#24744: coturnix — 05/12  at  12:21 PM
By the time I finish reading all of this I will be even older! Wow - it's huge! This was a big job, PZ. Thank you!

#24745: Ophelia Benson — 05/12  at  01:19 PM
I bet you're very sorry you asked for more submissions the other day. Just looking at all those links makes my arm hurt - the thought of posting them all makes me want to visit my local shrine of the Holy Taco With Image of St Anne in One Corner to give thanks that I didn't have to post them all.

#24774: Matt — 05/12  at  10:00 PM
Speaking of skepticism, I'm not particularly pleased with the Dean's World article on physics. Yes, he recognizes an obvious crackpot, but in the process dispenses some misinformation. He says we don't have a "working and complete" theory of gravity; Einstein's general relativity is certainly a working theory of gravity, and a very good one. "Complete" is a different issue, but when is a theory ever complete? (I say "never," unlike some of my string theorist colleagues.)

Then there's the history: he says of Einstein "Yeah I'm pretty sure he did [have a degree] but I'm also pretty sure he didn't have his PhD yet." This is somewhat true; Einstein had completed his diploma (roughly analogous to a Master's degree). He got his PhD around the time of his 3 landmark papers of 1905. I don't know the detailed chronology, but it's definitely a misrepresentation to suggest that he was not already involved in the physics establishment of his day.

Dean also says: "The guy who first proved mathematically that there should be such a thing as a black hole was still a student, and merely a mathematician and not one of those high-falutin' physicists." It's a little unclear what this means; Schwarzschild derived the black hole solution in GR while he was serving in the first World War, and his student days were far behind him. He didn't really believe they would physically exist, however. The theorems that showed that singularities happen pretty generally in general relativity came later, with the work of people like Penrose and Hawking.

#24776: Matt — 05/12  at  10:04 PM
By the way, sorry if this is an inappropriate place to point out (what I see as) flaws in a submission. I would have just commented on the article itself, but it seems to require signing up for an account on the Dean's World site and I would prefer not to.

#24779: Dean Esmay — 05/12  at  10:19 PM
Trudy Schuett responds to a piece that appeared in the last Skeptic's Circle that was full of straw men and name calling, she provides numerous references and citations to back up her point, and you go after her for responding in kind in her opening paragraphs?

I had sort of thought that protocol wasn't to editorialize about submissions, but, what the heck.

#24781: Dean Esmay — 05/12  at  10:27 PM
Matt: "working and complete" go together: the theory works very well for many things but there are still problems with it, as everyone including Einstein would admit.

I don't understand what your point is on Einstein's background was working at a patent office and was still working on his degree. My point on black holes was that it was--perhaps my recollection is wrong but I don't think so--was first proposed mathematically by an Indian mathematician. I'm forgetting the name, was it Ramanujan? Stephen Hawking talks about him in A Brief History Of Time, but I'll try to chase it down if you think it's important.

#24782: Dean Esmay — 05/12  at  10:33 PM
Oh and Matt, don't worry, I'm not offended that you responded or editorialized in the comments here. You don't have to sign up for a comment account if you don't want.

#24792: Matt — 05/12  at  11:27 PM
Dean: Glad you saw my comment here. I will be the first to admit that there are problems with any of our theories of physics; if there weren't, I wouldn't be a physicist. But on the other hand, general relativity seems to work in every domain in which it can be tested. There are some strange things that we see, like dark energy (or, more speculatively, the Pioneer anomalous acceleration) that hint that our understanding of gravity needs to be modified. But these modifications will almost certainly fit into the basic framework of relativity and quantum fields, perhaps with a cosmological constant, perhaps some effect of nonlinearities in GR that we don't understand yet, perhaps additional terms in the Einstein-Hilbert action. Cosmologists think of all sorts of possibilities, and I am not a cosmologist, so I'll leave it at that.

It worries me in general, though, to see the claim that "working and complete" go together. You seem like a sensible person, so I'm sure you mean the reasonable thing by this. But many laypeople tend to have unreasonable expectations, as you can witness here on PZ's blog all the time. Creationists tend to point to any minor unexplained detail as if it falsifies the whole framework of evolution. In a similar manner, crackpots tend to point to minor details we don't understand, or new phenomena we have discovered, and claim that they undermine the whole framework of relativity. In reality, relativity is so well-tested that there is no doubt that it is a correct theory, within some range of validity. It is true as well that Newtonian mechanics is still a correct theory, even though we now have an improved understanding of it as a particular limit of relativity. Someday we would hope to understand relativity as a particular limit of some more all-encompassing theory. This doesn't mean that relativity in itself doesn't work. In this sense I would say it is a working, if incomplete, theory.

I'm sorry if this seems pedantic. I don't really mean to take issue with what you say, I'm just cautious about how you are saying it, because I see in such choices of words the potential for a reader to be confused and think that our current theories are less well-established than they in fact are. It's less worrisome in physics than in biology, since there doesn't seem to be a large-scale public attack on modern physics, but I suppose I'm just a bit paranoid and I want to try to encourage writing that makes it clear the amazing extent of what we do know. Especially since this year, with the 100th anniversary of Einstein's miraculous year, there's an effort toward public education. People should realize that small discrepancies from Einstein's theory don't mean that it was wrong, just that it was incomplete, and that it will form an essential part of whatever new understanding we achieve.

In the same way, the public perception that Einstein was working outside the academic system of his time when he made his great discoveries troubles me a bit, because I see it as encouraging crackpots. Too often one hears arguments that, since Einstein was not a professor at the time, it must be that the greatest ideas come from outside academia. I've sometimes encountered a public perception of scientists as sternly keeping out new ideas to save the status quo, when this is in some sense the antithesis of how science works. (I won't deny that there is some inertia, and that some good ideas are overlooked, but generally the academic establishment works quite well.) It's very difficult for anyone outside the system to make a significant contribution because of the sheer volume of existing work that one should be aware of to pursue good research. Of course, it is possible, but it's not a course I would recommend to anyone.

Again, I'm sorry if I sound pedantic, and I apologize for the tone of my first comment. I'm just somewhat concerned about public perception of science, especially in light of all the idiotic controversy over teaching evolution recently. And I think one of the most important things that must be stressed is that science rigorously tests ideas and rejects those that don't work, but at the same time that flaws in an old idea don't mean that it doesn't work. One should never ask for a "complete" theory, even while striving for one, if that makes sense.

Less importantly: as for black holes, the earliest thing I know of along those lines goes all the way back to Laplace, in the context of Newtonian gravity. I'm unaware of any of Ramanujan's work having any bearing on the matter, but it's possible. The first concrete treatment of black holes as objects in Einstein's GR theory was by Schwarzschild, though.

#24794: Dean Esmay — 05/12  at  11:58 PM
Matt: All right, that's fair enough. I have no love for creationism (although to be honest, politically I think fighting them is often more counterproductive than helpful--but that's another argument entirely).

When you say this I think it comes to the crux of our "disagreement" (if it can really be called that):

In reality, relativity is so well-tested that there is no doubt that it is a correct theory, within some range of validity. It is true as well that Newtonian mechanics is still a correct theory, even though we now have an improved understanding of it as a particular limit of relativity.

Yes, yes, and yes to all of that in substance. I'd probably phrase it more in the negative: we know Newton was proven wrong by Einstein at certain levels, and Einstein brought us closer to completeness, and Einstein's still off somewhere at some point--if you figure it out and prove exactly how and where, and fix it, you'll win a well-deserved Nobel.

Regarding the contributions of non-academics to the sciences: well on this we may have to disagree somewhat. Yes, allowing outsiders to make contributions opens the door to crackpots, yet refusing to allow the academy door open at all to outsiders closes the doors to fresh air as well. Sometimes outsiders do make substantial contributions--sometimes as academics working in somewhat-related fields--mathematicians have often helped the other sciences, just for example--and sometimes people completely outside of it--amateur biologists and astronomers have made many worthwhile contributions for example. And sometimes the amateur becomes the academic as a result--Jane Goodall went from having no science degree at all to having a PhD because of her contributions (at least, that's the story as I've heard her tell it in interviews).

But I think if you read my piece closely, I make a point that should clear all that up: certainly if some outsider to the academy develops penetrating insights, surely he should be able to find some qualified scientist willing to at least look at what he has to say, examine it carefully, and say, "Hmm, you may have something here that bears further examination, this has some flaws but you know this is interesting." These things do happen, in all the sciences. The point is that if you've got something significant, and you're serious enough about it, you should be able to find someone who's qualified to go along with you.

But it's surely the case that at least 99 out of a hundred such offered contributions (and that may be overgenerous) are bogus.

#24803: PZ Myers — 05/13  at  05:39 AM
Mr Esmay seems dedicated to demonstrating that he is a crackpot here.

First he persists in calling the ANWR "dead", "barren", and "sterile" in another thread.

Here he is defending sweeping and absurd claims about feminists. (What is it with anti-feminists, anyway?)

And then this:

Newton was proven wrong by Einstein at certain levels

Along with the peculiar glee at the idea that people outside the academy have made signficant contributions to physics. I see that kind of nonsense all the time from people who don't understand how science works. Newton was not "proven wrong" at all--his observations and interpretations are still valid, and his insights were brilliant.

It's not my politics that make me view Esmay skeptically, but his credulity and counterfactual claims.

#24814: Alon Levy — 05/13  at  08:24 AM
Where did he disparage feminists?

#24826: — 05/13  at  09:49 AM
Dean is the kind of "Skeptic" that gives skeptics a bad name. He's credulous of pseudoscience and skeptical of proven science. Witness his belief that magical undetectable faries, not HIV, cause AIDS, that the magical faries are exacerbated by anti-AIDS drugs.

#24853: TallDave — 05/13  at  02:19 PM
Great post. Thanks for sharing your skepticism!

#24856: Richard B. — 05/13  at  03:04 PM
With all due respect, Professor Myers, while you're spot-on the evolution question your knowledge of politics and social science is dismal. There is a strong anti-scientific, anti-rationalist and anti-empirical sentiment in the modern women's movement. It was women's movement figures who gave us "woman's way of knowing", a non-rational approach to the world that disparages scientific realism as "linear thinking" cooked-up in the secret labs of the patriarchy to keep the sisters down, and such educational excesses as "how does the number make you feel?" as a substitute for learning the times tables.

Pseudo-science is strongly on display in the feminist treatment of the so-called wage gap, domestic violence statistics, health and longevity, and the laws and dynamics of family court. The body of pseudo-scientific garbage that's been piled up by the women's movement in these areas is staggering, and one could scarcely write a fair summary in 10,000 words.

I'd suggest you keep your snide remarks confined to areas where you have actual expertise, such as biology, and refrain from offering bold and aggressive assessments where you're ignorant. The battle against the creationists needs you to appear credible, and when you support the pseudo-scientists and anti-scientists of the feminist movement you decline in credibility to a place somewhere between Jonathan Witt and Bill Dembski.

"Restraint" is the watchword here.

#24858: PZ Myers — 05/13  at  03:22 PM
Give me stuff like ancient matriarchies, feminine intuition, and wiccan moon powers, and I'll agree with you: it's a load of hokum. There is a weird fringe to the feminist movement. But on issues like the very real wage gap and discrimination in the workplace (and everywhere) and spousal abuse, feminists are right on, and the mainstream of the movement is dealing with genuine issues.

I don't even have to be pro-feminist, however, to recognize the claim that every feminist lies is a false one. And the very idea that feminism is a harbor for crackpottery on the order of the Discovery Institute...please. That's total nonsense. What it represents is an all-too-typical attempt to discredit a serious situation.

#24860: Richard B. — 05/13  at  04:14 PM
The central question is this: is the typical, middle-class American white woman oppressed today? By any fair, impartial, and rigorous comparison of her condition that that of historical men and women and to contemporary men, she' not. Women have more wealth than men, longer lives, better health, more life choices, better education, less risk of violence crime, more power in the courts, more gender-oriented institutions, and more political influence.

It takes a very nimble mind with a selective focus on a few small things to reach any other conclusion.

One of these is obviously the so-called wage gap. On the surface this seems like a real issue: the average working woman makes less money than the average working man. Yet when we analyze this according to hours worked, years of experience, time off for family, workplace safety and (most important) occupational choice we find that American women are actually doing much better than they have any right to expect. If you choose nursing school over medical school, you can't really complain that you make less money than a brain surgeon, after all. But in spite of this gap, women as a group have more wealth than men, primarily because they live longer, thanks to the lower stress in their occupations, and end up inheriting the fruits of their higher-paid spouses. What an irony.

And don't even start on domestic violence where the fabrication of bogus claims the production of phony studies with inflated and deflated statistics has created an entire industry. You're out of your league here Myers, like Witt in discussions of science, and you'd best quit while you're ahead. Keep this up and I'll hit you over the head with citations that will make your eyes pop out.

But maybe you're just playing it safe. We all saw what happend to Larry Summers when he dared question the feminist orthodoxy and nobody wants that fate, certainly no academic.

#24864: PZ Myers — 05/13  at  05:34 PM
So your excuse is that women in the Middle Ages and in the third world were worse off than women today? That's pathetic. You admit that there is a gap, but you want to claim that women are "much better than they have any right to expect"? That's just screwy. Go ahead, hit me with your citations. I'm sure they're a load of biased BS.

Your last comment is absurd. Yeah, I'm just sucking up to all those womyn in power, who have so much say in my career, and I am living in terror of being made president of Harvard.

#24866: Richard B. — 05/13  at  06:02 PM
So your excuse is that women in the Middle Ages and in the third world were worse off than women today?

Nope, that's not my argument. I'm saying that middle-class American white women in the year 2005 are not an oppressed group. I simply wish to exclude lower-class, non-white, historical, and non-American data from the discussion because they bring too many variables into it. If we can't establish that the core group is oppressed, there is no basis for the current feminist program in America.

The mere existence of a gap isn't proof of discrimination, Myers, is it? There's a gap between men and women in terms of lifespan that's very easy to prove: (middle-class, American white) women live 5 to 7 years longer than (middle-class, American white) men.

Is that proof of discrimination, or an opportunity to tap-dance about choice?

#24872: — 05/13  at  07:20 PM
I don't get Richard B.'s Point. Are you trying to say since 70% of the women in the country are doing fine, we don't need people who keep up with feminist issues? What about the other 30% of women? You also said that women have more political influence? Where have I been? There are many tihings that I could question in what you said but, I don't have time.

#24875: Sylvia S Tognetti — 05/13  at  07:30 PM
I just posted something on "Being skeptical of climate skeptics" at http://www.postnormaltimes.net - obviously too late for submission but linked to this page. If I could find a trackback url I would post it here as a trackback...

#24882: Stuart Blackman — 05/14  at  04:13 AM
Glad that you decided to include my article on Othello, spite, and the end of the world - http://www.short-ton-unit.co.uk/articles/spite - on its merits. Regarding my Lomborg reference, is there anyone out there who actually thinks that the stone age did come to an end because we ran out of stones? Or that the Kyoto Protocol - or anything else, for that matter - will have any significant impact on a temperature rise of six degrees over the next century?

#24887: Alon Levy — 05/14  at  10:10 AM
Summers didn't "question feminist orthodoxy"; he made a patently false statement in his capacity as President of Harvard in order to rationalize his hiring way too few women.

Now, let's see how a middle-class American woman is oppressed. First, society still expects her to be a full-time mother. Second, many corporations visibly discriminate against women by paying a woman less than a man who does the same work and has equal experience; not all do, but enough do to make this a big problem. Third, glass ceilings still exist. Fourth, if you look inside the academia, you'll see that there is serious research that shows unambiguously that there is rampant gender discrimination; the study I can quote off-hand was done in the late 1980s and showed that professors rated a paper substantially higher when they thought it was written by a male than when they thought it was written by a female (incidentally, both male professors and female professors did that to similar degrees). Fifth, the old boy networks discriminate against women because they require connections dating back to eras when misogyny was far worse than it is today.

#24888: Alon Levy — 05/14  at  10:13 AM
Regarding my Lomborg reference, is there anyone out there who actually thinks that... the Kyoto Protocol - or anything else, for that matter - will have any significant impact on a temperature rise of six degrees over the next century?

Apart from most climatologists, nobody whose opinion matters.

#24891: Stuart Blackman — 05/14  at  10:37 AM
Alon,
To clarify, are you saying that "most climatologists" think that the Kyoto Protocol will have a significant impact on a temperature rise of six degrees over the next century? Or further protocols building on Kyoto? Or something else? I'm not suggesting Kyoto is pointless, just that it is likely to be pretty ineffectual in the face of worst-case warming scenarios. Hence my argument against basing our outlook on such scenarios.

#24895: Alon Levy — 05/14  at  11:16 AM
To clarify, are you saying that "most climatologists" think that the Kyoto Protocol will have a significant impact on a temperature rise of six degrees over the next century?

Yes, mostly. There will need to be further protocols if only because it extends only until 2012, but for the next seven years it is sufficient on its own, and while the opinion of climate scientists isn't as overwhelming as it is on the more basic issue of whether humans are causing global warming, it is still more pro-Kyoto than not.