Scientists. PAH!
Discussion
deadtom said:
The Michael Mann/climategate emails you mean?
all involved were cleared of any wrongdoing by the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation, an internal investigations by Penn State University, and an independent panel at University of East Anglia too.
I suggest you read the emails yourself, rather than accept rigged inquiries whose terms of reference rendered them useless. There's a big thread here with all the references you need, if you're interested. all involved were cleared of any wrongdoing by the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation, an internal investigations by Penn State University, and an independent panel at University of East Anglia too.
deadtom said:
I can't pretend to know enough about climate change in general to put forward my own arguments about it, but is the climategate argument really still a valid one?
surely if climate change really isnt our own doing, there will be strength of evidence enough to disprove the currently accepted theory that it is, even if the other side really were screwing around.
There are many threads here, going back years, if you really want to know what's going on.surely if climate change really isnt our own doing, there will be strength of evidence enough to disprove the currently accepted theory that it is, even if the other side really were screwing around.
deeen said:
"Descended from" as in evolved from, through a large number of generations the eel-like thing with a nascent backbone became a human, we are descended from them, what is "grand" or "not grand" about that?
Well the trouble is that this sort of thing is routinely reported inaccurately by the popular press in an effort to make it understandable by the general public. Other times it is reported correctly but people read into it slightly more than is written. This instance it's more the latter, although to be fair it isn't clearly written.In general you won't see claims that humans are "descended from" a specific species because that is incredibly difficult or impossible to tell from a mere fossil. Rather, two species share a common ancestor, and so usually the interesting bit is simply how far back that ancestor is. If a very ancient species is found to be a chordate, for example, that would mean chordates existed further back in the past that we first imagined. So, humans may well have evolved from eel-like creatures in the sense that one of the ancestors of humans may have been morphologically similar to an eel, and it may even be the case (if not provable) that humans actually evolved from a member of this species, but two things that are pretty much certain are that:
a) humans and this species shared a common ancestor somewhere along the line
b) humans are NOT evolved from modern eels
To use another commonly misquoted example, humans are not descended from chimpanzees, both species diverged from a common ancestor species that existed in the past. That ancestor species was not necessarily any more like a chimpanzee than it is like a human. Sometimes a species changes very little over millions of years (e.g. crocodiles) which makes things confusing.
XJSsometimeSoon said:
Alex said:
XJSsometimeSoon said:
Jetl3on said:
Painful reading, but I do wonder if Scientists make up half the stuff they discover, safe in the knowledge that nobody can disprove their "facts".
Metro:
"The mystery of evolution - we are descended from primitive eel-like creatures. The 2" Pikaia gracilens lived in the sea more than 500million years ago. But scientists from Cambridge and Toronto have confirmed it is the member of the Chordate family, to which humans belong, it used to swim like an eeel, skimming the sea floor".
EFAMetro:
"The mystery of evolution - we are descended from primitive eel-like creatures. The 2" Pikaia gracilens lived in the sea more than 500million years ago. But scientists from Cambridge and Toronto have confirmed it is the member of the Chordate family, to which humans belong, it used to swim like an eeel, skimming the sea floor".
Really pisses me off when a species name is not in italics
I am not usually this much of a pedant, however it really does boil my blood. Also they missed out who is authority (i.e who named the species) and did not put their initial at the end of the species name. Basics of any writing in biological sciences.
For example at the moment I am writing about Ginkgo biloba which was first formally described and given a taxonomic position by Carl Linnaeus. So in any article it should first read Ginkgo biloba L.
I cannot be arsed to look up the authority on Pikaia gracilens but it is very sloppy not to get it correct.
[/Rant]
As you were...
andy_s said:
Ah, Scientifica Diligentia S., I've never seen a species vent their ire on something quite so obscure - well done!
Lower case for the specific name. Hence Scientifica diligentia or Scientifica sp. if you only want to define the genus.Science is a progressive, er, science. Allowing trivial errors to creep in causes ambiguities.
Simpo Two said:
andy_s said:
Ah, Scientifica Diligentia S., I've never seen a species vent their ire on something quite so obscure - well done!
Lower case for the specific name. Hence Scientifica diligentia or Scientifica sp. if you only want to define the genus.Science is a progressive, er, science. Allowing trivial errors to creep in causes ambiguities.
XJSsometimeSoon said:
This thread is amazing, 3 separate arguments going on. The first is that all scientists seem useless, the second is the outrage that humans have a common ancestor that was a precambrian esq eel and the thrid being the ultra pedants arguing over nomenclature. God bless PH
It's just a case of getting the basics sorted first and going up from there.When something so simple and fundamental can be either right or wrong, it's odd that anyone who wants to get it right and show others how to get it right is branded 'pedant', as if one must always be slightly wrong to be 'cool'.
Same goes for anyone who is good being 'elitist'. Being elite is good, not bad!
otolith said:
Eric Mc said:
Aye.
The Glorification of Dumbness has done more damage to this country than possibly any other single factor.
Topically, clicky. The Glorification of Dumbness has done more damage to this country than possibly any other single factor.
king stupid I can't add up two numbers so how could I have fiddled my taxes?"carmonk said:
I also find it amazing how many thick people see their ignorance as a virtue. Harry Redknapp even used it as a defence in court. "I'm so fking stupid I can't add up two numbers so how could I have fiddled my taxes?"
If the alternative was sharing a shower with big bubba I'd probably be tempted to try that tack too.king stupid I can't add up two numbers so how could I have fiddled my taxes?"Jetl3on said:
i have my opinions on the subject, which Im entitled to.
The idea that all opinions are valid and equal is part of the problem with society IMO. Look at the subject of the thread. On one hand we've got a group of people who've devoted their entire lives to studying a small area of evolutionary biology and, in all likelyhood, have spent years gathering data to present a paper. On the other hand we have Jetl3on who has a different opinion and gathered his entire knowledge of the area from a paragraph in the f
king Metro. Eric Mc said:
Aye.
The Glorification of Dumbness has done more damage to this country than possibly any other single factor.
Absolutely correct.The Glorification of Dumbness has done more damage to this country than possibly any other single factor.
When I hear people in the media or in person excuse their ignorance of something with a laugh and 'Oh science... oh ho ho' type excuse it makes me very mad.
We should view these kind of comments in the same way as racism or farting in public.
All such people should immediately go live their lives without the benefits of science, incl antibiotics, cars or other mechanised transport, computers etc.
Really, we should stop them at airports etc, identify them with a simple questionaire and refuse them entry.
- If you don't belive in modern science then you cannot believe in aeroplanes which stay up in the sky, so you can't travel on them. Have a wooden broom instead.
That especially includes people who believe in new age magic, crsytal healing type stuff.
And horoscopes.
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