August 03 2020, @03:02PM (4 children)
Once you have discovered every law in the universe and reverse engineered all its history, and it all fits 100%, how do you demonstrate you have discovered all the discoverable? A. you can't. Therefore settled science is never absolute. For all practical purposes though, assertions like 'a brick will crush a light bulb' or "when reality differs from expectations, a leftie will declare reality wrong" are so invariable to be considered settled science.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Opportunist on Tuesday August 04 2020, @12:56AM (3 children)
Is there a chance we could at least try to keep politics out of science? Science and ideologies don't mix well.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:06AM (2 children)
Troll lives matter.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday August 04 2020, @01:00PM (1 child)
Do we get to vote on that?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday August 06 2020, @07:05AM
It's a matter of basic principles so, no.
Account abandoned.