Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2015 October 24

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October 24

Science is a scam?

any additional references or input to clarify the validity of this article I really like science and this made me upset. 199.19.248.27 (talk) 03:00, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Most of that article is correct, but I will add a few comments:

1) Not all scientific publishers are scammers. That is, they don't all require payment and publish ANYTHING as long as the check clears. The most prominent scientific journals don't do this. So, the trick is to know which ones are reputable and which are not. I'm not sure if they have an accreditation system like universities, but, if not, it is sorely needed, since, just like a degree from a diploma mill, anything in one of those journals should be ignored.

2) You need to look at the funding of a study. If it was funded by anyone with an agenda, like the company trying to convince you to buy their product, then you should assume the study will be biased.

3) We need more government funding of university studies. This will provide unbiased studies and also help to support higher education.

4) I agree that the process for approval of new meds is fundamentally flawed, in the US. I personally avoid any new meds, and only trust them after they've been used for years. For pain relief, for example, I use aspirin, since I figure all the side effects are known by now. I'm particularly wary when a doctor recommends a new med for a condition for which the current med seems to be doing a good job. That doesn't appear to pass a risk-benefit analysis. That is, there's lots of risk in a new med, and very little benefit if the old med is getting the job done. And if diet and exercise can make the use of meds unnecessary, all the better. StuRat (talk) 05:01, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

It's not really the science that's the scam. Wherever it is you have to go, there's always somebody to rob you of your lunch money on the way. You need a medicine? They can make it for a dollar but they'll charge you every penny you have. You want a genetic test? They could run them all for a few hundred, but the doctors will only ladle them out one at a time for you not much less than that, companies and regulators getting their cut. The muggers on the street and the kidnappers at ISIS aren't really much different from doctors or anybody else. And if you want science recognized, yeah, sure 'nuff, there's some company demanding it own the presentation of your results, which will puff them up if they're nothing or keep others from learning about them if they're good.

There's a different model, with strong support in the scientific community, of open publishing, but that involves companies trying to get paid in advance, and so they have zero standards. Which is pretty much what they should have, logically, but the culture still is expecting the person who publishes the paper to be the one to evaluate it, even though that isn't going to work with open source, and never was all that great a system otherwise. Wnt (talk) 10:12, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Publication bias is real, but people know it exists, and take it into account. Over time the truth will come out, wrong results won't stand forever. That also applies to the second item, scientists not having to show their work. The other four items mentioned in the article only confirm that we live in a capitalistic world. There are more fundamental problems the OP can worry about, problems that won't fix themselves, especially related to medical care: Studies show that medical errors in hospitals generate more income and increase profits. It means that bad practices are rewarded, good practices punished; that good hospitals may have to close while the bad ones can expand. It could perhaps explain these two reports:

Survival rates for patients with acute heart conditions go up when they are admitted to hospital during cardiology meetings, in other words: If you have a heart condition, you're more likely to survive when the people specialized in that condition are absent...

The "economic cost" of avoidable medical errors in the US has been estimated at 1 trillion per year. (although I'm not a fan of such inflated "economic cost" calculations) Ssscienccce (talk) 11:36, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

The Scientific method, as purely and virtuously applied, is one of the best systems of thought we've got. You have only to compare the post-Renaissance world to the Middle ages, or look at advances such as the germ theory of disease, or genetics, or the moon landings, or the Global Positioning System, to convince yourself of this.

But science is carried out by human beings, and human beings are, alas, endlessly fallible, and not all of them are equally virtuous, and some of them are careless or downright evil. So some science will inevitably be flawed.

The good news is that one of the bedrock principles of the scientific method is its explicit protections against human fallibility. The bad news is that, as in any tussle between cheaters and cheater-detectors, at any given time the sophistication of the cheaters may be sneaking out in front of the mechanisms designed to detect them. So we've got to remain eternally vigilant, but by no means do I think we should write the scientific effort off as a failure. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:26, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

@Scs, StuRat, Wnt, and Ssscience:good evil bad moral human make, not objective, science independent of moral, not good badMahfuzur rahman shourov (talk) 15:21, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Science should be independent of human morality, but as long as people remain determined to falsify "scientific" results to support their own agenda, and suppress results which don't, the two are intertwined. StuRat (talk) 18:34, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

One bit of good news about science is that bad science can only reign for so long, before it is dethroned. For example, if you claim you have a car that runs on water, with no other energy source, then you will be expected to prove it with actual demonstrations. If you do so with a faked experiment with a hidden energy source, to get investors, they will expect to see production models soon. At that point the scam is up and you go to jail. StuRat (talk) 18:43, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

@StuRat: Nonsense. Thorium powered cars remain economically viable no matter how often they are debunked. Whereas a company that genuinely invents a platinum-free catalytic converter first takes the bribe, then takes the dive. Bad science works at least as well as good science nowadays. Wnt (talk) 13:59, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Wnt: Nonesense. 01 02 199.19.248.27 (talk) 00:38, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

terms of genetics, memetics and related subjects which describe "carrier" of "malevolent" gene, meme(thought) etc is "reverse-aware" about the malevolence e.g carrier was convinced, thinks that carrying and spreading is beneficial

OP curious while looking into cultist incident sample, thought spread activitiesMahfuzur rahman shourov (talk) 14:40, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Behavior-altering parasites and parasitoids? Wnt (talk) 15:43, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Humans always think their own views are right, otherwise they simply change their views. Tgeorgescu (talk) 02:07, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Are voles slower than mice and hamsters ?

On the PBS TV show Nature, about 45 minutes into the "Pets: Wild at Heart" episode, there is a scene with a house cat chasing a vole. The cat has no trouble catching it. This contrasts with cats I've seen chasing mice and hamsters, where they have a very difficult time keeping up (although the prey constantly changing direction helps it flee). So, are voles somehow less able to flee ? Or maybe this one was injured or drugged for the show ? StuRat (talk) 17:57, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

According to http://www.speedofanimals.com, the top speed of a domestic cat is 29.8mph, the top speed of a house mouse is 8.1 mph. According to http://purelyfacts.com/question/12/which-is-faster-a-squirrel-or-a-hamster?DDA=111&DDB=50, the top speed of a hamster is 4mph. So your premise is decidedly flawed. According to http://www.softschools.com/facts/animals/vole_facts/334/, the top speed of a vole is 6mph.

SteveBaker (talk) 02:03, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it's a question of manueverabilty then. The vole seemed to run straight, while the mice and hamsters I've seen constantly changed direction to keep the cat from catching them. StuRat (talk) 03:40, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

I rather suspect whatever cats you have watched stalk mice and hamsters are either poor or apathetic hunters for whatever reason. In general, domestic cats are highly adapted to hunting mice and usually if a cat and a mouse are in the same space, and the mouse does not have direct access to an escape route from which the cat is obstructed, that mouse's time is up. Indeed, if the mouse has more than a minute to live it is generally the result of the cat's willingness to draw the experience out. Your average outdoor domestic cat kills between 2-6 animals per day, 1-2 of which are likely to be a rodent. Some cats are more aggressive than others in this respect though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKS07QYFD. Snow ^{let's rap} 03:44, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

• Having captured cottontail rabbits, domestic mice, mice, opossums, muskrats, shrews, moles and voles by hand; but never cats; I can assure you voles are at the slower end of that spectrum. The issue is always the habitat, never the inherent speed. Voles tend to hide, and when they can't, as in your dad's garage, they are eminently catchable. (I will add that I have also "chased" and caught dogs, but never caught or expected to catch woodchucks, grey squirrels, or chipmunks( μηδείς (talk) 04:13, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

• They could hide pretty well in a garage too, whether under a car, between gas cans, behind a tool cabinet, etc. StuRat (talk) 04:33, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

• Ah, yes. But given that my dada's prefered method of grain storage is hanging it in plastic bags from the rafters. . . . 05:26, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Shrews are probably as fast as mice I think but cats don't seem to find them much trouble. I saw a pair of cats playing a 'tennis' game with one once with a cat on either side of a vegetable row, they'd bat the shrew each time it came their side and then the cat on the other side batted it so it ran back again. After a few minutes they just left it alone and walked away rather than killing it which was a bit surprising. Dmcq (talk) 22:15, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

"If there's a bustle in your hedgerow...there are two paths you can go by...". StuRat (talk) 01:35, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Why is Missouri river considered a tributary

The Mississippi River flowing into the Ohio River

If the Missouri river is longer than the Mississippi river, then why is it considered a tributary instead of as the trunk? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.207.79.50 (talk) 20:43, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Which river is wider when they join ? Of course, there's no hard-and-fast rule, but I think that's what most people would consider. StuRat (talk) 20:47, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Tributary has some info, and check out Strahler_number too. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:45, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

The main river is the Missouri, but the Mississippi name came first, even though its northern portion is geographically a tributary. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:28, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

The name is crucial. StuRat's criterion is that of the main stem, which almost always holds true, but not quite: as you can see from the image to the right, at Cairo, Illinois, the Mississippi River is smaller than the Ohio River, and the combined river keeps going in the direction that the Ohio was going before the confluence, but we still call the Ohio the tributary, not vice versa, because the name "Mississippi River" is applied to everything from Nawlins to Lake Itasca. Nyttend (talk) 01:04, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

As User:Baseball Bugs noted, the Mississippi is named as the main river, even though it is hydrologically a tributary, because the length of the Missouri River was not known until the Lewis and Clark expedition. The Mississippi was explored earlier. That is a historical reason. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:18, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

With the Ohio and the Mississippi, the case was slightly different — Hernando de Soto discovered the Mississippi more than a century before the La Salle Expeditions discovered the Ohio, La Salle started from the upper end and couldn't have identified it as the same river (the Cairo area wasn't explored until long afterward), so the river at Nawlins and the river at Pittsburgh got separate names, leaving the lesser branch near Fort de Chartres to keep the grander name. So while it wasn't as clear-cut as the Mississippi and the Missouri, it was still a matter of exploration history. Nyttend (talk) 01:31, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Hanging chads! μηδείς (talk) 04:03, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

We have an article called Mississippi River System, which is also called the Missouri-Mississippi-Ohio watershed, among other things. The excellent illustration with that article shows that the Missouri is the main river, and others all run into it eventually. As noted above, it's an accident of history that the river running through New Orleans is called the Mississippi. Had the pioneers had access to this map, they might have named things differently. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:27, 25 October 2015 (UTC)