Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Editor of The Lancet: “Science has taken a turn towards darkness”

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.

Richard Horton
Editor-in-Chief
The Lancet

Here

Comments
News
By contrast, no one forces me to invest personally in Big Pharma or agribusiness. No one can take my property or my personal freedom if I don’t.
Interesting point. I agree with Seversky that the fight for good science not about a political platform or party. But at the same time, consumers can boycott various businesses and create pressure that way. It's almost impossible to boycott the government without going to jail. In many cases, the same amoral ideology is active in government and business - and in science.Silver Asiatic
May 31, 2015
May
05
May
31
31
2015
06:25 AM
6
06
25
AM
PDT
The rate of small-scale fraud in scientific publication, combined with the large-scale fraud of global warming, makes a strong case that the methodology has reached the natural limits of its usefulness.jstanley01
May 30, 2015
May
05
May
30
30
2015
06:50 PM
6
06
50
PM
PDT
If you look deeply you will find that all our off track problems are caused by the materialistic philosophy ..... If there are no right or wrong .... If there are no god , then every thing is permitted .. Remember Ivan Karamazov.......there are no shame , no truth , no honesty , no just , no good , no bad .......just nothing , they worship the false god of scientism and in the temple of scientism the guru is darwin then all sanity collapses ..period .nad med
May 30, 2015
May
05
May
30
30
2015
04:44 AM
4
04
44
AM
PDT
Seversky at 9: Government forces us to pay taxes, to fund science stuff, including stuff we consider misguided or contrary to the public interest, under threat. That is not some kind of libertarianism; it is a plain fact, accessible to anyone. By contrast, no one forces me to invest personally in Big Pharma or agribusiness. No one can take my property or my personal freedom if I don't. Far from who funds a study being irrelevant, it is crucial - IF one believes people should have any choices in life at all.News
May 30, 2015
May
05
May
30
30
2015
03:50 AM
3
03
50
AM
PDT
I think this is an excellent and apparently much-needed initiative. As was mentioned before, scientists are just human beings in white coats. However much we might hope otherwise, some of them are seduced by the Dark Side that offers recognition and money if they will just sacrifice foolish notions of integrity and standards. And why not? They see a world around them, as we all do, where people with far fewer scruples make huge sums in all fields, including journalism and religion. Here on UD, News is applauded for continually excoriating "government-funded" this and that, especially science. We hear rather less about the scientists who are bought and paid for by the likes of Big Pharma, agribusinesses, huge corporations with almost bottomless pockets. Are you saying that they can get away with most anything as long it's good ol' libertarian free enterprise? The point is that it's irrelevant whether it's government or private-sector funding behind it. Bad work can have bad consequences. Andrew Wakefield's now discredited study into the possibility if a link between autism and the MMR vaccine had a sample size of just 12 children. Yet that tiny group had a huge influence on the anti-vaccination movement. The sad thing is that a lot more than 12 children have fallen ill - and some even died - from preventable illnesses as an indirect consequence of this study. Whether the symposium that Horton wrote about will produce more concrete results than pious hopes and well -intentioned platitudes only time will tell. But I'm not holding my breath.Seversky
May 29, 2015
May
05
May
29
29
2015
09:05 PM
9
09
05
PM
PDT
Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables - Scott Aaronson - MIT associate Professor Excerpt: "Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!" http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec11.html Quantum Physics – (material reality does not exist until we look at it) – Dr. Quantum video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1ezNvpFcJU Quantum theory survives latest challenge - Dec 15, 2010 Excerpt: Even assuming that entangled photons could respond to one another instantly, the correlations between polarization states still violated Leggett’s inequality. The conclusion being that instantaneous communication is not enough to explain entanglement and realism must also be abandoned. This conclusion is now backed up by Sonja Franke-Arnold and collegues at the University of Glasgow and University of Strathclyde who have performed another experiment showing that entangled photons exhibit,, stronger correlations than allowed for particles with individually defined properties – even if they would be allowed to communicate constantly. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/dec/15/quantum-theory-survives-latest-challenge
Many times materialists try to write off quantum mechanics as only applying to the sub-atomic scale. That it applies to the large, 'macro', scale of the universe is established here:
Macrorealism Emerging from Quantum Physics - Brukner, Caslav; Kofler, Johannes American Physical Society, APS March Meeting, - March 5-9, 2007 Excerpt: for unrestricted measurement accuracy a violation of macrorealism (i.e. a violation of the Leggett-Garg inequalities) is possible for arbitrary large systems.,, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007APS..MARB33005B
Perhaps someone else knows of some other aspect of physics that has been confirmed to a greater level of certainty than 120 standard deviations, but I have not heard of anything greater. I am certainly amazed that such a magnitude (120 sigma) was achieved on a test that so directly implicates Theism in its conclusion as Leggett's Inequality does! Verse and Music:
Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together. Brooks & Dunn - Believe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5z-jjWyAJQ
bornagain77
May 29, 2015
May
05
May
29
29
2015
02:52 PM
2
02
52
PM
PDT
In the article the 5 sigma level of certainty in experimental physics is mentioned
In particle physics, significance is set at 5 sigma—a p value of 3 × 10–7 or 1 in 3·5 million (if the result is not true, this is the probability that the data would have been as extreme as they are). http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960696-1.pdf
5 sigma can also be stated 5 standard deviations:
Standard deviation Excerpt: In statistics, the standard deviation (SD) (represented by the Greek letter sigma, ?),, Particle physics uses a standard of "5 sigma" for the declaration of a discovery.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Particle_physics
In regards to ID, it was noted that a 500 flips of a fair coin, all landing heads, would be a 22 sigma event:
SSDD: a 22 sigma event is consistent with the physics of fair coins? - June 23, 2013 Excerpt: So 500 coins heads is (500-250)/11 = 22 standard deviations (22 sigma) from expectation! These numbers are so extreme, it’s probably inappropriate to even use the normal distribution’s approximation of the binomial distribution, and hence “22 sigma” just becomes a figure of speech in this extreme case… https://uncommondescent.com/mathematics/ssdd-a-22-sigma-event-is-consistent-with-the-physics-of-fair-coins/
I mention all this because, in regards to falsifying local realism, quantum non-locality was confirmed to 70 standard deviations in the following test:
Closing the last Bell-test loophole for photons - Jun 11, 2013 Excerpt:,,, requiring no assumptions or correction of count rates – that confirmed quantum entanglement to nearly 70 standard deviations.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-06-bell-test-loophole-photons.html
And Leggett's Inequality achieved a stunning 120 standard deviation:
Experimental non-classicality of an indivisible quantum system - Zeilinger 2011 Excerpt: Page 491: "This represents a violation of (Leggett's) inequality (3) by more than 120 standard deviations, demonstrating that no joint probability distribution is capable of describing our results." The violation also excludes any non-contextual hidden-variable model. The result does, however, agree well with quantum mechanical predictions, as we will show now.,,, https://vcq.quantum.at/fileadmin/Publications/Experimental%20non-classicality%20of%20an%20indivisible.pdf
Leggett's Inequality, the mathematics behind it, and the Theistic implications of it, are discussed beginning at the 24:15 minute mark of the following video:
Quantum Weirdness and God 8-9-2014 by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=N7HHz14tS1c#t=1449
Here is the article by Dr. Richard Conn Henry that Dr. Paul Giem discussed at the 32:28 minute mark of the preceding video
Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger by Richard Conn Henry - Physics Professor - John Hopkins University Excerpt: Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the "illusion" of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism (solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist). (Dr. Henry's referenced experiment and paper - “An experimental test of non-local realism” by S. Gröblacher et. al., Nature 446, 871, April 2007 - “To be or not to be local” by Alain Aspect, Nature 446, 866, April 2007 (Leggett's Inequality: Violated, as of 2011, to 120 standard deviations) http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/aspect.html
Here are a few more quotes and articles of related interest:
Quantum physics says goodbye to reality - Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell's inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell's inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics. Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization. They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640 “I’m going to talk about the Bell inequality, and more importantly a new inequality that you might not have heard of called the Leggett inequality, that was recently measured. It was actually formulated almost 30 years ago by Professor Leggett, who is a Nobel Prize winner, but it wasn’t tested until about a year and a half ago (in 2007), when an article appeared in Nature, that the measurement was made by this prominent quantum group in Vienna led by Anton Zeilinger, which they measured the Leggett inequality, which actually goes a step deeper than the Bell inequality and rules out any possible interpretation other than consciousness creates reality when the measurement is made.” – Bernard Haisch, Ph.D., Calphysics Institute, is an astrophysicist and author of over 130 scientific publications.
Preceding quote taken from this following video;
Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness - A New Measurement - Bernard Haisch, Ph.D (Shortened version of entire video with notes in description of video) http://vimeo.com/37517080
bornagain77
May 29, 2015
May
05
May
29
29
2015
02:50 PM
2
02
50
PM
PDT
PPolish ...... See what I mean ? Science gone crazy .....complete madness !!! Did you see the artist,s rendering with those tiny legs where no sane person can see any function for them AS legs ? Did you compute how many times they say "" such and such sheds light on evilution ""? .........did you notice that this sentence repeated zillions times proves that evilutionists ARE really in the dark ..........disgusting... Indeed .nad med
May 29, 2015
May
05
May
29
29
2015
12:32 PM
12
12
32
PM
PDT
Using computer modeling to put ankles and toes on snake ancestor: http://m.livescience.com/50902-snake-ancestor-had-ankles-toes.html "Computational Evolutionary Biology" the epitome of Cargo Cult Science? "Computational Evolutionary Biology" the epitome of GIGO?ppolish
May 29, 2015
May
05
May
29
29
2015
12:21 PM
12
12
21
PM
PDT
I don't think it affects the evolutionary sciences all that much because experimentation is so difficult in these sciences since we are dealing with history. Contrary to giving a boost to evolutionary sciences, it points out an even greater problem - the inability to test their "explanations/hypotheses" much of the time.tjguy
May 29, 2015
May
05
May
29
29
2015
12:19 PM
12
12
19
PM
PDT
It is good to see this openly discussed. It is important for a specific age/medical patient group: The people who outlive a typical human life span or beat cancer death diagnoses. Yer News hack knows many people who have beat the life expectancy tables by decades, also a retired cop whose cancer prognosis went backward (from stage 4 to stage 2*). The problem is, many treatment plans may or may not be well founded. A local physician who treats people in their nineties, says to me that all he is interested in is evidence-based medicine. That is why legitimacy in studies is so important. *All the retired cop wanted was for every last cancer cell to die before he did, so he told the doctors, go ahead and blast them good. Seems to have worked, so far. ;)News
May 29, 2015
May
05
May
29
29
2015
12:19 PM
12
12
19
PM
PDT
This is especially true in the health and medicine fields. The health industries and related government agencies and academic research organizations are cesspools of corruption and malfeasance. Organized crime comes to mind.Mapou
May 29, 2015
May
05
May
29
29
2015
10:45 AM
10
10
45
AM
PDT
Evilutionary stand is the cause ... If nothing worth nothing and if every thing is matter in movement including minds then who cares about truth if truth for them is the dance of quarktrons ?!?!nad med
May 29, 2015
May
05
May
29
29
2015
10:28 AM
10
10
28
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply