"Are you a Quack?"
Very nice resource added, thanks Emma!
"Do you ever think about things you do think about?" - Henry Drummond to Matthew Harrison Brady in Inherit the Wind
Detecting BS / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page Detecting BS.
how is this possible that it is true ?
Complete BS
Well in the case of the doomsayers If they believe it it has to be true. Also to quote Garfield and Friends IF YOU SEE IT ON TELEVISION IT MUST BE TRUE.
Well in the case of the doomsayers If they believe it it has to be true. Also to quote Garfield and Friends IF YOU SEE IT ON TELEVISION IT MUST BE TRUE.
::headdesk::
You would have to say that, after I just watched three movies, Mimic, Godzilla and Alien.
Wie Sie säen, so sollst du ernten.
Sorry Undead i was more referring to the people who toot the horn of the History Channel's 2012 specials as the truth because i saw a few comments like that when i read bout the New Zeland Earthquake last night.
Oh, no worries, Mike!
I was adding to the sarcasm.
It's funny, but terrifying how people believe some of the stuff that they air on TV, I've seen people believing some very, very strange stuff, but at least the programs from History and NatGeo are somewhat convincing, the shows that I've seen people believing consists of monsters in waters and closets.
Wie Sie säen, so sollst du ernten.
Do you mean to say the monster in my closet isn't real? And here I've spent all these years being afraid of it.
Don't worry Alene i also had a fear the closet monster when i was little also had the reoccuring dream that i was being chased down the hallway by the closet monster.
Darn it! All right, I'll get out of your closet.
"Do you ever think about things you do think about?" - Henry Drummond to Matthew Harrison Brady in Inherit the Wind
Undeadnurse
I am convinced that most of the people who watch and believe the stuff on the History Channel don't understand that it's TELEVISION and see all these people who for the most part aren't scientists or even in the scientific realm and take their word that the Mayans or Nostradomis The Bible or whoever predicted something in Dec 2012 when there's no evidence of any of those people or things saying anything like that.
I am convinced that most of the people who watch and believe the stuff on the History Channel don't understand that it's TELEVISION and see all these people who for the most part aren't scientists or even in the scientific realm and take their word that the Mayans or Nostradomis The Bible or whoever predicted something in Dec 2012 when there's no evidence of any of those people or things saying anything like that.
Most certainly, the shows pertaining to 2012, Nostradamus, the Maya, the Bible, etc. are very convincing to people who really don't know any better because they don't know who is, and who isn't really part of the scientific community and when NatGeo and History air these shows as documentaries (they aren't), people instantly go into a panic because to them, these people who are claiming to be scientists are spewing drivel that, to them, at least, sounds real and convincing and because they do claim to be scientists, that is a figure that most people actually look up to simply because they're supposed to know what they're talking about.
Other programs, however, supporting the idea of science fiction type monsters in lakes and oceans, some people actually believe this stuff, too. I find that to be odd.
Wie Sie säen, so sollst du ernten.
Because they say so that's how it's possible.
Does anyone have ideas for an expansion of this page?
I keep thinking I ought to get a "Help! Help! There's nobody here to answer, what do I do?" guide put together, showing how to answer your own questions, or at least how to keep yourself busy and critically thinking before hitting the wall and absolutely having to rely on someone else to give you an answer.
It harkens back to the idea of the "teach a man to fish" proverb. I don't want to endlessly feed people fish, I want to kick back and watch their fishing boats from the seaside, only stepping in when they've tangled themselves up in the fishing net and fallen overboard, or something equally proverbial. You get the idea, I want people to be able to make the first steps into teaching themselves, rather than being fed the answers.
Only I can never word it in a way that doesn't involve an excessive amount of words (or as V would put it, 'verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose'). So any ideas?
or as V would put it
Perhaps my favorite character, and the movie is pretty good also.
So any ideas?
For starters, people need to understand that typing something into Google doesn't mean you will automatically be directed to reliable information. Learn to discern the quality of your sources. I don't think that most of the people who show up here with problems are able to do this. The Michael Shermer video goes into this briefly. Maybe we should link to it here on the board more often.
I wonder if there's a less sciencey version, if you know what I mean. Or perhaps I'm thinking of a 'how to research and evaluate something' kind of thing.
Yeah, I suppose "learn to discern the quality of your sources" is a subset of "how to research and evaluate something."
Maybe we do need some kind of primer on, if not the scientific method, a general set of simple guidelines for analyzing claims (i.e. teaching people to fish). I don't know how to do this without being "sciencey," though surely we can at least avoid a vichyssoise of verbiage that veers most verbose.
Less sciencey in the sense that you shouldn't need to know a whole lot of science to be able to see if something is credible, relevant or what have you. The idea that nobody needs to know the physics of an Earthquake to find faults with claims they are getting more frequent for example - finding an answer in that case simply involves finding an accurate source of records.
I can't even word it right now. If a claim is seen as 'something scientific', I'd imagine readers who don't know science get troubled over their lack of scientific knowledge in response to it, rather than their research skills - a response may simply arrive by a few minutes of reading what the consensus is, rather than an in depth understanding of the underlying physics.
That isn't to rule out science in anyway, just to highlight that you don't need to be knowledgeable in it to smell something fishy.
I think that those that knows science and physics enough actually laugh about the stupid claims.
The people afraid are either people that either never had science or physics, like kids or people that do not have the gene for understanding physics and science.
If there is science involved then I think we have to break it down in as simple parts as possible.
But we cannot avoid it.
No denying that in some cases plugging some numbers into an equation can show you just how inaccurate a claim is. The problem is that if someone doesn't know the law of gravitation or whatever, for example, there are still other methods that can be pursued that don't involve math or science and yet still get a sense of answer to the question, rather than just blurting out a cry for help.
Using that example, if you don't know the law of gravitation how can you research that law in order to plug in the numbers to debunk the claim? There ought to be another avenue to explore before resorting to the in depth stuff or before giving up entirely and posting about it.
Which brings to question the basic research of using our search box, as well as Google's.
You'll get no arguments from me about teaching people some interesting and useful science, but if there is an easier first step that people in a sense don't have to learn, all the better. It's a guide to spotting bogus claims in the first place as much as it is methods for dealing with them without the aid of others.
Using that example, if you don't know the law of gravitation how can you research that law in order to plug in the numbers to debunk the claim? There ought to be another avenue to explore before resorting to the in depth stuff or before giving up entirely and posting about it.
I doubt that there is a shortcut for this one.
Only using logic deduction would put you into the same realms of the pseudo science.
You pretty soon get into a logic: I fit in my pyjama, my pyjama fits into my suitcase, so I fit in my suitcase.
I've got to say you've lost me there obae.
Take the claim that Elenin causes Earthquakes. There ought to be a way to research this claim without resorting to calculating it's affect at any given point using equations you don't know about. You ought to be able to get the right information into Google in the first place, and then get the right information from it, whether it leads down the route of mathematics or not.
Ultimately, I want to give people an idea of what to do were 2012hoax to not be here, were none of us to be around to answer questions. Is it possible to give people an idea of how to find accurate and reliable information to answer a claim without anybody helping out?
It doesn't rule out science, it doesn't rule out asking questions at some point, and there's certainly an argument to be had for garbage in garbage out and getting nowhere - but that's why we ought to teach people how to spot garbage for themselves, as a first step at least.
Take the claim that Elenin causes Earthquakes. There ought to be a way to research this claim without resorting to calculating it's affect at any given point using equations you don't know about.
How? Since any mass will attract any other mass.
The very fact that you use the word "attract", people start to have wild speculation since they have no sense of scale without giving some formulae so they can calculate themselves.
One could use an analogy, that Elenin attraction on you is the same as a human of 80 kg standing 191 km away from you. But how did we get that number?
Right now I am peer reviewing this DeeDee paper about alignment and sunspots. And it seems that Jupiter has a 31.81 times stronger pull on the sun than Mercury, 7.53 times stronger than Venus and 11.73 times stronger than Earths pull on the sun. But again how did I get these numbers? Even though these numbers are big, they are still 41,759,200,000 times lower than sun's own gravitational pull at that same surface. We really need some way for people to check the numbers to see for themselves that the paper is following a false lead.
Maybe we could split the page into 2 parts. The simple one using the numbers I just gave and the second part that explains in detail how we got those numbers.
Edit: I put the wrong number as and should be: 41,759,200,000
But again how did I get these numbers?
That's sort of the point, but the question is not only 'how do I get these numbers', but 'how do I find out why I need these numbers', or even 'do I need these numbers in the first place?'
Again, no arguments in telling people how to use the equations or what they mean in everyday life1, but you've got to get them there in the first place. Is there a way to teach people how to find information, including how to calculate this stuff, without being there and pointing it out yourself?
If you made a page here for example going through simple or commonly used equations, how do you get someone to read it if you weren't here to point them in the right direction? Can people be taught to find the right type of information on their own, whatever their level of knowledge? Can people even be taught how to identify something as nonsense in the first place before trying to tackle it on their own?
Footnotes
1. I'm even reading 'The Physics of Superheroes' right now, explaining where comic books go right and wrong with regards to physics, and explaining the correct physics in terms of how Superman acts and so on
But how do they get to those specific step by steps if they have no knowledge that they exist in the first place?
If someone has no help from us, if we don't exist, if the forums aren't accessible, how do they ever get from a state of 'Oh blimey this claim seems awfully real' to 'actually, after some research I'm more confident it's baloney' - even if they couldn't explain exactly why, even if their research never took them towards math or towards peer-reviewed papers, they are still in a position of knowing what they initially read was rubbish.
Recognizing crap is the first step. How it can be tackled is an advanced step. That makes sense, right?
We through whatever means read claims and spot when something is fishy. Either it's because in the back of our minds we know enough physics to cast doubt on it, or we've recently read reputable news contrary to the claim, or we just get the impression of someone's character that something just doesn't sit right - we can pretty quickly find a bogus claim when we see one, else we know where best to go in search of further information.
Other people aren't like us, either they don't have an interest or grasp of physics, they aren't aware of various news outlets, or they get drawn into something because it sounds plausible to them, it looks official or whatever - these people can't easily identify what a bogus claim is in the first place, let alone what to do in order to debunk it.
I think that something can be done to change that. I think we can give people an idea of what to do when faced with an unknown, of where to look for information and importantly how to look at it before even attempting to debunk it. Essentially how to fend for themselves, teaching them how to think critically, without really requiring them to be knowledgeable.
Look around the forums and you'll see posts from people who do know something is nonsense, but their initial reaction is to come here and find out why. Surely, somehow, it must be possible for them to find out why without necessarily coming here, or without starting here at the very least.
Edit: What great timing, a perfect example has just been posted - that's someone who has attempted research, who has thought about it before coming here. How can we improve on that so that this person knows more, or knows what he knows with more confidence, without ever coming here? Can we guide him to be a position to answer his own question of 'Any legitimacy to this?', for example?
But as this and past posts have shown, trying to word that in a way that doesn't baffle people is my stumbling block at the minute.
Nice little article here - maybe an addition to the "Detecting BS" page?
Hear the music before the song is over…
Unfold
Forbes Article - 10 Questions to Distinguish Real from Fake Science by 
Artelis, 09 Nov 2012 22:21
TEDtalks have just uploaded a video on the subject, though it's a specific one involving sample cases rather than a general 'how-to' guide, but it does show some neat tactics that anyone with determination and access to the Internet can do.
Worth a watch for the interested, but perhaps not for first time readers.
/forum/t-185016/detecting-bs#post-