Scientific Reproducibility - Peer Review

[dennislmay]

Scientific Reproducibility Is Hampered by a Lack of Specificity of the Material Resources

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130905085904.htm

"The stories we tell in scientific publications are not necessarily instructions for replication."

Peer review with little ability to replicate experiments - journals ignore the issue.

Dennis

[Mikee]

The "soft" scientists have problems too. Particularly in the United States it seems:

"Behavioral studies with a lead author in the United States showed an especially strong tendency to find what researchers had predicted before performing the research."

[Samson Corwell]

The "soft" scientists have problems too. Particularly in the United States it seems:

"Behavioral studies with a lead author in the United States showed an especially strong tendency to find what researchers had predicted before performing the research."

Isn't that self-refuting?

[Mikee]

Isn't that self-refuting?

I'm not sure what you mean.

Samson:

"It states that behavioral studies may be biased, but it itself is a behavioral study."

Okay, thanks. Except the two researchers were scientists (an epidemiologist and a evolutionary biologist) and they were comparing meta-studies to individual studies. A quality control test, so to speak. But I see your point.

[i'm putting this here so as not to bump Dennis]

[BaalChatzaf]

Soft science is no science. There are two kinds of science: physics and its closely related sciences, such as chemistry, molecular biology etc. And the rigorous descriptive sciences such as geology, oceanography, meteorology etc.

Mathematics is not an empirical science so it is out of the loop although is it indispensable tool in the real sciences.

Everything else is hot air or tiddly winks.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[caroljane]

Agree with Baal, Economics for example is not a science, nor is politics or anything else unprovable empirically, The hot air however, may produce something useful, since the Earth's helium resources are depleting alarmingly and real science has not figured out how to replenish them,

[BaalChatzaf]

The helium that is on earth is not disappearing, it is dispersing to places where it is difficult or impossible to recover. The only to destroy helium is to fuse it to become a heavier element.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Samson Corwell]

Isn't that self-refuting?

I'm not sure what you mean.

Is states that behavioral studies may be biased, but it itself is a behavioral study.

[dennislmay]

In the hard sciences - primarily engineering aspects of experiments done in support

of physics I am aware that there have been problems related to the materials involved

not being well characterized - thus making experimental replication difficult.

High power/current electrode design was a big subject about the time I got out of the

Air Force - it is a kind of black art involving some propriety processes and a long

learning curve to do it well.

Many experiments involving the crystal structure of metals can give results all over the

place if you don't have the exact same material from the same batch with the same

temperature history to deal with.

When it comes to replicating controversial experiments there is almost never a real

attempt to do exactly as described - thus the controversy is never actually resolved.

The failure mechanism in some high power experiments is never actually explained

because the materials involved may not have been well characterized before hand.

The problem is real but the solutions are not simple and not one size fits all.

Dennis

[caroljane]

What about the helium though? Is this not a real problem ?

[dennislmay]

Helium is a problem for a technological culture stranded on the Earth. Unleash the shackles of government preventing space industrialization and helium will never be a problem again.

Dennis

[caroljane]

Please elucidate, Dennis, For those of us stranded on Earth,what does the helium shortage mean?

[dennislmay]

If we remain stranded on Earth helium will get more expensive over time assuming it continues to have

economic uses. It is used in industrial processes [welding], as a coolant in scientific equipment used in

electronic testing/processing, for toy balloons, for blimps, for a mixing gas in aquatic systems and many

other uses I'm sure. The cost of helium is one of the reasons interest in heavy lift airships has gone

away again right after several major breakthroughs in design came about.

The cost will affect the cost of many items using helium during processing.

Dennis

[BaalChatzaf]

If we remain stranded on Earth helium will get more expensive over time assuming it continues to have

economic uses. It is used in industrial processes [welding], as a coolant in scientific equipment used in

electronic testing/processing, for toy balloons, for blimps, for a mixing gas in aquatic systems and many

other uses I'm sure. The cost of helium is one of the reasons interest in heavy lift airships has gone

away again right after several major breakthroughs in design came about.

The cost will affect the cost of many items using helium during processing.

Dennis

We will have to go off world to harvest helium (eventually). We can probably mine it on the Moon which is a short ride from Earth and/or potentially snare it from Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun with a sufficiently robust technology.

One thing is for sure: the only helium we can -make- is by exploding H-bombs. That is not very efficient.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

If we remain stranded on Earth helium will get more expensive over time assuming it continues to have

economic uses. It is used in industrial processes [welding], as a coolant in scientific equipment used in

electronic testing/processing, for toy balloons, for blimps, for a mixing gas in aquatic systems and many

other uses I'm sure. The cost of helium is one of the reasons interest in heavy lift airships has gone

away again right after several major breakthroughs in design came about.

The cost will affect the cost of many items using helium during processing.

Dennis

We will have to go off world to harvest helium (eventually). We can probably mine it on the Moon which is a short ride from Earth and/or potentially snare it from Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun with a sufficiently robust technology. Think of Ray Bradbury's story "The Golden Apples of the Sun".

One thing is for sure: the only helium we can -make- is by exploding H-bombs. That is not very efficient.

Ba'al Chatzaf