Thank you for such a succinct and correct statement of the problem.

@mrillig

9 ай бұрын

Thanks very much; and thanks for all the examples!!

An important thing that this gets right is that a major source of bias is just narrative bias---bias towards promoting, remembering, and believing things because they make an interesting narrative---i.e., things that 'capture the imagination' as you say. I think a big myth is that biases in science and other forms scholarship as well as the media all come from ideology, or politics, or financial incentives. Of course those things play a part, but so many myths are just good stories and stick around for that reason.

@mrillig

9 ай бұрын

I agree!

Thank you for your youtube videos!

@mrillig

8 ай бұрын

thanks!

What persistent myths are there in your field of science? Let me know in the comments! :) Also see my substack newsletter on the same topic: matthiasrillig.substack.com/p/myths-and-misconceptions-in-science

Others: 9) That the wave-particle duality is in any way a paradox. That comes from believing in discrete particles existence, fathering than recognizing the standing wave structure that extends to infinity that is the reality. That has a centroid and distribution and resolves the apparent paradox from misunderstanding. These wavicles are the basis of things. 10) That then ties to a misunderstanding of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle created by quantum theorists who converted what Heisenberg said (about limiting our ability to know due to interaction with the fundamental particles), as versus their view that what he meant to say was about the fundamental nature of the things being observed. Wrong. 11) And this too ties to quantum theories wrongly evaluating particles locations (based on the false idea of discrete particles at a location) as a probability function. It s no such thing. The wavicle is in all of those locations simultaneously all of the time. 12) This also extends to the renormalization of energy bands to eliminate those states (the ground state in particular) that imply the potential that we might know that some particles properties (as aggregates) are known in paired properties - knowledge of which would violate their misunderstanding of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. 13) And this too leads to the invalid Copenhagen Convention. Etc…

@mrillig

9 ай бұрын

Thanks; can't really judge the physics examples, but it is interesting to read.

Som Persistent Myths: 1) SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted by aerosols (large droplets. --> No - it is airborne. 2) Immunity is persistent and durable against RNA viruses and so vaccination protection lasts and new vaccines are only needed for new variants. No. --> The body intentionally forgets immunity to RNA viruses quickly, recognizing how quickly hey change. Revaccination is needed three times a year with constantly updated vaccines for actual immunity. Correction. Though the principle is the same, there are exceptions both ways. Certain classes of virus are recognized by the body as viruses for which permanent immunity is not helpful. Accordingly, the body intentionally allows immunity to fade quickly. Revaccination must occur annually or more frequently. The simple idea that vaccination provides durable protection is often wrong. 3) "Low dose" radiation is harmless or even good for you, No --> This is based on a fallacies application of the null hypothesis based in "excess cancers" versus "excess dose" when in reality background dose is excluded, dose is inappropriately binned, and most importantly there is no reasonable way to distinguish the causes of particular cancers occurrence in individuals. As a result the correct reference frames are total dose and total cancers. Using that the null hypothesis is roundly rejected. Risk is linear down into the background noise. 4) Tied to this, early in radiation health physics, the slope of the cancer curves was arbitrarily adjusted down by a factor of two by including a Dose Reduction Equivalence Factor (DREF) that had zero basis in science, but was useful politically to reduce the apparent risk, allowing higher exposures, and making the apparent risk from fallout less. As time has passed the DREFs are continuously reduced as data shows that the real DREF is 1.0. 5) Dark matter. Dark matter was created as an idea to explain the velocity curves of Andromeda and the Milky Way. It never existed. It does not exist. 6) Dark matter artificially added with no science basis was inadequate, and so Dark Energy (equally lacking evidence or basis) was added to bend the rotational velocity curves to better match. It too does not exist. It is an epicycle of sorts arbitrarily added without basis. Together with Dark Matter this is Cold Dark Matter (CDM). It is utterly without basis covering up our ignorance and our unwillingness to truly attempt to understand the nature of the Universe and why galactic velocity curves deviate wildly from Keplerian expectations. 7) Continued persistence in believing that gravity is a force, despite over a century ago learning that gravity is non existent and that it is an artifact of the warping of space-time by matter. It is a persistent illusion. And at low densities conditions, the Universal Law of Gravitation can be derived directly from relativity. This does not then mean that gravity does exist. It only shows that the correlation we see is explained by the curvature of space-time. No force is involved. 8) That groundwater transport can be modeled using Kds. All eight requirements for Kds to be valid are violated in groundwater modeling. There is rough concordance with reality. But that does not justify the use of invalid models. 9 Further, it is routine to use discrete nodal models to do this modeling which entirely ignore the dominant structural elements present in the real world being simulated and thereby rendering the modeling entirely invalid. etc.... Science has a whole lot of bad thinking used as basis for all manner of things.

@mrillig

9 ай бұрын

Thank you. Thank goodness there is also some good thinking as well. But the list is impressive. I cannot judge all of them, but agree with the ones for which I have some background.

More: 15) That the Turing test is an adequate test of consciousness or intelligence. It is neither.

@mrillig

9 ай бұрын

Thanks!