How to spot bad science.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
How does this have anything to do with what we are discussing?

It doesn't really have any impact on our discussion. I had said I didn't think you have a concept of all the as-of-yet unobserved phenomenon. You replied that, "I do, very much so."

I was just laughing at how the meaning had been misinterpreted. I had meant that there's a lot out there we don't know about yet, and we can't know it's nature (nor the nature of how it will be first brought to light) until we actually can observe it. It was funny to me to read your response because in that context it meant you knew the nature of all unobserved phenomenon and how it would come to light.

I understand what you meant of course, that (roughly speaking) you understand there is more out there for us to learn about, but it was still funny.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
If Physicists work together now, what makes you think that they won't work together in the future?

There are potentially many reasons why a single physicist could be working alone. Choice is (most) of them. Possible motives could be greed/selfishness, anti-social personality, or simply not being accepted by the scientific community, granted funding, and then deciding to do what they can on their own. KH's point about "easy" stuff applies here, but there's no way to prove all the "easy" stuff is already gone.

Necessity would be the other category. It's possible we could lose a lot of our current knowledge at some point in the future, at which time it would be patently obvious that "lone genius" could have it's impact. Simply not having the infrastructure and community to rely on anymore. I'm sure there are other reasons why a researcher could be working alone when lightning (or dumb luck) strikes, from the "ordinary" no one else around, to the "paranoid" secret project for some (relatively) poor special interest, to the "conspiracy" of someone eliminating all the other collaborators.

For some related Einstein quotes:

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." --Albert Einstein

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

[Jon Miller]

Once more, I don't think you know what is involved anymore. Nor where the possibilities are for new physics.

JM

[Aeson]

You asked for possible reasons why a physicist could be working alone. I didn't mention any probabilities. Are you disputing that those are possibilities?

[Jon Miller]

A lot of them are rediculous. It still doesn't address the point of how one person would accomplish more then many. For example, greed is rediculous, no one goes into physics for greed.

Very small advances, which will never appear in the text books, are the result of insight from many many people (and very intelligent and creative people at that). If one person wanted to go off and do it by themselves, they would find that by the time they had the neccesary insights to make an advancement in theory, that some other group would have vastly surpassed them.

Also, having society destroyed and a lone person rediscovering optics or having a loan scientist continue work is obvious a possibility but not at all relevant to the discussion.

What is published is not the farthest advance of understanding or insight. If you aren't talking to people you are going to be having insights that others have already had and be wasting your time.

I mean, just consider probability. I admit that there is a lot of future left. But 'easy' stuff is only limited in quantity. If you say that every physicist has 1/1000 chance of great insight to an easy major advance of physics understanding, the probability of any easy stuff left would be vanishingly small considering the large number of physicists who have not gained insight into it in the last 60+ years.

JM

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
It still doesn't address the point of how one person would accomplish more then many.

I didn't say they would accomplish more than many. You would expect generally that the "many" would accomplish more. But that may not hold true in every case.

For example, greed is rediculous, no one goes into physics for greed.

Some of them are indeed ridiculously unlikely. Greed is definitely not that ridiculous though.

I didn't say they would go into physics because of greed. Although why you feel that is impossible is beyond me. If someone has a natural aptitude for it and sees personal benefit in it, why could greed not be a motivating factor?

But, given what I did say... You are saying no one in physics could ever be affected by greed?

Lets see... $$$.

Very small advances, which will never appear in the text books, are the result of insight from many many people (and very intelligent and creative people at that). If one person wanted to go off and do it by themselves, they would find that by the time they had the neccesary insights to make an advancement in theory, that some other group would have vastly surpassed them.

In general, that would be expected. Yes.

But your statement assumes the "many" will always cover everything and won't ever miss anything important. No way to prove that Jon.

Also, having society destroyed and a lone person rediscovering optics or having a loan scientist continue work is obvious a possibility but not at all relevant to the discussion.

You asked for reasons why a researcher might be working alone. I answered your question... very simple. If you want more relevent answers, ask more relevent questions. (That might include qualifying them better.)

I mean, just consider probability. I admit that there is a lot of future left. But 'easy' stuff is only limited in quantity. If you say that every physicist has 1/1000 chance of great insight to an easy major advance of physics understanding, the probability of any easy stuff left would be vanishingly small considering the large number of physicists who have not gained insight into it in the last 60+ years.

Like I said, this "probability" is just conjecture unless you have some data to derive it from. 1/1000 is just pulled out of thin air, and so must be whatever number of "missed" insights too. You're trying to count things which by definition we necessarily couldn't know of (yet) if they exist.

I don't know why it's so important for you to constantly try to prove negatives. It should be obvious that such attempts are futile.

[Jon Miller]

Where major advances are left in physics currently isn't an area which is likely to produce any ammounts of money. He won't make any major advancement in the area he is being payed to do research in.

Consider the past, Aeson. You can look at times when major physics advances happened, and seemed to scale up as more physicists were involved. And then stopped increasing despite the fact that more and more physicists were in existence. So you can plot the distribution of major advances and number of physicists in practice and come up with some (extremely rough) idea of the probability.

1/1000 is made up, yes, but it is reasonable (within several orders of magnitude). Any number that is reasonable (no 1/10000000 which would suggest that our physics forbears where extremely extremely lucky) would suggest that all 'easy' major physics advancements have already been discovered.

And we were discussing the advancement of science. The collapse of civilization would obviously turn everything on it's head, and it isn't reasonable to discuss that in the greater discussion. It is like discussing apples and lamb. Sure, you can eat both, but other than that they share little in common.

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

All I am asking is for you to be reasonable and give up your romantic unrealistic notions of science. I am not seeking to prove that it can't possibly exist. Merely to show, which one can't with the existence of God for example, that it is very very very very unlikely.

Jon Miller

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Where major advances are left in physics currently isn't an area which is likely to produce any ammounts of money. He won't make any major advancement in the area he is being payed to do research in.

You don't think say... it could be worth a few bucks if someone came up with a working method for cold fusion? (And "paid to do research in" is not a qualification you had provided before. Though when dealing with possibilities, you wouldn't be able to rule it anyways.)

Consider the past, Aeson. You can look at times when major physics advances happened, and seemed to scale up as more physicists were involved. And then stopped increasing despite the fact that more and more physicists were in existence. So you can plot the distribution of major advances and number of physicists in practice and come up with some (extremely rough) idea of the probability.

1/1000 is made up, yes, but it is reasonable (within several orders of magnitude). Any number that is reasonable (no 1/10000000 which would suggest that our physics forbears where extremely extremely lucky) would suggest that all 'easy' major physics advancements have already been discovered.

I'm glad you admit your numbers are made up. Your claim that they are reasonable is supported with what formula? Obviously you have to take into account the chance per researcher (which is kinda stupid as each researcher will have different chances based on ability and area of research), as well as how that corresponds to the number of "easy".

What is the number of "easy"? That's where you're counting things that can't be counted. Without definining how many "easy" there are, your fractions have nothing to work on.

And we were discussing the advancement of science. The collapse of civilization would obviously turn everything on it's head, and it isn't reasonable to discuss that in the greater discussion. It is like discussing apples and lamb. Sure, you can eat both, but other than that they share little in common.

But you miss the point again and again. You asked a question, I answered. If you wanted different answers, you should have qualified your question better.

Besides... Your original quote was that all the examples of older physicists couldn't happen nowdays. If we were set back... perhaps they could (literally speaking).

All I am asking is for you to be reasonable and give up your romantic unrealistic notions of science. I am not seeking to prove that it can't possibly exist. Merely to show, which one can't with the existence of God for example, that it is very very very very unlikely.

By disputing my stance, that it can exist, you are in fact "seeking to prove that it can't". If all you want to say is that it can exist, but you don't think it's worth considering, that's fine with me. I don't dispute it. If you want to make substatiated claims... back them up.

As for disproving the existence of "God", that is a very good analogy. Because as you haven't defined the number of "easy" which everything hinges off of, "God" is similarly not defined. There is vast variation possible within the definitions or quantifications of those terms.

If on the other hand you want to deal with a specific "easy" or "God", then it might be possible to make accurate claims about probabilities. But before defining or quantifying those terms, any probabilities based on them are meaningless conjecture.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Dauphin

6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood's science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.

Einstein? Perelman?

I know this is now JM vs Aeson but anyway.

Einstein has already been mentionned as no a "nowadays".
Perelman is really the exception.
In fact, the only reason YOU probably have heard of him is because of the fact that he works alone and his personnality.
If not for those, mainstream news would not have cared any about it, as Fields Medals usually don't make mainstream news.

My point is that it IS hard to find examples, and they are so rare that they are considered exceptional.

You could even argue that his work WAS syntheses with other people's work but that depends on point of view.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Aeson
As for disproving the existence of "God", that is a very good analogy. Because as you haven't defined the number of "easy" which everything hinges off of, "God" is similarly not defined. There is vast variation possible within the definitions or quantifications of those terms.

If on the other hand you want to deal with a specific "easy" or "God", then it might be possible to make accurate claims about probabilities. But before defining or quantifying those terms, any probabilities based on them are meaningless conjecture.

No it isn't. We have had 'easy' advances in the past. As such, by assuming a relatively similiar sampling of physicists (which probably isn't correct, as physicists are probably better now with a larger population to draw out of) and doing a ratio based upon when advances (by a single man) has occured, we can come up with a very rough (within a couple orders of magnitude) chance for an 'easy' event.

Now we can have some discussion of easy, but if we put the upper bound on Einstien, the discussion becomes just what is major advances. This will have some large uncertainty, but still will be a number which could be cited with a confidence interval.

On the other hand, there is nothing we can say about God at all, as we don't have any experimental evidence of Him. Nor do we have anything we can say with any confidence interval.

If I am bored for a few hours I might plot up a graph.

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

A difference between Math and Physics is that Physics is constrained by reality. I would guess, that there would be single persons who will provide major advancement in Mathematics in the future (probably less and less though...).

JM

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
No it isn't. We have had 'easy' advances in the past. As such, by assuming a relatively similiar sampling of physicists (which probably isn't correct, as physicists are probably better now with a larger population to draw out of) and doing a ratio based upon when advances (by a single man) has occured, we can come up with a very rough (within a couple orders of magnitude) chance for an 'easy' event.

Now we can have some discussion of easy, but if we put the upper bound on Einstien, the discussion becomes just what is major advances. This will have some large uncertainty, but still will be a number which could be cited with a confidence interval.

...

If I am bored for a few hours I might plot up a graph.

I would be interested to see what you come up with. Especially what threshholds you used for determining whether an advance was achievable from a single physicist (whether it was or not), what constitutes a "major leap", ect. As you say, and I have said, those are some of the factors which any substantiated claim of probability would hinge off of.

On the other hand, there is nothing we can say about God at all, as we don't have any experimental evidence of Him. Nor do we have anything we can say with any confidence interval.

As I said, it depends on what "God" is defined to apply to. We can say some rather definitive things about Zeus for instance. Observing the top of mount Olympus, understanding the origins of lighting... allows for well founded statements about claims made of the nature of his existence. There are multitudes of "Gods" out there, and to some more definite claims are made than others.

Certainly if a "God" is given omnipotence, or attributed nothing testable, nothing definitive can really be said.

A difference between Math and Physics is that Physics is constrained by reality.

And our understanding of "reality" is constrained by our observational capabilities.

[Jon Miller]

The general behaviour which I claim will be for a very broad range. The only area it would break down at is if you said that almost everything were single person responsible major advances or that almost nothing (like 1, GR) was a single person responsible major advance.

Now I agree, it is a continuim. But by just picking a reasonable number (10-1000) the behaviour will be what I claimed.

We will put limits on it, if you will.

JM

[Odin]

Originally posted by bipolarbear
Art Bell needs to see this.

Isn't that the crankpot whose BS was the inspiration for the movie The Day After Tomorrow?