Dinosaurs: Made In China

Point being, the entire field of paleontology is filled with positivists like this, that will explain away raining frogs or flying whales

What have paleontologists got to do with "flying whales"?

Keep up Jimmy, flying dead whales and plagues of frogs are god trying to obliquely message us to the flatness of the earth, paleontologists, meteorologists and pretty much any one with an ology attached are instrument's of the illuminate and NASA who fight successfully to subvert this message, wake the fuck up!

Quote from: John Davis on February 21, 2020, 08:21:27 AM

Point being, the entire field of paleontology is filled with positivists like this, that will explain away raining frogs or flying whales

What have paleontologists got to do with "flying whales"?

They are the same brand of positivist that brings wild and unsubstantiated "guesses" to hold their worldview together. Keep up.

Point being, the entire field of paleontology is filled with positivists like this...

The real point is that it's clear you have no idea that most paleontologists study invertebrates, and a large portion of those specialize in fossil microorganisms. Only a relatively small fraction of of paleontologists are concerned with vertebrates, and only a small number of them work with dinosaur fossils.

Dinosaurs get a lot of publicity because people find them fascinating, which obviously irritates you no end, to the point that you post ridiculous comments about "the entire field of paleontology" that only highlight your ignorance of the subject. The fact is that most paleontologists do unglamorous, but often useful, detail work on "small critters". This work is useful because, along with other facets of geology, it allows analysis of local paleoenvironments, often in detail, which helps make informed decisions about economic aspects of mineral exploration projects. Exploration companies aren't going to keep a staff of scientists on the payroll for very long unless their work can be seen to have direct economic benefit to them greater than their cost, which means there must be more than your hypothesized "toothpicks and scotch tape" underpinning their theories.

... that will explain away raining frogs or flying whales with what seem like "perfectly reasonable explanations", until one looks at the whole.

I don't recall any paleontologists explaining flying whales or raining frogs. Do you have a citation that documents this, or is this yet another something you've dreamed up trying to salvage another failed argument?

This stuff is getting really funny!

Oh? They are too big to gain enough food to exist? We'll just fill their bones with air and give them feathers. Perfectly reasonable alone.

What's too big to get enough food to exist?

Are you now suggesting that you think birds don't exist? Or exist but none can fly? It's quite well established that birds have feathers and bones that are hollow for the same reason that aircraft use structural members that are as light as possible but still get the job done safely.

When taken as a whole, one sees the entire mess for what it is - cobbled together ad hoc explanations to support their childhood born delusions of dragons.

Are you so angry because scientists studying actual fossils dug out of the ground conclude that they aren't compatible with your childhood delusion of giant humanoids, which is based on... what evidence, exactly?

Nobody is claiming paleontologists explained away the whale situation. Read the fucking post. I'm not going to bother with anything else you said, because if you couldn't handle that I can only imagine what else you misconstrued due to ignorance or malcontent.

Nobody is claiming paleontologists explained away the whale situation. Read the [expletive deleted] post. I'm not going to bother with anything else you said, because if you couldn't handle that I can only imagine what else you misconstrued due to ignorance or malcontent.

Nice excuse for ducking the points I bring up. I can't say I blame you for evading them. Your lack of response is noted.

But do keep going about your baseless notions about "the entire field of paleontology", sideshows about flying whales (and frogs!) and how you think "positivists" explain them (without any examples), and the like. These are genuinely entertaining!

If you'd like examples pick up the works of Charles Fort.

Once you learn to read, I'm happy to take you and your points seriously.

<< Corrected below >>

That toy plastic replica of a "Dinosaur" skeleton "was most definitely made in China".
And possibly a few "flat Earthers" are no more genuine?

If you'd like examples pick up the works of Charles Fort.

Or, better yet, just thumb through one of these at the checkout stand...

And the silliness never ends on the FES! 

https://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk/blog/_archives/2018/07/19/how-much-food-did-sauropods-eat.html

An artificial fermentation system was used to simulate digestion of the plant leaves in the Sauropods’ enormous stomachs.  This permitted the research team to calculate the leaves’ nutritional value.  The results showed many of the plants had significantly higher energy and nutrient levels than previously believed.  The scientists concluded that these megaherbivores would have needed to consume much less plant material per day than previously thought.  Dinosaur numbers may not have been as constrained by the amount of plant food available.  Ecosystems could have potentially supported a much bigger dinosaur population density.  This might go some way to helping to explain the presence of lots of megaherbivores, including several different genera of Sauropod present in the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of the United States.

Lead author Dr Gill, explained:

“The climate was very different in the Mesozoic Era, when the huge Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus lived with possibly much higher carbon dioxide levels.  There has been the assumption that as plants grow faster and/or bigger under higher CO2 levels, their nutritional value decreases.  Our results show this isn’t the case for all plant species.”

Wow. They engineered a stomach that made their math work, then pretended that actually said something about dinosaur stomaches. Then it still didn't match, so they upped the CO2 levels.

Solid work there.

Wow. They engineered a stomach that made their math work, then pretended that actually said something about dinosaur stomaches. Then it still didn't match, so they upped the CO2 levels.

Do you know for sure that the CO₂ levels in the Mesozoic were the same that they are now? Citation?

At any rate, you've got it backwards. The experiment was to test the assumption that plants representative of the Mesozoic were low in nutritional value and, thus, inadequate to serve as a food source for large dinosaurs. The idea being challenged was not whether there were higher CO₂ levels, which was initially assumed, but whether or not accelerated plant growth due to a CO₂-rich environment is uniformly poor in quality that would yield insufficient metabolic energy after digestion. The reported result was that the assumption was not correct, and that it's at least physically possible for plants to supply energy in sufficient quantity after a physically-realizable digestion process to sustain the metabolism of very large herbivores without needing to consume excessive amounts.

Solid work there.

It's actually pretty interesting and may well be onto something significant. It's quite apparent that you either didn't read the linked article, or didn't grasp what it said if you did.

This is an example showing that palenotology isn't all dinosaurs all the time. How, for instance, do you think scientists could have an inkling about the types of plants that lived and thrived not only during the time of the dinosaurs, but through large parts of geologic history? Paleobotany (a branch of paleontology), of course!

Referring to your earlier post, I haven't had a chance to refresh my acquaintance with Mr. Fort's anecdotes again. I recall he published a book about one-off events and other rare phenomena that are interesting (if true as reported) but difficult to study (which makes them mysterious) because they were poorly documented and don't (or seldom) recur. I admit that it's been ages since I read anything by him - I think I was in Jr. High School at the time and had a friend who was interested in "woo", but that was more than 50 years ago. If I find some of his stuff that is readily available or among used books for sale, I may re-read some.
 

Why would I make some claim about them being the same; it should be assumed they are the same as now. Unless we evidence or show a claim otherwise.

It is not true at "any rate". It is true for very specific rates.

I did read the articles, and spent some time emailing those involved with the study. I'm sure it says nothing significant. I'm not sure most of these endeavors do anything except point out a mound of increasing flaws with the orthodox models.

Let us know what they said!

Why would I make some claim about them being the same; it should be assumed they are the same as now.

Here's the claim:

... it still didn't match, so they upped the CO2 levels.

Why make that claim? The obvious reason is that you though it would further your argument.

It has no merit, but since you apparently don't know much about the topic and seem to have misread the writeup, it might seem reasonable as an outright guess, and looked like an opportunity to make a snarky remark about the study. Even if you did know such a claim was incorrect, readers who are less familiar with the topic may not know that, so you figured it was worth a try. Hanlon's Razor says to assume the former, less dishonest, explanation for why you would say such a thing until convinced otherwise.

Unless we evidence or show a claim otherwise.

Assuming that the CO₂ levels were the same then as they are now is overly simplistic. Well-known and well-established (in the geologic community) research has found otherwise. Geologists are the intended audience for scientific papers about paleontology



http://www.biocab.org/carbon_dioxide_geological_timescale.html

It is not true at "any rate". It is true for very specific rates.

"At any rate" in the context used does not imply any specific rate of change. It means:

You use at any rate to indicate that what you have just said might be incorrect or unclear in some way, and that you are now being more precise.

This phrase is common enough that I presumed that a reasonably literate native English speaker would be familiar with it. I apologize if it confused you; that was not the intent.

I did read the articles, and spent some time emailing those involved with the study.

Out of curiosity, what did you ask? Please do let us know if they answer and what they say.

I'm sure it says nothing significant. I'm not sure most of these endeavors do anything except point out a mound of increasing flaws with the orthodox models.

Designing and running an experiment that can reveal shortcomings in hypotheses, and developing new models that are more complete by incorporating new data, is how science works. There is nothing untoward - or unexpected - here.

In this case, the study described tested the assumption that vegetation available to dinosaurs may not have been nutritious enough to sustain them as they are currently thought to have lived. If the results described are, in fact, correct, then it is evidence that the assumption was not correct and that particular concern can be discounted.

Since you lack familiarity with the basics of the topic under discussion, your being "sure it says nothing significant" is of no significance at all.

@ Alpha2Omega - you must know he's just trolling, right?

@ Alpha2Omega - you must know he's just trolling, right?

It's hard to tell with John. Much of the time he seems to really believe the things he says.

At any rate (there's that idiom again!), the problem is that even if he's just writing all this nonsense for his own amusement, some people who read it will actually believe it, often because they are looking for support of a notion that all scientists are stupid, evil, or both.

They'd have little trouble finding support for the fact scientists are evil, stupid, or both.

For example, take Einstein, science's poster boy. Not only was he caught faking an experiment to prove his point (gyromagnetic ratio experiment), he also went on to say later "So much the worse for the experiment, the theory is right" of his own work. He talks similarly of others in his field.
The "cosmological constant" was "not justified by our actual knowledge of gravitation." It was only there to make the equations fit the data.

Paul Dirac talks as of this wanton disregard for fact over the scientists whims as well: "it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment."

Peter Medawar, Nobel Laureate, says of scientific method - it is "simply the postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up and the public sees us.  The illusion is shattered if we ask what goes on behind the scenes."

Much of this has only worsened since WWII. In the aftermath, science was given a makeover of sorts. It was made into a brand; we see that today in shows like "The Big Bang Theory" and pop scientists like Neil D. Tyson. It undermines the entire endeavor of science, and affects how it is taught, practiced and how we as a public engage with science - and how it is funded. We have been engaged with what can only be described as a caricature of science. The real science, and those who practice it will stop at nothing to save their baby.

This is easy enough to see. Two studies that are oft cited around this is "Normal Misbehavior" by Raymond De Vries and "Scientists Behaving Badly" by Martinson. Historically its all over the place. Galileo's work was patently false as it predicted an incorrect number of tides a day; this did not stop him from pushing it as truth. Much of Newton's work has been said to be "Nothing short of deliberate fraud" by biographer Richard Westfall; "no one can manipulate the fudge factor quite so effectively as the master mathematician himself." Two other relevant studies at the top of my head are "Sci-Gen, Who’s Afraid Of Peer Review?" and the studies pushed by "Ionattis" that show that most peer reviewed studies are in fact incorrect.

NASA comes to mind as well. The pioneer probes were specifically meant to test Newton's law; it failed and all the worse for the experiment again.

Webb adjusted the fine structure constant to a very slightly different value than it is from today; this lead to a level of accuracy in his work that surpasses even that needed to discovery a new particle and gain a nobel prize. Unfortunately, the orthodoxy just called him insane and went on with their days.

What we are seeing is as Fort described it: "Attempted positivism: not to find out the new; not to add to what is called knowledge, but to systematize" and "We see conventionally… We see what it is “proper” that we should see." We even see it with Copernicus: "A Copernicus conceives of helio-centricity.  Continuity is against him. He is not permitted to break abruptly with the past.  He is permitted to publish his work, but only as an interesting hypothesis" and so we see: "The preposterous is always interpretable in terms of the “proper”, with which it just be continuous."

It matters not if any of this make a lick of actual sense; all that matters to the scientist is that it is continuous. And continuous to nonsense is more nonsense. Dragons be here.

There are plenty of other examples of scientists behaving under what can only be considered evil.  Instances of trying to step around the Nuremburg Codes, and in many cases succeeding. The scientist cares about his work first, his livelihood second, truth third, and morality last.

There are plenty of other examples of scientists behaving under what can only be considered evil.  Instances of trying to step around the Nuremburg Codes, and in many cases succeeding. The scientist cares about his work first, his livelihood second, truth third, and morality last.

And according to yourself, you are the most prolific scientist. 

Its' not a hard title to earn when the rest of the field is filled with war criminals.

I did not give myself this title; it was awarded to me by my esteemed colleagues. I imagine Ichi will be up for it this year given his new research.

There are plenty of other examples of scientists behaving under what can only be considered evil.  Instances of trying to step around the Nuremburg Codes, and in many cases succeeding. The scientist cares about his work first, his livelihood second, truth third, and morality last.

As someone who actually knows a lot of people in academia and proper scientists. You talk a lot of shit.

Scientists are people. Just like you, stop pretending that they are a subset of humans so that you can treat them with disdain. You have yet to show that you yourself are capable of actually reading a proper scientific publication, or even understand the processes that most publications go through.

Of course there are junk publication, and junk scientist. Just like you get junk, lawyers, architects, engineers, priests, people on this website and politicians. But to throw a huge portion of people in a giant junk box because they are not saying what you want them to say, says more about you than it does about them.

How about you go find someone that does real research, sit down and have a talk to them. Maybe discover that these people you want to burn at the stake are real humans.

Quote from: John Davis on February 25, 2020, 10:32:34 AM

There are plenty of other examples of scientists behaving under what can only be considered evil.  Instances of trying to step around the Nuremburg Codes, and in many cases succeeding. The scientist cares about his work first, his livelihood second, truth third, and morality last.

As someone who actually knows a lot of people in academia and proper scientists. You talk a lot of shit.

Scientists are people. Just like you, stop pretending that they are a subset of humans so that you can treat them with disdain. You have yet to show that you yourself are capable of actually reading a proper scientific publication, or even understand the processes that most publications go through.

Of course there are junk publication, and junk scientist. Just like you get junk, lawyers, architects, engineers, priests, people on this website and politicians. But to throw a huge portion of people in a giant junk box because they are not saying what you want them to say, says more about you than it does about them.

How about you go find someone that does real research, sit down and have a talk to them. Maybe discover that these people you want to burn at the stake are real humans.

Like it or not, like many other professions they are a subset of humans who are taught certain values and ideologies either explicitly or implicitly. To pretend that is not the case is a bit silly. Especially given the concerned effort to do this very thing since the backlash against science in the after math of Nuremburg.

Many of my friends are academics and they know the disdain I have for their profession. Some are open enough to admit it, like those in the above cited studies have. Others are not, but we agree to disagree.


Let's look at a few such notes from scientists:

“I think it’s really unfortunate that there’s so many rules about how we use radioactivity, how we use these animals, but there really aren’t many guidelines that train scientists on how to design experiments, how to keep notebooks. And it’s almost as if young scientists think that, ‘Oh, this is a pain, you know, let’s just do it and not think about it, and you’re just pestering me and you’re expecting too much.’ And it’s extremely frustrating as someone that’s running a lab.”

“There was one person that is a very famous scientist that I won’t name, who, when I was working in my post doc, had a ter . …—he has still has the reputation. If he liked you, if you were really good, he wrote you a lousy letter of recommendation so you would stay in his lab forever. If you got a good recommendation from this guy, you don’t want to hire this person, because he really wanted to get rid of them.”

“[N]ewcomers [can] … get on the wrong side of somebody like the chairperson, or head of the department with a lot of power and then there is trouble … we have to … navigate very carefully in order not to burn bridges, and derail long-term research projects … It is very complex.”

“When I left my post doc, I was told, “don’t compete with me, you won’t win.” And you know it was a given that you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t win … for that particular person I knew up front that he was not an easy person. I knew it … There was no question, this is mine, and it is like signing a paper, “this is mine. I’ll teach you what I know, but any particular intellectual property, don’t mess with me.”

“I’m always wary of submitting grants to study sections, because those people who sit on the study sections, it’s not unknown for them to take your ideas, kill your grant, and then take and do it. And I think all of us have either had that happen to them or know somebody who had that happen to them.”

“For example, a particular study that I’m involved in is about drugs to … offset the effect of radiation … [The] company that makes [the] drug … does not want a certain control group in the study and will not fund the study if that control group is there … . there’s nothing illegal about [this], and I know for a fact it happens all the time and that’s the way it goes. It’s because government can’t pony up enough money to do all the clinical research that needs to get done. In this … study … the individual who’s going to be principal investigator is an untenured assistant professor … And you know, screwing around with this drug company, negotiating the study, has cost her a lot of time, and she, it’s going to make it harder for her to get tenure. And the pressure is clearly on her to knuckle under. I mean, she could have started that study months ago if she’d just said, sure, I’ll do whatever you want, give me the money.”

“If you ask why are the rules being bent, it’s, in some cases, because too many rules have been implemented that obstruct you getting the necessary things done …. there get to be so many rules and you’re doing anything you can to dodge around those rules without totally stepping over the line … they implement more rules and then there’s more individuals that go, like, ‘This is a ridiculous rule, how do I get around that?’”

“For instance, you have the two grants. I have to buy two bottles of the same chemical because something bought by this NIH grant can’t be used for the project sponsored by other than NIH. So as many as you have grants, you have to have the same, yes, the same bottle of the same chemicals. And of course, you have to sign that ‘Yes, this came from the funds used for this project. That’s why I’m buying this.’ But of course I use it for something else.”

“One gray area that I am fascinated by … is culling data based on your ‘experience.’ … there was one real famous episode in our field … [where] it was clear that some of the results had just been thrown out … [When] queried [the researchers] … said, ‘Well we have been doing this for 20 years, we know when we’ve got a spurious result …’ [When that happens] … Do you go back and double check it or do you just throw it out … [and] do you tell everybody you threw it out? I wonder how much of that goes on?”

“I was defending my master’s thesis and I was doing a poster presentation, and the external examiner came and had a look at some of my graphs. And he said, ‘You know, well I’d be much more convinced by your data if you’d chopped off the last two data points …’ I was like, well, I wasn’t sure that you could do that kind of thing (laughter) … for me it’s being honest about what you found and … my work may be more convincing had I lopped off the last two data points, but those two data points may be more interesting than something that has happened before.”

“Okay, you got the expected results three times on week one on the same preparation, and then you say, oh, great. And you go to publish it and the reviewer comes back and says, ‘I want a clearer picture,’ and you go and you redo it—guess what, you can’t replicate your own results… . Do you go ahead and try to take that to a different journal … or do you stop the publication altogether because you can’t duplicate your own results? … Was it false? Well, no, it wasn’t false one week, but maybe I can’t replicate it myself… there are a lot of choices that are gray choices… They’re not really falsification.”


So, let's look at the data.

Obscuring the meaning of data, dropping data that doesn't fit what you want it to, using your gut feeling: 15%
Not keeping adequate records as required: 27%
Ignoring rules concerning biosafety, radioactive materials etc: 36%
Using funds improperly from another funding source: 51%
Providing inaccurate letters of recommendation: 20%
Cutting corners in a hurry to complete a project   23%
Using their position to exploit others: 46%
Changing the methodology and design and results of a study due to funding pressures: 15%
Withholding details or results: 11%
Stealing ideas: 45%


Suffice it to say, this is a real problem in academia - and the above academics agree enough to publish studies showing as much.

Like it or not, like many other professions they are a subset of humans who are taught certain values and ideologies either explicitly or implicitly. To pretend that is not the case is a bit silly. Especially given the concerned effort to do this very thing since the backlash against science in the after math of Nuremburg.

Many of my friends are academics and they know the disdain I have for their profession. Some are open enough to admit it, like those in the above cited studies have. Others are not, but we agree to disagree.


Let's look at a few such notes from scientists:

Suffice it to say, this is a real problem in academia - and the above academics agree enough to publish studies showing as much.

I am very much aware that there are issues in the field. Many of these issues are tied up to the fact that they have huge funding and time constraints. I have seen  how much work it takes for Some academics to get funding for studies. The people I know are almost all in one or other environmental field, in Africa, which seems to get very little funding. And often those studies dont produce the results they where hoping to get.
That is why there is a process of peer review (which is not done often enough)

All you proved above is that these are humans that have human problems. Tell me that you have never once cut a corner in your business to get shit done. Also, there are literally millions of scientist around the world, its not hard to find bad stories.

But good science requires repeating experiments over and over again by different teams around the world. Thats the benefit of having millions of scientists around the world.
Your claim that all scientist are junk requires all of them to be junk.
Science works, if you dont believe me, then where did
 - your computer
 - modern airliners
 - encryption (you know this one)
 - modern medicine
 - modern cars
 - cell phones
 - modern materials
 - ext, ext
come from?

Shit did not happen by mistake.

It is my job as an engineer to not 'cut corners.' When I'm asked to do such, I fight it, and if the fight is impossible I find new employment.

I have no doubt science "works" in some ways; namely it appears useful to engineering, as the examples you pointed out that are actually owing to science (encryption is largely a mathematical exercise) show. Saying it actually states the truth is another thing. I am reminded of what was said by Hartle; that many different laws can be fitted to a given set of data, and that we can never be sure that we have attained the correct set

Lindegren says of scientific method “[it] is permeated with opinions which pass for valid scientific inductions and with contradictions which are disregarded because it is too painful to face the prospect of the revisions of the theory which would be required to reconcile the contradictory observations with the dominant theory.”

When we look at such experts saying it does not work, and then I'm met with your apparent amazement in your television and microwave who am I to believe?

As Planck puts well: "Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'"

It is my job as an engineer to not 'cut corners.' When I'm asked to do such, I fight it, and if the fight is impossible I find new employment.

I have no doubt science "works" in some ways; namely it appears useful to engineering, as the examples you pointed out that are actually owing to science (encryption is largely a mathematical exercise) show. Saying it actually states the truth is another thing. I am reminded of what was said by Hartle; that many different laws can be fitted to a given set of data, and that we can never be sure that we have attained the correct set

Lindegren says of scientific method “[it] is permeated with opinions which pass for valid scientific inductions and with contradictions which are disregarded because it is too painful to face the prospect of the revisions of the theory which would be required to reconcile the contradictory observations with the dominant theory.”

When we look at such experts saying it does not work, and then I'm met with your apparent amazement in your television and microwave who am I to believe?

As Planck puts well: "Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'"

I find it strange that little you say ever has the slightest relevance to the shape of the Earth.

If the scientific establishment had an ounce of the resolve I do to do what is right when I'm an engineer, there wouldn't be these kinds of problems in the field. Unfortunately, that is not how scientists and academics are taught. Is it unreasonable for such a body of educated individuals that hold some of the largest centres of power to be held to a higher standard than a software engineer?

I don't think so, and I don't think people believe this to be the case either.

Quote from: John Davis on February 25, 2020, 01:05:13 PM

It is my job as an engineer to not 'cut corners.' When I'm asked to do such, I fight it, and if the fight is impossible I find new employment.

I have no doubt science "works" in some ways; namely it appears useful to engineering, as the examples you pointed out that are actually owing to science (encryption is largely a mathematical exercise) show. Saying it actually states the truth is another thing. I am reminded of what was said by Hartle; that many different laws can be fitted to a given set of data, and that we can never be sure that we have attained the correct set

Lindegren says of scientific method “[it] is permeated with opinions which pass for valid scientific inductions and with contradictions which are disregarded because it is too painful to face the prospect of the revisions of the theory which would be required to reconcile the contradictory observations with the dominant theory.”

When we look at such experts saying it does not work, and then I'm met with your apparent amazement in your television and microwave who am I to believe?

As Planck puts well: "Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'"

I find it strange that little you say ever has the slightest relevance to the shape of the Earth.

The moral nature of the round earth academic is very relevant when one is asking me to take them on their word, which they self admittedly say is not worth the ink it is printed with.

As is the nature of their method. And their fancy beliefs like dragons and magical dark energy don't help things either.