[foobarian]

The depictions of "wrong physics" in the 3 Body Problem show kinda remind me of that. Any kind of thinking that had even a whiff of going against the party line would cause problems for the author. What a weird time.

I wonder if it's similar to how we look down on e.g. string theory, except I don't know if that's an apples to apples comparison given that we haven't seen any string theory apples yet :-)

[xyzelement]

FWIW in the current time we definitely encounter "wrong physics" in places where science and politics intersect.

EG - a scientist can easily get smacked down for being "a climate change denialist" or an "antivaxer" or a similar unpalatable label way before the merits of their effort are evaluated.

[wongarsu]

Also a "climate alarmist". There is a band of climate science you can freely publish without reputational damage, but don't go over or under it.

But that's probably nothing compared to the narrow band of tolerable science when it comes to questions of race or ethnicity. Anything that could be construed as people of some descent being "inferior" in any aspect is pretty risky to publish.

[brabel]

I've just watched a documentary on Netflix, "Three Identical Strangers" (SPOILER ALERT), about a 1960's to 1980's study about identical twins/triplets separated at birth and who grew up in intentionally distinct conditions (of the triplets, one grew up in a blue collar family, one in middle class, and one in a upper class family, all with an older sibling in the family as a sort of "control").

Apparently, the study ran for decades, but the results were never published... it's unclear why but it seems plausible to me that, aside from the ethical concerns, the study came to uncomfortable conclusions about the polemic "nature VS nurture" debate. Initially, they show how all siblings in the study, despite the intentionally very different environments, all came to like and do the exact same things... but later in the documentary, it also shows there were differences enough that the similarities were only superficial (in what I can't see as anything other than trying to appease the "nurture" crowd - as there seems to be no justification for that, as much as I tried to find it in what was shown).

The documentary also mentions the study may even actually have been about the influence of different parenting styles on the children, or even about mental illness, given many of the participants in the study had biological parents who may have been mentally ill (who the hell would give up their children if they didn't have some serious mental issues?!), which again seems to point at trying to divert from the study findings in my opinion.

The documentary is a little sensationalistic as it tries to outrage the viewers instead of trying to understand the actual circumstances of the study (siblings were always separated at birth at the time in most adoption agencies, apparently, that was not the fault of the study), which is a pity but understandable as that makes for better entertainment which is what Netflix really needs for its viewers to be happy, but still it's well worth a watch.

These articles talk a little bit about the controversies:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2208369-three-identical...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/11/nature-or-nu...

[Anotheroneagain]

>uncomfortable conclusions about the polemic "nature VS nurture" debate

These always seem to miss the effect of nutrition (and other) in the womb, which is massive. You need nonidentical twins as controls.

[EnigmaFlare]

There's a dirty fashion in climate science to include political activism or call to action in their papers. Especially if they've found something that shows good news about climate change. They qualify it with "... but we must all make an effort to reduce fossil fuel use".

I used to teach science and would tell students not to give life advice to the reader, because that's what we were supposed to teach them. But then all these climate change papers started doing just that. It's equivalent of ancient mathematicians saying "glory to the king" in their work and reveals that the authors are bound by a conflict of interest and can't be expected to do honest work.

I recently read one about childhood safety, and they said that following the government's safety rules was important, while also defining their own idea of what kinds of safety are valuable or harmful. If the government already knows better than you, why are you even researching this? It's obviously just some effort to pressure people into not making their own dangerous decisions. But again, that's not science, that's activism and non-objective.

[dmbche]

You got some of those edgy papers near? I keep hearing things like this, but at every turn the science being published is hot trash.

[EnigmaFlare]

You're probably not searching with a genuine effort to find the good ones.

There's the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. The authors found a politically incorrect result and tried to cover it up by inventing a new hypothesis (which they hadn't tested) after they'd collected their data.

I also read a fairly comprehensive secondary research paper trying to support the no-biological-differences theory and when it came to Ashkenazi Jews, they admitted the only plausible explanation was genetic superiority.

This is an area where the science all points in one direction but popular opinion is in the other direction. People don't look at the research. Probably because they don't want to understand, they just want to spread their political ideology. Nobody, as far as I know, has ever shown that no races are inferior.

[defrost]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption...

where the bulk of scientists agreed in various ways that the confounding problems made it exceedingly implausible that differences were either entirely genetically based or entirely environmentally based?

> This is an area where the science all points in one direction but popular opinion is in the other direction.

Or maybe an area where the science is inconclusive but personal opinion shades the reading and subsequent presentation?

[EnigmaFlare]

> exceedingly implausible that differences were [...] or entirely environmentally based

"entirely environmentally based" is the popular and un-scientific belief that I disagree with. So you agree with me?

[dmbche]

What's the conclusion everyone is missing?

I'm sure you know how unscientific IQ tests are, I'm surprised that's what you're bringing up here as being "good science" being shut down politically. Just trying to correlatw the two tests they used is absolutely subjective, I would take a step back and reexamine the parts of those studies that convinced you of whatever beliefs you have - it seems like a shoddy foundation.

[EnigmaFlare]

IQ test have genuine predictive power when applied to large groups. So no, they're not unscientific. In fact, the idea of IQ tests being useless or culturally biased is a now-outdated excuse that people used to use to justify the different results between ethic groups. It's now well accepted that different ethnic groups have different average IQs, and that IQ is a useful predictor of various life outcomes. What the politically-motivated researchers don't agree on is whether that's entirely environmental or partly genetic. Everyone agrees that it's at least partly environmental.

There's honestly no evidence for the environmental-only theory of intelligence. That's the popular politically correct belief but every study I've ever seen or heard of either fails to support it or supports the opposite.

[cedilla]

Verbally smacked down? Yes. But it's absurd to even compare this to the purges in China, Germany and Russia, were people were literally killed to death.

Also, while everyone has the right to argue anything, no one has the right to have the merits of their effort evaluated. When you go on and tell everyone here that ROT13 is as secure as RSA-2048, everyone will rightly laugh at you without considering your reasoning.

[bergen]

Not arguing with your point but “killed to death” sounds like an awesome metal band name

[Semaphor]

"Killed to Death" is an album by Murdered [0]

And there are 7 bands that had a song like that [1]

[0]: https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Murdered/Killed_to_Dea...

[1]: https://www.metal-archives.com/search?searchString=Killed+to...

[xhkkffbf]

And then there was that classic movie, "Murder By Death."

[bitwize]

"Kohga, the stupendous chief of the Yiga Clan, is gonna kill you all... to death!"

[Civitello]

heck there are probably humans who can sight read ROT13

[actionfromafar]

Funny I was thinking of how so many otherwise intelligent and educated people believe climate change is just a liberal hoax.

[blululu]

Ask any of your friends how much sea level will rise by 2050 and you will get some pretty wild answers.

It's a technical subject that does not immediately affect most of us on a day to day basis. It is not surprising that people would have poorly informed opinions on a topic they don’t really care about very much.

For what it’s worth, the average college educated liberal has a comparably abysmal understanding of climate change but their ideological judgement happens to be closer to reality on this one.

[eastbound]

I’m an ex-climate militant, so the fun part is that I have a very large corpus of knowledge on this topic. It’s an incredible experience to have read papers deeper than people who try to defend climate, and to know the weakness of each paper. Militants and even professionals really generally don’t know what they’re talking about, which is across the board in climate change. They are right, but often by mistake or pure luck, and I abhor that.

The sad part is any scientific topic that becomes politicized, becomes abyssal in terms of science. It is true of climate change, feminism before that, all the way back to 1500 and planets.

[PeterStuer]

I guess it got swept up in the reasonable skepticism that resulted from the exposed overt politisation of science that was already on the rise but went hokystick in 2020?

OTOH climate science as a field did already suffer from siege mentality before, whether justified or not, that did suppress rather than engage disallinged views.

(Fwiw my own not too informed view on the subject is we are heading for real disaster, we will and have postponed any real action until too late, but it will be the geo-engeneering grifters that will put the final nail in the coffin)

[kergonath]

> a scientist can easily get smacked down for being "a climate change denialist" or an "antivaxer" or a similar unpalatable label way before the merits of their effort are evaluated.

Interestingly, I have more examples of the opposite: scientists being branded “climate alarmists” (even as their models consistently under-estimate global warming) or totalitarian control freaks (or some enlightened nonsense about being mindless followers of prominent Jewish people, very subtle that one) for saying that vaccines save lives.

Also, this has absolutely nothing to do with people getting actually killed or deported for their work, even though some loud mouths have a persecution complex.

[bryanrasmussen]

>scientists being branded “climate alarmists” (even as their models consistently under-estimate global warming)

the attacks come from different directions - climate alarmists attack comes from without the scientific community (political, corporate)

climate denialist or antivaxer attacks generally come from within the scientific community, generally from experts in the field from which results are being denied.

The people who then want to support climate denialism can then say the scientists are non-scientific because they are taking sides, providing another useful tool of attack.

[devjab]

There are no scientific merits for being an antivaxer though. You can certainly have egotistical reasons but the herd immunity created through general vaccination isn’t just a theory anymore.

I’d be more curious as to how anti-vaccine agendas ever became a thing. With a lot of these things like climate change, there are clear economic forces which will pour “tobacco is healthy” amounts of money into pushing whatever makes them money. But then you have something like antivaxing which quite literally benefits nobody, because even the people who don’t want to put themselves at risk by getting vaccinated still sort of do so by collectively bringing back terrible diseases through their destruction of the herd immunity… but who could possibly gain anything from spreading this nonsense? “Yay, polio and the measles are back!!!”. Then you have the more harmless stuff like flat-earthers which also don’t really have any obvious driving force. But at least it’s harmless and sort of funny.

Anyway, I don’t think you really have a point with what you’re saying here. You can’t put anti-vaccinate “science” up for a discussion with real science because it’s utter nonsense. Similarly you can’t be a climate change denier, you’re free to argue about what causes the heat up, but you can’t deny that it’s been happening at a rapid pace since the Industrial Revolution, at least not with any pretence of doing science.

[Vecr]

It depends what you mean by "antivaxer", what is the subclinical myocarditis rate for ACAM1000 again? (Not ACAM2000, I'm very specifically talking about ACAM1000)

[Thorrez]

>There are no scientific merits for being an antivaxer though.

Read pages 4,5,6 of this vaccine insert[1]. It seemingly says a large percent of infants have adverse reactions to vaccines (up to 85% for some vaccines and symptoms). An anti-vaxxer can say "I won't give my kid a shot that has a chance of causing an adverse reaction."

[1] https://www.fda.gov/media/74035/download

[matheusmoreira]

> I’d be more curious as to how anti-vaccine agendas ever became a thing.

It's simple. They don't trust authorities on the subject. They don't trust authorities in general. They feel lied to and manipulated. In many ways, that's the fault of the authorities. They are prone to simplifying things in order to get their consent.

During the pandemic I witnessed government officials proclaiming that there were no risks associated with the vaccines. That's just false.

Everything is a risk/benefit calculation. There is no 0% and no 100%. Things are vastly more complex than they seem to be. Yet these authorities insist on simplifying things for the layman in order to manufacture consent for their public policies.

These people aren't stupid. They will find out. When they do, they will never listen to you again. They will actively resist you.

[jcranmer]

> I’d be more curious as to how anti-vaccine agendas ever became a thing. With a lot of these things like climate change, there are clear economic forces which will pour “tobacco is healthy” amounts of money into pushing whatever makes them money. But then you have something like antivaxing which quite literally benefits nobody, because even the people who don’t want to put themselves at risk by getting vaccinated still sort of do so by collectively bringing back terrible diseases through their destruction of the herd immunity… but who could possibly gain anything from spreading this nonsense? “Yay, polio and the measles are back!!!”. Then you have the more harmless stuff like flat-earthers which also don’t really have any obvious driving force. But at least it’s harmless and sort of funny.

The motivation for anti-vaccine--and flat-earthers, for what it's worth--is basically the same thing as Q-Anon. It's all primarily based on feeding on peoples' feeling of a conspiracy against them. It's not being pro-measles, it's thinking that the vaccine is a cover for the government trying to collect your DNA or euthanize your children or something, and there are all too many grifters who are willing to ride the wave of such thinking and flog their own products on top of that. Don't use the government's cure for COVID, buy my COVID cure for only $50! And I'm not the government or an evil megacorporation, so you know I'm trustworthy.

> But at least it’s harmless and sort of funny.

It's... not really harmless. There's a path from the flat earth stuff to the January 6 riot.

[m3047]

Imagine someone asks you: "If I flip a fair coin 99 times and it comes up heads each time, what are the odds it comes up tails on the 100th toss?"

Do you say 50%, or do you dismiss their prior? At what point do you dismiss their prior or them, entirely? You don't have to dispute the mathematics, you just have to get bored with the impracticality of the question: it will never happen. Maybe they should flip that allegedly fair coin until it comes up heads (or tails) 99 times in a row and get back to us.

It's reasonable to ask what confounding factors are at play. It's reasonable to have a null hypoothesis.

[seabass-labrax]

> I’d be more curious as to how anti-vaccine agendas ever became a thing.

I think the cause might have been the polar opposite of a conspiracy: isolated, but similar, examples of opportunistic fraud. Soon after COVID-19 vaccines were developed, I saw lots of advertisements for pseudo-scientific remedies for COVID-19 - these were clearly intended to make some profit out of the public's justified concerns about mRNA technology.

However, once mRNA vaccines proved themselves to be not especially different in efficacy or danger from traditional vaccines, it makes sense that the vendors of pseudo-scientific remedies would seek to maintain the anxiety about vaccines somehow. Hundreds of self-serving quacks trying to keep their customers (and compensate for the shrinking size of their market!) would naturally result in self-sustaining movements of anti-vaxers. The persistent conflation of COVID-19 conspiracy theorists with civil liberties campaigners in some parts of the media would have benefited the quacks further, by making anti-vaxing seem more of a legitimate social movement than it actually was.

[EnigmaFlare]

Ironically, this is how popular beliefs are supported, but I don't think anti-vax is one of them. The news tells people what they want to hear to keep them engaged to make money from advertising to them. That's why news organizations are split into partisan groups, they have to do that to serve their own markets. Anyone being neutral would alienate most of their audience by making them uncomfortable.

Remember when the correct belief about the origin of Covid was naturally occurring in an animal then spreading to people in a market? Turned out to be a big conspiracy and false. But the news kept telling people that because people had already formed political attachment to that belief.

[defrost]

> Turned out to be a big conspiracy and false.

Did it now?

Lableak truther loses $100,000 in his own debate https://www.protagonist-science.com/p/lableak-truther-loses-...

Even with money on the line and an arsenal of medical expertise and documents that's not a case that can be conclusively made.

[EnigmaFlare]

I agree it's not conclusive, so I shouldn't have said "false", but the FBI says it was most likely a lab leak [1].

Your article starts by calling it a "false myth" so they're clearly still in the political partisanship trap whatever the outcome of some bet. Anybody who's certain it was of natural origin is just being fooled by the news and some prominent scientists who made some intentionally misleading statements.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/28/politics/wray-fbi-covid-o...

[shiroiushi]

Maybe I'm a little behind on this stuff, but I thought that it hasn't been conclusively proven either way (lab leak or naturally occurring). The lab-leak hypothesis was shouted down in mainstream media early on because they didn't want to offend China, but I don't think it's ever been conclusively proven that it wasn't a lab leak. However, there hasn't been sufficient evidence to back that hypothesis either.

[Anotheroneagain]

FWIW in the current time we definitely encounter "wrong physics" in places where science and politics intersect.

We find them where they intersect with actual reality, because it's all just nonsense. Electrons and photons are not real. You won't ever get your quantum computer (at least not in that way), because the physics isn't real.

[cseleborg]

String theory has, however, been successfully applied to oranges. Here in Germany, these are now routinely sold in nets, made of some sort of string. QED

[perihelions]

That makes sense. After all, orange is a color: wrapping oranges with strings is a way of deriving the phenomenon of color confinement.

[boxed]

Struggle sessions were full of this stuff yea. Many people were killed during the Cultural Revolution for accepting reality.