Irrelevant Scientific Research Honored 93
More than 1,000 people attended this year's Ig Nobel awards, a light-hearted alternative to the Nobel Prizes. Scientists who unlocked the inner secrets of dog fleas, crisps and tangled string swept the show. Handing out awards was William Lipscomb, the 1976 Nobel laureate for chemistry, also doubling Thursday, at the age of 89, as the hero in the "Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate Contest." The prize itself is a plaque that reads, "This Ig Nobel Prize is awarded in the year 2008 to an Ig Nobel Prize Winner, in recognition of the Ig Nobel Prize Winners' Ig Nobel Prize winning achievement." At last I can submit my paper, "Everything is Really Wet, Even Dry Stuff." for peer review.
Dog Fleas (Score:1, Informative)
If they find something that will eliminate the need for chemical pesticides or at least find one that isn't potentially carcinogenic, and one not made from petro chemicals, I think the research is quite meaningful. There are a few diseases that are brought by fleas.
Re:Discovery Institute should get its act together (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Discovery Institute should get its act together (Score:2, Informative)
Evolution has mountains of scientific evidence supporting it, your "feeling" has none. Who's trolling now?
improbable.com (Score:2, Informative)
The official ig website with video, background and list of winners [improbable.com]
Re:Discovery Institute should get its act together (Score:3, Informative)
The "I'm not buying it" argument against evolution typically comes because humans do not innately have the understanding of the time scales involved, or of the nature of probability.
Humans don't typically pay attention long enough to visibly see evolution taking place. The evidence is there, but it may take effort to put it together, and they're unwilling to do that. (I keep thinking that a month-long process of breeding antibiotic-resistant e. coli and feeding it to them would go a long way toward helping them understand it, but that's just me.) And lots of people don't understand probability -- look at gamblers and their "systems", or even try to explain the Monty Hall problem to someone.
And of course lots of people don't understand simply because they can't or won't make the effort. I have less respect for those people.
Re:Discovery Institute should get its act together (Score:3, Informative)
(I keep thinking that a month-long process of breeding antibiotic-resistant e. coli and feeding it to them would go a long way toward helping them understand it, but that's just me.)
No, that won't work. They'll say that's just "microevolution", and that it proves nothing about "macroevolution". This is the standard creationist argument any time antibiotic-resistant bacteria are brought up.
Re:Discovery Institute should get its act together (Score:3, Informative)
That won't work becasue they would use the moving goal post fallacy, among others.
We can see perfectly clear evidence of evolution in humans. They just don't want to believe, so they don't. They want others to believe so the make stuff up. The fact that none of what they say about evolution is true.
Knot theory is "under-researched" ?? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Discovery Institute should get its act together (Score:3, Informative)
We can see perfectly clear evidence of evolution in humans.
Go on ..
Nobody ever said evolution would produce a "better" animal, just one "more suited" to breed in the environment in which it lives.
Yeah. Think about that.