Trump and his murder of Republican Christian extremists have declared war on science.
The US Department of Agriculture has banned scientists and other employees in its main research division from publicly sharing everything from the summaries of scientific papers to USDA-branded tweets as it starts to adjust to life under the Trump administration, BuzzFeed News has learned.
According to an email sent Monday morning and obtained by BuzzFeed News, the department told staff – including some 2,000 scientists – at the agency’s main in-house research arm, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), to stop communicating with the public about taxpayer-funded work.
And:
The Trump administration has instituted a media blackout at the Environmental Protection Agency and barred staff from awarding any new contracts or grants.
Emails sent to EPA staff since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday and reviewed by The Associated Press detailed the specific prohibitions banning press releases, blog updates or posts to the agency’s social media accounts.
Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.
Has this been validated? Buzzfeed doesn’t have a great track record of late…
Did BuzzFeed ever find those russian hookers that peed on Obama’s hotel room bed?
Trump lambasted CNN and Buzzfeed, CNN merely reported the document’s existence, not it’s contents. Buzzfeed published it in it’s entirety, and as I understand it they never claimed the events were substantiated.
Afterwards both the director of national intelligence and VP Biden confirmed the report itself was legit. However the contents of the report remains unproven. We know the identity of the english spy who dug it up, but he’s apparently in hiding:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38591382
It’s probably going to go down in history as one of those interesting things that will never be proven. If it’s false, it would be very hard to prove it. If it’s true, it would be very easy to prove it, but presumably the information would loose it’s blackmailing value if it were published.
Edited 2017-01-25 01:32 UTC
CNN is famous for creating fake news.
Examples:
http://www.anonews.co/cnn-green-screen/
Faking news from Crimea.
They also did this during the Lebanese civil war.
Here is a video compilation of lots of examples of CNN lying and decieving the public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLSwvZd17Qw
Dramatization is not the same as “fake news”. Whatever the actual definition of “fake news” is anyway; we seemed to have a perfectly good word already, which was “lies”.
Nononono, you mean to say “alternative truth”.
If using green screens and other fakery to build support for a political agenda isn’t fake news? Well we might as well just make Hollywood the ministry of truth then, as anything goes.
Strangely, I don’t see anyone railing against Fox for their use of “fake” 3D graphics.
Vanders,
A weatherman might use a green screen in the studio for dramatic effect, I’ve even seen them wear props sometimes to entertain the audience, but it obviously doesn’t mean the weather is fake. There’s a lot of politically motivated hyperbole going on, which isn’t unusual or surprising, but I am disappointed that the president has resorted to calling facts “fake news”.
It’s not fake news, it’s an alternative truth.
“fake news” is a key phrase.
So if you claim WTC7 fell from natural causes (fire etc) are you a “fake news” source?
Alternatively if you claim WTC7 fell due to carefully prepared demolition with explosives: is that “fake news“?
Having checked the evidence, I was obliged to review the trust I had felt about particular news sources (e.g. BBC for one).
It may also be that the new administration is “reviewing the trust” across a range of issues. It does not have to be a bad thing – does it?
This question can be answered by some basic engineering knowledge, and it can be discovered that the natural cause is very much plausible, while the other is not. (jet fuel burns at 1500 degree celsius while the load factor of steel at that point is zero, and let’s not talk about structural stress now)
So many things can be learned at life, but sometimes I feel like Ford Fairlane. That is: conversation with Zuzu Petals was like masturbating with a cheese grater: slightly amusing, but mostly painful.
According to you the steel right across the width of WTC7 reached melting point at just the right moment to descend together. Your view is not shared by any of the many demolition experts out there.
For comparison see the tower that collapsed in Tehran last week caused by fire:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0TEMoqPsyM
Now if you still don’t grasp the difference …
WHO TALKED ABOUT MELTING? Seriously, thermal expansion, structural strength, these words don’t ring a bell to you? Hot forging was known for thousands of years by people, yet even today it is difficult for some to grasp.
What should I grasp about the Tehran building? One was 17 storey, the other is 50. One was steel and concrete the other steel and glass. Just to mention two elementary differences.
And let’s not talk about that your like minded conspiracy theorists already asking the President Rouhani ” to thoroughly investigate the possible use of explosives in the Plasco Buildingรขโฌโขs shocking demise, and to act swiftly and decisively to preserve the physical evidence.”
See my quote about Zuzu Petals.
You are talking about WTC7 right? You know – the one that no aircraft crashed into.
So the fuel to do this – where was that supposed to come from?
The building in Tehran was made of CONCRETE. Concrete contains water. The water can cause the concrete to spall (explode) during a fire.
judgen,
Afaik none of those are greenscreens. Especially the disappearing nose like other distortions in video is due to compression error or maybe voodoo magic. I let the reader to choose.
feamatar,
I guess I don’t know, one of the reporters looked unnaturally lit but maybe there was unnatural lighting. I want to give judgen the benefit of doubt
Regardless, it doesn’t justify Trump’s tirades and cutting off the USDA and EPA from public contact raises huge ethical concerns.
They certainly bring their own lighting – the thing they tend to do is if they arrive late to some scene for something, they’ll stage it by putting out police tape and the like – misleading to a degree, definitely emotionally manipulative, but usually not technically un-factual in the reporting or editorial position (except for mistakes – CNN does have a decent track record on factual reporting, even if they’re coverage is often shallow and timid). It’s not necessarily “fake news” in the same way reports of Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring is. Yes, that was going around during the campaign, and people believed it.
In this case Trump’s directives were blunt and open to interpretation, and that allows the more sensationalist news and fake news sources to blow it up. Buzzfeed is developing an M O for a kind of run-with-it sensationalism, and it’s disgusting – and it’s counter productive. There are real problems with what Trump did and is doing – but I’m certain Buzzfeed’s style of coverage is not helping to get to the core of it.
Edited 2017-01-25 22:08 UTC
So, from what I understand they are banned from wasting taxpayer dollars posting on social media. That doesn’t mean you won’t find this information online, or even on social media but the government isn’t going to put it there anymore.
Where will you be able to find it… where it always has been on the .gov sites. So, for one the information will not become confused with hearsay… that is so often posted on social media anyway.
The EPA’s job is to protect the environment by regulating industry… not to post on social media to make itself popular, or to help cover up it’s failures.
Shut up Thom. There is literally nothing bad about this.
Edited 2017-01-25 01:30 UTC
cb88,
Seriously? Your entitled to your opinion, but there’s no reason to be a bully about it.
Ah so I’m the bully… not the editor running off his mouth in ignorance. The fact is the EPA does more harm than good these days… so any effort to limit the money spent there is a good thing.
I grew up in the 90’s and watched captain planet and read the weekly reader… I have no love for polluters. But, I also have no love for the EPA… because they suck at keeping the USA clean. Or have you not heard of all the recent and past toxic tragedys..
And honestly, I don’t mind an jab at the president… whoever is in office. What got me was the blatant disrespect for Christians “murder of Republican Christian extremists”… that was highly uncalled for and very disrespectful. You might find alot of Christians drive thier Ford excursions and diesel smog belting beaters… but frankly that’s a drop in the bucket relative to industrial pollution the government turns a blind eye to.
Edited 2017-01-25 03:45 UTC
You’re right. Crows and their relatives are highly intelligent birds. It was a low-blow to insult them by comparing them to Trump voters.
If you use the government to impose your religious beliefs on others, you are a religious extremist. Keep your fairy tale Christian or Muslim or whatever bullshit out of government.
Thom, you deserve respect for what you believe (or not believe, in this case); but please, respect other’s beliefs: Calling these beliefs “fairy tails” or “bullsh*t” turns you into another intolerant (closer to Trump, actually).
Edited 2017-01-25 13:17 UTC
Except no, not really. Religious fairy tales are no different than any other fairy tale – Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Power Rangers, Spongebob Squarepants, whatever – if we are free to call those bullshit and fairy tales, we can call some 1700 year old book fairy tales and bullshit.
Religious beliefs have no intrinsic value that elevates them above other fairy tales. Claiming that they do legitimises the sense of superiority religious people have used for millennia to oppress, murder, and slaughter those that do not believe in the same fairy tales they do.
Religion has no place in government. If your fairy tales help you or aid you or whatever – that’s great, that’s freedom, that’s amazing and precious. However, the second you try to impose them upon others – you are an extremist, and a clear an present danger to the progress of mankind. Evidence of this throughout history is legion – and Trump’s Christian extremist administration is just another chapter in a long history of a religious sense of superiority doing incredible amounts of harm.
Edited 2017-01-25 13:26 UTC
You don’t respect my religious views and I don’t respect your anti-religious views. Where does that leave two people like us in a society where we need to find a way to live together peaceably?
That is the dilemma.
I for one, would like to see government decentralized as much as possible and give people more choice about where to live and what type of government they want to live under. In the USA, for example, that would mean people like you could move to California or New York where your values are represented in government, and people like me could move to the south or midwest were my values are represented. This way we could live together peaceably and securely, with the federal government only providing the most important of services that both of us can agree on. The problem I find with this philosophy is that people on your side generally believe in a strong centralized government; one that shares your values and makes little consideration for the values of people like me.
In the end, the most practical solution may just be to battle it out politically and see who is left standing in the end.
Fuck that. If you believe in things without evidence, you’re a fool.
Apparently OSnews is turning into another YouTube.
Lies. I see no cat videos here.
That is because the transformation is still in progress.
So… not… yet
The only one who needs to shut up is you because you are totally clueless…
It costs a lot of money to post on social media? Really? LOL The memo that went out at the USDA was NOT just for social media posts.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-usda-idUSKBN1582OB
It’s not stopping peer reviewed papers but most of the public is NOT reading those are they? The USDA is already doing damage control and saying a new directive will go out.
You grew up in the 90’s? Wow! That explains your ignorance in regards to the EPA. I was born in 1969 the same year the EPA was founded and a river near Cleveland started on fire due to pollutants (no kidding). I remember what the air and water quality was like back than and the endless stories of landfills not secured. The city I grew up near was known for the brown tint to the sky! The EPA is hardly perfect but they are responsible for cleaning up a lot of the crap.
Yes, social media has a lot of bad information that circulates on it so you want to remove sources of good information posted to it? What kind of logic is that?
Should we mention telling the owner of the blog to shut up is just plain dumb to begin with?
Edited 2017-01-25 14:22 UTC
But should it really be the EPA’s problem that the public isn’t reading their stuff outside of social media? The last time I checked the EPA was not a PR firm.
Ummmmm All organizations put out information whether it’s news or education and outreach. Social media is one way to do that. Why does the NSA use social media? Why are the EPA and USDA being singled out? Again, it wasn’t only social media.
Citizens should be informed on what all parts of government are doing. We shouldn’t only have access to dense research or policy papers. Why is this even being argued? It’s common sense.
Edited 2017-01-25 17:15 UTC
I’m just saying, as long as the info is publicly available somewhere then what is the difference?
If someone isn’t willing to go to a .gov website because its too hard and out of the way then they really don’t much care about the information anyway, do they?
Im not sure any of this is about that anyway. When Obama was president, all of the republicans hated everything he did. Now that Trump is president all of the democrats are going to hate everything he does.
I guarantee, had republicans come up with obamacare, it would be awesome and nothing would be wrong with it at all.
And if it were democrats taking things off facebook, that too would be an awesome move and progressive thinking to democrats.
Its all a giant $!#fest of two-year-olds whining because the current president doesn’t have the correct party label.
But Republicans DID come up with ObamaCare. It was their garbage compromise.
So, the fossil fuel industry’s lackies in congress (the whole GOP and most Democrats) defund and undermine the EPA every chance they can, and then when the EPA is ineffective, it’s the EPA’s fault they can’t protect anything. Oh boy.
Who’s going to ban the Cheetoh Jesus from posting on social media?
I’d much rather my tax dollars not be wasted by the current president tweeting stupid crap like thanking his family for supporting him and pictures of his church attendance.
So by your logic, when you go home for the day from work and post a comment on OSNews, then whoever you work for is wasting money for you to do that?
He is no longer allowed to think about anything that isn’t work related anymore because that would be a waste of tax payer money?
Wrong. Nobody said anything about him not being “allowed” to think about things that aren’t work related.
You need to understand that the president is a representative of the American people, and by extension so is the @POTUS account. It is not Trump’s own personal account to spam whatever personal crap he wants. If he wants to ego-stroke himself and his family, and post his church pictures, he needs to be doing that during personal time using personal accounts.
Ah, so tweeting is a waste of taxpayers money. I’m looking forward to Trump stopping his own tweeting.
Not one to lead by example by example, is he.
Edited 2017-01-25 02:21 UTC
Trump pays for Trump’s account, just as he always has. He doesn’t extort the taxpayers to pay for it.
The three-letter agencies can’t say the same.
Trump does not pay for @POTUS.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/did-donald-trump-say-hed-refuse-to-take…
I guess I was a bit quick on my copy paste fingers. You were talking about twitter. Oh well, its there now..
Twitter is free. And Trump registered @POTUS with his Gmail address.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3HSX8kUoAEBpNS.jpg
AFAIK They have a gag order on publishing all their research publicly.
The EPA has an obligation to share data from research it sponsors, and to aid with education. Twitter is a perfectly valid avenue, simply by virtue of the fact that a ton of people participate on Twitter.
Just because you’re too farking cool to care about Twitter mean it’s a bad thing.
It isn’t just posting on Twitter, though. They were also ordered to stop sending messages via list servers, to answer questions from the press – basically, end all communication regarding their purpose as an organization.
So here is the question, why is the EPA doing ANY research much less the billions of dollars it is probably wasting on it.
Protecting the environment only requires some common sense and *research to develop guidelines*… research just for the sake of it is like taking the money you were told to spend on cleaning up stuff, and preventing messes and spending it on a muddying truck… lots of fun for the scientists but a waste of taxpayers dollars.
Well, the EPA has an organization with it, created by Congress, for the express purpose of doing research.
The EPA does more than mere protection – that’s just the name given to the organization when all of the various environmental agencies were consolidated into one executive agency.
The EPA has done research since its inception. The primary focus of the research is to determine what the most significant environmental concerns are, and how to mitigate them.
As for the money spent on research, it’s hard to find a breakdown of research grants versus grants for other purposes, but best I can tell, they spend about $700 Million on science and tech, and presumably the majority of their research is conducted under that budget category. That represents a bit under 10% of their budget.
But, yeah, who needs actual facts when you can imagine the ones you want to be angry about?
You must have missed where I mentioned that I have no problem with the EPA doing research for the express purpose of creating guidlines and regulations to improve the environment.
However, what they do is just waste a ton of money on propaganda research and fail at helping prevent huge natural disasters. When Apollo 1 caught on fire… NASA restructured and started practically from scratch with no tolerance for screw ups … the EPA needs the same kind of gutting and getting back the real buisiness of cleaning up the word today and not at some point in the future when they get enough funding or political aid.
We currently have socialized research … paied for by the taxpayers with virtually no oversight… What is coming to light is that in the end businesses that are driven and actually want to create competition will always provide better solutions that just throwing money at research.
I reckon I am a Christian Extremist as Thom put it… seeing as I believe in a young earth and all. But what does that have to do with my technical ability or merit as a positive part of the labor force?
Edited 2017-01-25 04:08 UTC
“Pesky scientific discoveries that I happen to disagree with” is not “propaganda”.
I’m pretty sure you’re just making stuff up and actually have no idea what the EPA actually does w/r to research.
From your comments it’s hard to tell if you’re doing some sarcastic performance art, where you impersonate an uneducated hick, or if your stupidity truly is sincere.
Yeah, come on. All these billions wasted by the EPA for actual scientific research could be used for “the wall” instead.
Alternatively they can be used to bail Trump out the next time one of his companies goes bankrupt.
Or for paying for his next inevitable divorce.
Edited 2017-01-25 06:40 UTC
making information easily available is NOT a waste of taxpayer money
and we wonder who supports Trump!
Morons are like cockroaches. For every one you see, there are thousands you don’t, but they’re there, just waiting to swarm on a pile of filth big enough. That pile was Trump this time.
Yeah, it is official and definitively has ramifications for science on USA. This will probably create a brain drain problem where scientists, faced with that horrible working condition of being gaged and losing federal funding will move to a country that has jobs for their research.
As far as this being relevant here, it is. I can’t believe how many ignorant people are posting here, since two out of the three major operating systems right now were born in USA, and computer programming being applied science, those commenters are literally imbeciles.
Private funded science is still alive and well in the USA and other countries so if the science is valuable it will find a market.
Only problem is that not all scientific areas get private funding easily. Examples would be basic and (especially) environmental research. Unfortunately the market is very bad at estimating the real value of things, especially science.
Just look at it like this: had humanities (philosophy, ethics, etc.) advanced as much as science in the last century, we would be living in a Star Trek-like utopia now, not in this mess. But according to the market and politics, humanities have no value, so we don’t.
Wasn’t the internet created with public funded science? Or linux? Both based on fundamental research.
I don’t think it would have the same quality and be world wide if it was invented (read: made and sold) with corporate money.
Their is a big problem with research. Because funding from governments is declining, researchers need extra funding from other resources. Some of these resources only want publishing of the results if it fits their business.
Fundamental research is very important. But of no interest for corporations.
I laugh when people say: research will be done by companies.
BS, public funded fundamental research (a specific field of research) is almost always funded by the government. Because it’s long running research, with high risk of not getting useful results. Very little companies are willing to fund that kind of research.
Something like the Internet or the iPhone would not have existed without that research.
Almost none of them do fundamental research. Whether it’s D-Wave’s quantum computing or IBM’s quantum imaging, they’re not doing fundamental quantum physics research, they’re just researching applications of publicly funded quantum physics research. Google can research AlphaGo and neural networks all they like, but they’re not contributing to fundamental neuroscience, which would likely provide much more insight into intelligence.
Private funded science are mostly merely engineering. Applications of things already discovered.
Scientific publishing is sorely lacking in null or negative results, which is just as valuable scientifically as positive results (when attempted in earnest, of course), but you would find no market for them. Markets aren’t magic.
lol
He’s running government like a business. People are getting what they voted for.
Yeah but it would be so much reassuring if he wasn’t such an utterly shit businessman.
Amen to that. I grew up outside of Atlantic City, NJ. Trump’s casinos repeatedly failed and every bankruptcy meant taxpayers bailed him out. Now that he’s left AC, the place is heading somewhere very dark.
Haha! Right.
Personally, I think business experience is a knock against candidates. Business is all about risk reduction and finding the greatest ROI for the business. With government it’s more about doing the greatest amount of good even if the ROI is nebulous.
I was talking with my uncle who works with lots of government contracts, and he was saying that they routinely use small businesses over larger corporation even though the small businesses are more expensive. That’s not good business, but it’s good government.
Flatland_Spider,
I’m very curious if you have evidence for that?
Everything I know and have experienced in my career is the exact opposite: Large corporations can charge a lot more than smaller ones. Smaller companies are the “bottom feeders” who take the work that larger companies (like IBM) don’t find profitable.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/small-businesses-lament-there-are-too-f…
http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/19/obama-its-inevitable-that-america…
https://www.youtube.com/embed/rjhx1-qU9jM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O7wVsvoM6tE&feature=youtu.be
Is there a gag order on that ? The evironmental president presided over bad drinking whater ?
In an earlier post here on OSNews it was observed that science is political. With all the unverifiable information derived from hypotheses originating in science, it’s literally fake news just as bad as CNN or posters on Facebook or the others.
If a scientific document appears in a peer-reviewed article in a science magazine or on a Government website it’s supposed to be hard verifiable science. If it appears in a sensationalized news media outlet, buyer beware. If it appears on social media, be prepared to check the revenue stream from the advertisers because they pay for it.
Ok, so that covers the political claim, what about religion? By sidestepping the peer-review process for vetting scientific claims and articles, scientists have been cultivating a cult following that seems to have infected many cultural circles. Yes I mean that as a cult, an unverified and often unverifiable religious belief.
Scientists are free to post what they want on social media on their own time and expect it to be protected by the freedom of speech and freedom of the exercise of religion set forth in the US Constitution and the amendments in the Bill of Rights. When they do so on the clock at a taxpayer-funded institution the authority of the employer comes into play, however, and they are not under the direct authority of Congress alone as the First Amendment would dictate. When they are researching for a living they should be doing exactly that. Researching. Not spreading scientific report summaries that haven’t been peer-reviewed yet.
After reading your post, it’s crystal clear to me that you would have burned Charles Darwin’s theories without a blink, ’cause they were rejected by his peers.
Yours “Science changes scientists want it or not” friend,
Franz
It’s not Darwin’s fault if said peers have only of scientist the name adhere to a blind dogma to justify their expertise.
Inquisition made no other way to impose their point of view. Actually Darwin have demonstrated his theories, his opponents haven’t proved him wrong.
Actually Darwin have *NOT* demonstrated his theories. That’s why they are “theories” because if they were demonstrated they would become *laws*.
Today, we use evolution *theory* as an *axiom*; and people tends to confound it with *laws*, which are not.
It can be proved evolution doesn’t exist, but so far all that we have *learnt over the time* says evolution *theory* seems to be right. And here’s where the SamuraiCrow (OP) got caught equaling *theory* (unproved) with *fake news*.
That’s not how that works. I can’t believe that old creationist meme still survives even in supposedly educated people today.
Did you know there is a Theory of Gravity? Germ Theory of Disease?
If Newton or Maxwell made their discoveries today, they would be called Theories, not Laws. Calling things Laws was just a convention from an antiquated era – not an actual scientific practice.
In many ways, theories are even more solid than laws. Newton’s Laws of Gravity only tells you how to predict planetary motion. Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity explains Newton’s Laws, explains it’s failures, and provides a framework in which previously unobserved behaviours may be predicted and reasoned about – like gravitational lensing and gravitational waves.
Right on. We collect data and when it corroborates what we expect we call it evidence. It needs only one well done experience to disprove what may be seen as a wonderful theory by the scientific community.
So far, no matter how many times the creationists have tried, and they did, they could not provide a single case to discredit Darwin’s evolution but, alas, let they try! And, please, forbid them to present their “theory” as scientific when so many evidences from well done experiences indicates they are wrong.
I believe that evolution exists but is not the “Origin of the Speicies” as Darwin proposed. He only proved that evolution exists and that’s it.
I think you misunderstand the phrase “origin of species”. He’s not talking about the origin of species as a concept (i.e., he’s not talking about the origins of life), but about the origins of individual species (i.e., how two groups of initially the same organism living under different conditions can cause both groups to diverge, eventually leading to the… Origin of a new species).
if you take Darwinian speciation to the extreme and extrapolate only a little then you’re back in the same chemical evolutionary soup that evolves “life itself” anyway
…they’re basically the same concept, just at difference levels of complexity (although numerically there are probably similar orders of magnitude in terms of the probabilities for a higher-order speciation jump relative to the jump from a cycling thermo-chemical system to being “self-replicating”, and that in turn to being encapsulated; simply with more constraints)
No, Thom is correct, those are two different topics – albeit related ones. The only direct connection is that without life coming to exist via SOME mechanism, evolution obviously couldn’t occur. But you could make the same link between planetary formation & evolution – and they’re obviously not the same processes.
OK, so what do you believe gave us so many species on our little blue dot?
I’m asking because nature had more than 2 billion years to work on it (if we believe on Earth as the place where life begin) or much more than that if DNA came from outer space. Now, we are really used to big numbers and, perhaps because of it, most of us fail to realize what it means on biological scale. It means a lot as bacterial studies (exchange of genetic material, differentiation) and multiple cellular organisms evolving on different isolated locations have shown (to the point that new species where the result of it).
Would you ask me what I find the most intriguing of all things on science I would, without doubt, pick the rise of DNA/RNA, all the rest on evolution is more like a consequence of the years passing and changes on environment giving new opportunities for groups of animals with “right” characteristics.
I say just the same, I can’t believe supposedly educated people do not use a dictionary to learn the differences between “theory” [1] and “law” [2]
[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/theory (first definition)
[2] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/law (third definition)
Now, you’re going to tell me that the Theory of Gravity is set in stone and it is in fact a law. Or that we incorrectly say that the 1st Law of Thermodynamic should be called “Theory”.
franzrogar,
I would to like show my appreciation and thanks, for not referencing a wikipedia link. Don’t get me wrong. Wikipedia is a nice jumping off point. However, most people these days. Stop their research at wikipedia, without following the sources, or verifying the wikipedia source(s).
kwan_e was replaying to your allegation that if a theory was proven it would be promoted to “law”.
So by your thinking line, the Kepler’s laws should be downgraded to what as we now know that no, the movement of planets is not really an ellipse with Sun at one of its focus and the other two are only (very) good approximations?
And what about the 2nd law of thermodynamics that, contrary to what many think, can and is violated on quantum scale? Should it also be downgraded?
He was not wrong and was pointing you the the right direction but if you refuse to learn, well, it is something up to you.
Since the beginning of last century things started to change on science, empiricism is not king anymore and modern theories surpass by leaps and bounds the old “laws” on explaining how things really work.
Law is just the old term for Theory in science. It was renamed to make people mindful of the scientific method where any old “law” can be discarded if new evidence is found that shows it is not entirely accurate.
It is the equivalent of Cops calling the people they catch for Suspects. I can’t believe we have dropped so low in the western world that we even need to debate this. What the hell happened to public schools?
What happened is that we allowed people with superficial information about things, people that ignores they ignore, that don’t know that they don’t know, that fail to scrutinize their beliefs to dictate what should be learned on schools. It should be only ridiculous but is actually tragic.
No, but you should read the dictionary I linked and you would have not wasted time writing something wrong:
Quote: “Law [3]: A statement of fact, deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present.”
So, The 2nd Law is “a statement of a fact [mathematical expression], deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present (human scale)”.
The same way, the THEORY of evolution is NOT a law because it’s not “a statement of a fact [animal neck grows over time], deduced from observation [fossil], to the effect that a particular natural o scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present [tree leaves on high, less on floor]”; because then all animals on the same era of the giraffe evolution should also have elongated necks.
Oh, I see, we have an adept of empiricism between us. So, it does not matter to you that the General Relativity, being the creation of a powerful human mind looking for symmetry and beauty on nature (on this case, conservation of physics equations under different conditions, i.e. under gravitational fields and accelerated reference frames) which is just a theory by your definition, provides us with a better prediction of what we observe, and even predicted phenomena we were not aware of, we must pay attention to “laws” because they speak the truth as they are the result of “direct” observation, on this case, the 3 laws of Kepler. It also does not matter that quantum physics provides us a better understanding of how the subatomic world really works, again, presenting us with phenomena totally unknown to us, what matters is the 2nd “law” of thermodynamics which is actually a kind of statistical “law” (by the way, it does not put the limits you assumed on it, the “human scale”, also, it got refined since it was first used). Really, 20th century did not catch up for you.
I will rephrase my last reply in a vulgar language so you can understand it:
Theory = Hypothesis
Law = Fact (if the conditions are met)
No, theory != hypothesis. That’s why they’re separate words.
http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/howscienceworks_19
No, law != fact. Get it through your head: the use of language changes over time. The only reason they’re continued to be called “Laws” is simply due to historical consistency. Like calling atoms atoms even though they are decidedly not indivisible.
That is called laziness. People got used to the term and instead of having to publish corrected books they decided to keep the term because people mostly no longer studies Greek.
It’s just the same as saying “We’re going to see stones” in a class of geology in the High School. Should we fire the teacher? YES.
Should we change the term “atom”? YES. Laziness is one of the worst enemies of Science.
The scientific community simply does not use Theory and Law in the way you want it.
GET OVER IT.
I’m part of the scientific community and everyone uses the way I use them, from the top Cum Laude Doctorates to the newbies.
That in your pseudo-scientific world they don’t know the difference is their ignorance. Oh, and by the way, the one who keeps pushing over and over and over again it’s you so GET OVER IT.
Go tell the National Academy of Sciences they are wrong.
As it stands, you out yourself to be either a liar, or an incompetent person in your “scientific community”.
Edited 2017-01-27 09:40 UTC
As it stands, you don’t know how to read. Full stop.
Your claim is that laws are stronger than theories. That theories become “laws” when “proven”. That theories are “unproven” laws. Learn to remember your own argument, dumdum.
Amen, I think we can now set it on stone. Also, I think we just wasted our time.
This is wrong. You’re interpreting the definition of theory incorrectly.
Darwin initially proposed a hypothesis, and after many years of scientific testing, we have amassed enough evidence to support the hypothesis. The hypothesis is now a theory since there is an overwhelming majority of results which support it.
That’s how science works. When something is a theory, it means we don’t have a better explanation for our observations, and it’s very unlikely there is another explanation.
Laws are social constructs. They aren’t real. Nothing happens if I go faster then the posted speed limit. If you’re thinking of the Laws of Physics, they’re misnamed. Like the American Buffalo isn’t a buffalo; it’s a bison. They’re theories, and students learn theorems in a physics class.
Exactly. Evolution could potentially be falsified (if not, then it wouldn’t be a valid theory), but it hasn’t been despite two and centuries of attempts to do so. And the notion that there’s some widespread conspiracy to cover up evidence falsifying evolution (a common claim made by the tinfoil hat crowd) is absurd: if someone actually did find legitimate scientific evidence falsifying evolution, they’d be shouting it from the rooftops – that’s the sort of thing that gets you a Nobel prize & your name in the history books.
I probably still would but not because of the content. The title is a misnomer. It should have been called “Evolution: Evidence for Genetic Theory That Fails to Prove the Origins of Anything”.
Looks like you have no experience with science.
Seriously? In what universe is directing staff “to stop communicating with the public about taxpayer-funded work” even REMOTELY equivalent to “spreading scientific report summaries that haven’t been peer-reviewed yet.”
As for the rest of that paragraph: if you’re going to try to justify governments limiting communication of scientific research because it’s politically inconvenient, then have the courage of your convictions to state that directly. Endlessly dancing around the point instead just makes it more conspicuous by its omission.
As for the practice itself? It was a terrible idea when the Harper Conservative government tried to pull the same thing in Canada a decade ago, because it’s directly at odds with the proper practice of science – and it’s a terrible idea now for the exact same reason:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/faq-the-issues-around-muzzling-go…
You should have chimed in earlier! Welcome to one more on the light side of the Force!
Title says it all.
Don’t you mean “bestester and bestester”?
1) first of all, science is a long time span game. Repeat it at least a 1000 times;
2) if it does not get it right at first it does not mean that it will not do with time (from all we have seen, it does);
3) real things are really complex, I mean, real things are really really complex and as so, continuous refinement is much more likely to happen, i.e., expect to see some deviations when comparing;
4) peer review failed and will fail again but see 1) and 2);
5) without advertising and dissemination how are ideas and results get the attention they need? In this case, more is better;
6) a half truth is a whole lie (or what they call “alternate truth” on USA these days).
So many things wrong from the start.
Actually it’s called “Fake News”. And in the case of CNN it was “the pot calling the kettle black” because they faked a bunch of news themselves.
Whatever name some may prefer, I would stick to the simpler and more apt “lie” word.
Do not forget just how long it took the medical community to realize that smoking tobacco was actually seriously bad for human health.
Check out the adverts from that era:
http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main/index.php
Then bear in mind that some of the strident claims of the current era will be debunked within a decade or so.
Like what? Um, statins and mercury are my guess. It would be interesting to hear other peoples candidates.
Edited 2017-01-25 12:36 UTC
Actually, it did not took that long, what happened was that the warnings from serious research was in conflict with what the tobacco industry wanted advertised and, in a USA “scientific” style, got discredited, just like what is happening nowadays.
Seriously, people really don’t want to learn from past mistakes, and by that I don’t mean “trust whatever a scientist has to say” but “exercise caution whenever things push us to”.
When facing things with dire possible consequences, like environmental and health risks, we should act instead of just ignore and pretend they are not possible or trustworthy, like many on current administration are doing.
https://www.facebook.com/JonathanPieReporter/
EDIT: Not linking to any specific video – they are all good
Edited 2017-01-25 12:52 UTC
Apparently, the USDA itself isn’t in full agreement with Thom:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-usda-idUSKBN1582OB
Sorry, just saw that someone else posted it too. Still valid to consider though.
Edited 2017-01-25 14:39 UTC
Sorry about the ‘naked’ news. Sending you a well ‘dressed’ directive, later. Do at your own peril. ๐
PI should be going back to being 3.0 soon, which will really help simplify the homework of our young people. 3.145926…? Seriously, who came up with a number like that? Sad, really.
I can’t tell if you intentionally left out a digit to better emulate a Trumpism, or if it was just an accident. ๐
Accident – oops!