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The problem of 'fake science' in layman literature.

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  • The problem of 'fake science' in layman literature.

    There are hundreds if not thousands of science editors in magazines and news papers, some good, some OK, some bad. Some often use misleading and sensationalist titles and language in their articles even though they usually cite or refer to the scientific literature. One clue is the title is in the form of a provocative question. Other hints are words and phrases like it: "force scientists to rethink theories . . .", "New discovery upends evolution,"

    An interesting odd articles in several of the questionable sources:

    Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1284659/NASA-news-parallel-universe-particles-neutrino-Antarctica-ANITA-study



    NASA news: High-energy particles in Antarctica could prove parallel universes
    SCIENTISTS studying a "fountain of high-energy particles" using NASA instruments in Antarctica may have discovered evidence of a universe parallel to our own.
    By SEBASTIAN KETTLEY

    © Copyright Original Source



    It is odd, because I could not find any NASA news release that made this clam. Yes there is a ANITA study in Antarctica to study basic particles like Neutrinos.

    I did find this:
    Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bizarre-particles-keep-flying-out-of-antarcticas-ice-and-they-might-shatter-modern-physics/



    There’s something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it.

    Physicists don’t know what it is exactly. But they do know it’s some sort of cosmic ray—a high-energy particle that’s blasted its way through space, into the Earth, and back out again. But the particles physicists know about—the collection of particles that make up what scientists call the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics—shouldn’t be able to do that. Sure, there are low-energy neutrinos that can pierce through miles upon miles of rock unaffected. But high-energy neutrinos, as well as other high-energy particles, have “large cross-sections.” That means that they’ll almost always crash into something soon after zipping into the Earth and never make it out the other side.

    And yet, since March 2016, researchers have been puzzling over two events in Antarctica where cosmic rays did burst out from the Earth, and were detected by NASA’s Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA)—a balloon-borne antenna drifting over the southern continent.

    ANITA is designed to hunt cosmic rays from outer space, so the high-energy neutrino community was buzzing with excitement when the instrument detected particles that seemed to be blasting up from Earth instead of zooming down from space. Because cosmic rays shouldn’t do that, scientists began to wonder whether these mysterious beams are made of particles never seen before.

    Since then, physicists have proposed all sorts of explanations for these “upward going” cosmic rays, from sterile neutrinos (neutrinos that rarely ever bang into matter) to “atypical dark matter distributions inside the Earth,” referencing the mysterious form of matter that doesn’t interact with light [The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]

    All the explanations were intriguing, and suggested that ANITA might have detected a particle not accounted for in the Standard Model. But none of the explanations demonstrated conclusively that something more ordinary couldn’t have caused the signal at ANITA.

    A new paper uploaded today (Sept. 26) to the preprint server arXiv changes that. In it, a team of astrophysicists from Penn State University showed that there have been more upward-going high-energy particles than those detected during the two ANITA events. Three times, they wrote, IceCube (another, larger neutrino observatory in Antarctica) detected similar particles, though no one had yet connected those events to the mystery at ANITA. And, combining the IceCube and ANITA data sets, the Penn State researchers calculated that, whatever particle is bursting up from the Earth, it has much less than a 1-in-3.5 million chance of being part of the Standard Model. (In technical, statistical terms, their results had confidences of 5.8 and 7.0 sigma, depending on which of their calculations you’re looking at.)

    © Copyright Original Source



    Even some of this language is odd, but it does not make the unusual claims the less questionable articles make.

    My guess it has something to do with the magnetic field of the earth. I would like some in put on anyone that may have some knowledge or sources to contribute.
    Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
    Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
    But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

    go with the flow the river knows . . .

    Frank

    I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

  • #2
    Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
    There are hundreds if not thousands of science editors in magazines and news papers, some good, some OK, some bad. Some often use misleading and sensationalist titles and language in their articles even though they usually cite or refer to the scientific literature. One clue is the title is in the form of a provocative question. Other hints are words and phrases like it: "force scientists to rethink theories . . .", "New discovery upends evolution,"

    An interesting odd articles in several of the questionable sources:

    Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1284659/NASA-news-parallel-universe-particles-neutrino-Antarctica-ANITA-study



    NASA news: High-energy particles in Antarctica could prove parallel universes
    SCIENTISTS studying a "fountain of high-energy particles" using NASA instruments in Antarctica may have discovered evidence of a universe parallel to our own.
    By SEBASTIAN KETTLEY

    © Copyright Original Source



    It is odd, because I could not find any NASA news release that made this clam. Yes there is a ANITA study in Antarctica to study basic particles like Neutrinos.

    I did find this:
    Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bizarre-particles-keep-flying-out-of-antarcticas-ice-and-they-might-shatter-modern-physics/



    There’s something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it.

    Physicists don’t know what it is exactly. But they do know it’s some sort of cosmic ray—a high-energy particle that’s blasted its way through space, into the Earth, and back out again. But the particles physicists know about—the collection of particles that make up what scientists call the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics—shouldn’t be able to do that. Sure, there are low-energy neutrinos that can pierce through miles upon miles of rock unaffected. But high-energy neutrinos, as well as other high-energy particles, have “large cross-sections.” That means that they’ll almost always crash into something soon after zipping into the Earth and never make it out the other side.

    And yet, since March 2016, researchers have been puzzling over two events in Antarctica where cosmic rays did burst out from the Earth, and were detected by NASA’s Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA)—a balloon-borne antenna drifting over the southern continent.

    ANITA is designed to hunt cosmic rays from outer space, so the high-energy neutrino community was buzzing with excitement when the instrument detected particles that seemed to be blasting up from Earth instead of zooming down from space. Because cosmic rays shouldn’t do that, scientists began to wonder whether these mysterious beams are made of particles never seen before.

    Since then, physicists have proposed all sorts of explanations for these “upward going” cosmic rays, from sterile neutrinos (neutrinos that rarely ever bang into matter) to “atypical dark matter distributions inside the Earth,” referencing the mysterious form of matter that doesn’t interact with light [The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]

    All the explanations were intriguing, and suggested that ANITA might have detected a particle not accounted for in the Standard Model. But none of the explanations demonstrated conclusively that something more ordinary couldn’t have caused the signal at ANITA.

    A new paper uploaded today (Sept. 26) to the preprint server arXiv changes that. In it, a team of astrophysicists from Penn State University showed that there have been more upward-going high-energy particles than those detected during the two ANITA events. Three times, they wrote, IceCube (another, larger neutrino observatory in Antarctica) detected similar particles, though no one had yet connected those events to the mystery at ANITA. And, combining the IceCube and ANITA data sets, the Penn State researchers calculated that, whatever particle is bursting up from the Earth, it has much less than a 1-in-3.5 million chance of being part of the Standard Model. (In technical, statistical terms, their results had confidences of 5.8 and 7.0 sigma, depending on which of their calculations you’re looking at.)

    © Copyright Original Source



    Even some of this language is odd, but it does not make the unusual claims the less questionable articles make.

    My guess it has something to do with the magnetic field of the earth. I would like some in put on anyone that may have some knowledge or sources to contribute.
    This problem has been pointed out a few times. As I noted previously
    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
    Medical research is currently a mess. One problem is that there are a bunch of fake, legitimate sounding journals that keep popping up which will print your "research" if you pay them from which you can use that to push for everything from grant money to getting the results picked up and covered by the media.

    The TV show "Adam Ruins Everything" covered this in an episode on nutrition where they reported on a journalist who had a fictitious study claiming that eating chocolate helps you lose weight (“Chocolate with high cocoa content as a weight-loss accelerator”) published in the International Archives of Medicine for 600 Euros. It was picked up by multiple news outlets often getting front page coverage.

    The entire affair can be read about here: I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How as well as here: How the "chocolate diet" hoax fooled millions.

    The host of the aforementioned TV show, Adam Conover, had his own fraudulent study "The Possible Irritating Effects of Nutritional Facts" published in a faux journal called Advances In Nutrition And Food Technology to confirm that this does indeed happen. It was pretty obvious that the publisher never read it for it is a blatant spoof.

    And have posted this a couple times


    One thing that I've noticed is how the purveyors of woo like YECs, anti-vaxxers and the like will almost always quote these sensationalist news article to support their beliefs rather than the published research itself since the latter is much harder to twist into something that corroborates those beliefs
    Last edited by rogue06; 05-21-2020, 03:54 AM.

    I'm always still in trouble again

    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      This problem has been pointed out a few times. As I noted previously

      And have posted this a couple times

      [ATTACH=CONFIG]44840[/ATTACH]

      One thing that I've noticed is how the purveyors of woo like YECs, anti-vaxxers and the like will almost always quote these sensationalist news article to support their beliefs rather than the published research itself since the latter is much harder to twist into something that corroborates those beliefs
      These are legitimate concerns particularly in extreme religious views like YECs publishing fake science. This thread is a bit different in that it deals with layman science writers who ostly support legitimate science, but misquote, misrepresent, and slant science to get reader response. Some of this bad layman science articles are than misrepresented by those promoting a religious agenda that makes their audience believe they are scientific sources.
      Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
      Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
      But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

      go with the flow the river knows . . .

      Frank

      I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

      Comment


      • #4
        Even some reputable, maybe reputable, have too much time on their hands and spend it looking for insects in fuzzy photos of Mars. The science equivalent of looking Jesus in Cumulus clouds. Interesting pictures if you check out the article. Unfortunately many do not see the fine print that Ohio University retracted the article. Though once the cat was out of the bag the memes of MArtian insect spread like a California brush fire for a while.

        Source: https://scitechdaily.com/photos-show-evidence-of-life-on-mars-insect-and-reptile-like-fossils-living-creatures/



        Photos Show Evidence of Life on Mars: Insect- and Reptile-Like Fossils & Living Creatures

        By [Dr. William Romoser] OHIO UNIVERSITY NOVEMBER 19, 2019

        [Update 11/29/19: Ohio University has withdrawn this article.]

        Analysis of images from Mars rovers shows insect- and reptile-like fossils, creatures according to Ohio University entomologist.
        As scientists scramble to determine whether there is life on Mars, Ohio University Professor Emeritus William Romoser’s research shows that we already have the evidence, courtesy of photographs from various Mars rovers.

        “There has been and still is life on Mars.” — Dr. William Romoser, Ohio University Professor Emeritus

        Dr. Romoser, who specializes in arbovirology and general/medical entomology, has spent several years studying photographs from the red planet that are available on the Internet. He found numerous examples of insect-like forms, structured similarly to bees, as well as reptile-like forms, both as fossils and living creatures. He presented his findings Tuesday, November 19, 2019, at the national meeting of the Entomological Society of America in St. Louis, Missouri.

        “There has been and still is life on Mars,” Romoser said, noting that the images appear to show both fossilized and living creatures. “There is apparent diversity among the Martian insect-like fauna which display many features similar to Terran insects that are interpreted as advanced groups – for example, the presence of wings, wing flexion, agile gliding/flight, and variously structured leg elements.”

        Romoser said that while the Martian rovers, particularly the Curiosity Rover, have been looking for indicators of organic activity, there are a number of photos which clearly depict the insect- and reptile-like forms. Numerous photos show images where arthropod body segments, along with legs, antennae, and wings, can be picked out from the surrounding area, and one even appears to show one of the insects in a steep dive before pulling up just before hitting the ground.

        “Three body regions, a single pair of antennae, and six legs are traditionally sufficient to establish identification as ‘insect’ on Earth. These characteristics should likewise be valid to identify an organism on Mars as insect-like.” — Dr. William Romoser

        Individual images were carefully studied while varying photographic parameters such as brightness, contrast, saturation, inversion, and so on. No content was added, or removed. Criteria used in Romoser’s research included: Dramatic departure from the surroundings, clarity of form, body symmetry, segmentation of body parts, repeating form, skeletal remains, and observation of forms in close proximity to one another. Particular postures, evidence of motion, flight, apparent interaction as suggested by relative positions, and shiny eyes were taken to be consistent with the presence of living forms.

        “Once a clear image of a given form was identified and described, it was useful in facilitating recognition of other less clear, but none-the-less valid, images of the same basic form,” Romoser said. “An exoskeleton and jointed appendages are sufficient to establish identification as an arthropod. Three body regions, a single pair of antennae, and six legs are traditionally sufficient to establish identification as ‘insect’ on Earth. These characteristics should likewise be valid to identify an organism on Mars as insect-like. On these bases, arthropodan, insect-like forms can be seen in the Mars rover photos.”

        Fossil Image from Mars Rover
        Putative fossil insect on its dorsum with head to the top, and with selected structures labelled. Credit: Analysis by Dr. William Romoser

        Distinct flight behavior was evident in many images, Romoser said. These creatures loosely resemble bumble bees or carpenter bees on Earth. Other images show these “bees” appearing to shelter or nest in caves. And others show a fossilized creature that resembles a snake.

        Romoser, who was an entomology professor at Ohio University for 45 years and co-founded its Tropical Disease Institute, also spent nearly 20 years as a visiting vector-borne disease researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Between 1973 and 1998, Romoser authored and co-authored four editions of the widely-used textbook, “The Science of Entomology.”

        Romoser noted that interpretations of insect- and reptile-like creatures he described may change in the future as knowledge of life on Mars evolves, but that the sheer volume of evidence is compelling.

        “The presence of higher metazoan organisms on Mars implies the presence of nutrient/energy sources and processes, food chains and webs, and water as elements functioning in a viable, if extreme, ecological setting sufficient to sustain life,” he said. “I have observed instances suggestive of standing water or small water courses with evident meander and with the expected blurring of small submerged rocks, larger emergent rocks at the atmosphere/water interface, a moist bank area, and a drier area beyond the moist area. Water on Mars has been reported a number of times, including surface water detected by instrumentation on Viking, Pathfinder, Phoenix, and Curiosity.

        “The evidence of life on Mars presented here provides a strong basis for many additional important biological as well as social and political questions,” he added. It also represents a solid justification for further study.

        © Copyright Original Source

        Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
        Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
        But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

        go with the flow the river knows . . .

        Frank

        I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

        Comment

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