Science, Kai...Pure Science, and be Damned to He Who Says "Enough".

[Kai]

But none of the results are important, HFLS. I don't cure cancer or solve world hunger or send people to mars. I don't even do experiments. All I do is observe, characterize, and compare. Naturalist's work, something that gets sneered at by /real/ scientists.

[Bruno]

Personally, I'm more of a Disgruntled Technologist, but whatever.

[Jasper]

That comic makes me smile.

[Kai]

But none of the results are important, HFLS. I don't cure cancer or solve world hunger or send people to mars.

NEITHER DO THEY! All of their results are wank in those fields.

observe, characterize, and compare.

sounds pretty fucking science to me. I'm pretty sure that's how people worked out how the solar system worked, and how to observe planets you cannot even fucking see, by the wobble in another thing you cannot even see. So, going by those /real/ science types, Darwin was not a scientist? They can choke ona fucking dick.

observe, characterize, and comparings what set us up with one of the major science theory's ever, evomotherfuckinlution*. and that's not science enough for em?

Dicks.



*This was Darwin's original title 'The Voyage of The Beagle & Theory Of Evomotherfuckinlution Bitches' but the Holy Church took offence, and hell, you know the rest ...

Actually, Darwin did many experiments.

[Requia ☣]

Sometimes I lament for the truly mad scientist days of early psychology.

Milgram making people think they electrocuted someone to death.
Harlowe torturing baby monkeys.
Making babies associate fuzzy rabbits with distress and fear.

Lousy ethics board.   

The Milgram experiments are still allowed, though tricky, as most test subjects are students who have heard of it.

[Requia ☣]

The Harlowe experiments... why the fuck would you do that to monkeys?  You can already watch the same thing happen to kids in orphanages.

[Iason Ouabache]

But none of the results are important, HFLS. I don't cure cancer or solve world hunger or send people to mars. I don't even do experiments. All I do is observe, characterize, and compare. Naturalist's work, something that gets sneered at by /real/ scientists.

You have no way of knowing if the results are important until you are done.

[LMNO]

Couldn't you consider your entire work one big experiment using the scientific method?

Hypothesis:  All Caddisflies of X genus and species have Y characteristics.

Test: Observation.

Conclusion: This one doesn't

Revise Hypothesis.


Yeah?

[Kai]

Couldn't you consider your entire work one big experiment using the scientific method?

Hypothesis:  All Caddisflies of X genus and species have Y characteristics.

Test: Observation.

Conclusion: This one doesn't

Revise Hypothesis.


Yeah?

Strong inference involves manipulation and experiment though.

Four steps of strong inference:

1. Devising alternative hypotheses
2. Devising a crucial experiment.
3. Carrying out the experiment so to get a clean result.
4. Recycle, refine, rinse and repeat.

Since there is no experimentation in systematics I have to accept that systematics cannot utilize strong inference.

That is, until I devise some analogue. Maybe. If I even can.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

But none of the results are important, HFLS. I don't cure cancer or solve world hunger or send people to mars. I don't even do experiments. All I do is observe, characterize, and compare. Naturalist's work, something that gets sneered at by /real/ scientists.

You have no way of knowing if the results are important until you are done.

That reminds of Kevin Dunbar:

Dunbar knew that scientists often don't think the way the textbooks say they are supposed to. He suspected that all those philosophers of science — from Aristotle to Karl Popper — had missed something important about what goes on in the lab. (As Richard Feynman famously quipped, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.") So Dunbar decided to launch an "in vivo" investigation, attempting to learn from the messiness of real experiments.

...

Dunbar came away from his in vivo studies with an unsettling insight: Science is a deeply frustrating pursuit. Although the researchers were mostly using established techniques, more than 50 percent of their data was unexpected. (In some labs, the figure exceeded 75 percent.) "The scientists had these elaborate theories about what was supposed to happen," Dunbar says. "But the results kept contradicting their theories. It wasn't uncommon for someone to spend a month on a project and then just discard all their data because the data didn't make sense."

[LMNO]

Couldn't you consider your entire work one big experiment using the scientific method?

Hypothesis:  All Caddisflies of X genus and species have Y characteristics.

Test: Observation.

Conclusion: This one doesn't

Revise Hypothesis.


Yeah?

Strong inference involves manipulation and experiment though.

Four steps of strong inference:

1. Devising alternative hypotheses
2. Devising a crucial experiment.
3. Carrying out the experiment so to get a clean result.
4. Recycle, refine, rinse and repeat.

Since there is no experimentation in systematics I have to accept that systematics cannot utilize strong inference.

That is, until I devise some analogue. Maybe. If I even can.

Time to dust off the ol' Law of Fives...




Or, you could just conclude that Platt is full of shit, and carry on with your important scientific research.

[Kai]

Couldn't you consider your entire work one big experiment using the scientific method?

Hypothesis:  All Caddisflies of X genus and species have Y characteristics.

Test: Observation.

Conclusion: This one doesn't

Revise Hypothesis.


Yeah?

Strong inference involves manipulation and experiment though.

Four steps of strong inference:

1. Devising alternative hypotheses
2. Devising a crucial experiment.
3. Carrying out the experiment so to get a clean result.
4. Recycle, refine, rinse and repeat.

Since there is no experimentation in systematics I have to accept that systematics cannot utilize strong inference.

That is, until I devise some analogue. Maybe. If I even can.

Time to dust off the ol' Law of Fives...




Or, you could just conclude that Platt is full of shit, and carry on with your important scientific research.

If I concluded that Platt was full of shit (which he isn't, he has an important about getting to the root of problems rather than wandering around them in circles), then I would have to conclude that a certain professor of mine whom I hold in the highest regard, certainly higher than any other professor I have ever known, is also full of shit.

[Richter]

#5 is PROFIT or DESTROY THE FOOLS, IMHO

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I say you just do the observe/compare stuff during the day, and at night, break into the lab and create something Evil.

[Kai]

Or perhaps I need to re-examine my definition of experiment, because apparently an experiment need not be manipulative, it can be observational or logical.