New Analysis Shows Dinosaurs Not As Heavy As Previously Believed. 155
Cognitive Dissident writes "Discovery.com has an article on a new study using computer modeling to estimate the actual amount of flesh needed to cover the skeletons of dinosaurs. Based on a comparison with modern animals, it indicates that these animals could have weighed dramatically less than has been previously estimated. 'A huge Brachiosaur, once thought to weigh 176,370 pounds, is now believed to have weighed 50,706 pounds.' That's only about two-and-a-half times the weight of a modern African elephant. If other evidence can be reconciled with this, many estimates of the ecosystems dinosaurs lived in will also have to be revised."
Dino Booty (Score:5, Funny)
I blame yo-yo dieting myself (Score:2)
Dinosaurs. Not heavy, just big boned.
T-Rex just has to realise that these low carb diets are just a fad, and that it cannot get by on just one brontosaurus a week.
Re:I blame yo-yo dieting myself (Score:5, Funny)
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Really! I mean if new evidence suggests that 72% of our concept of a Brontosaurus never actually existed, why should we believe that the other 28% ever did? Obviously the scientists are just making this junk up, and the universe popped into being fully-formed last Tuesday, just in time for tea.
Re:I blame yo-yo dieting myself (Score:4, Insightful)
"Discovery.com has an article on a new study"
The problem with the gullibility of the world are those willing to swallow that a "study" constitutes research bearing evidence.
Bad news, Jim, the study, is a quicky look at an information set for the purpose of determining if further research ( an actual search for evidence) is worth throwing money at. A strange animal , the study, frequently found near bored professors trying to busy a classroom has also been sited being unethically molested by corporations and governments for the purpose of manipulating the populace into beliefs advantageous to their purposes. This modern "study" device is actually descended from a useful tool that used to be defined by rules designed to make it scientifically useful; like polling a random 10% of your info pool, remaining an unbiased observer and including findings that may be contrary to the benefactors goal. Compare and contrast to todays "study" used to sell you everything from soap to political party, Polling targeted groups, interacting to manipulate outcomes and of course only keeping what could be construed as useful to a benefactors cause.
Caveat Geekor!
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We should be ashamed of all the years we've been calling dinosaurs old and fat.
Bullshit, maybe the rest of the dinasaurs were fit and trim, but my ex-wife is certainly old and fat.
Not fat (Score:2)
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Fred Flintstone tells me that they're simply fishing for an excuse to jack up the price of bronto burgers.
What about footprints? (Score:5, Interesting)
[Sorry if this is a repeat. I do not see my first attempt.]
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I suspect that the margin of error for footprints would be even higher. After all, many, many uncontrollable and unknowable external effects would go into the final fossilized footprint.
Re:What about footprints? (Score:5, Informative)
I doubt a footprint can give any useful measure of the weight of the animal that made it.
Too many variables. Walking speed and method will influence it, as it affects the impact between foot and soil and the time the foot is pushing down on the soil. Exact original soil content (water content and particle size). How deep the soft layer of soil really was.
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Haven't read article, but if you know what the rock is made of, you probably know what the mud was made of. Then, you can probably estimate impression depth on a scale with viscosity.
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Yes, but you have absolutely no idea how much water was in it when the footprint was formed, and only the vaguest idea of the size and kind of organic molecules present (you know, all that stuff that makes it dirt rather than sand)
Elephant metric system (Score:5, Funny)
pounds? for a minute there I thought we were talking sience...
Let's make the African elephant unit a standard.
Re:Elephant metric system (Score:4, Informative)
Even when talking "sience", there's nothing wrong with using pounds and ounces.
This is a US site, and science-savvy Americans understand both systems of units.
Re:Elephant metric system (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Elephant metric system (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry Kapiti, that should have read:
"A huge Brachiosaur, once thought to weigh 12597.9 stone, is now believed to have weighed 3621.9 stone."
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Okay, so just substitute newtons for pounds - multiply by 4.45. That'll give you the proper SI unit for weight...
So, 176,370 pounds = 785,000 newtons (approximately, can't understand why TFA gives weight to the nearest pound)
And, 50,706 pounds = 226,000 newtons.
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Seriously, it's hard to take you as anything but a troll for raising a fuss over such a simple conversion. If you can't understand the units, then convert them to something you can.
In fact, in the time you spent griping about this, you could have made the conversion and then posted it for the relevant slashdot audence to see! And that would actually be doing something useful.
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True, but given the contexts in which they are used by 99% of the people on the planet, there's little effective difference.
Maybe the distinction will gain more relevance with future developments, but I don't see the lb making it off the earth as a unit of any use.
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https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pound_(force) [wikimedia.org]
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pound_(mass) [wikimedia.org]
So it is the slug and the newton, in your scenario. The space dinosaur has 0 lbs of weight, but a mass of x lbs.
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Re:Elephant metric system (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. The unit is Newton-metres. Now, does anybody want to argue about standardisation of spelling?
Scientists must hold the line! (Score:2)
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Whatever idiot (or parent's freak) that modded the parent "troll," waste your points on me so you won't have any left to mod other informative posts down. It only takes simple arithmetic to convert kg to lb, or as the parent says, just google it.
BTW, 1 km is .6 mile. Mass can be measured in pounds as well as kg, it's just a different measuring system that is easily converted.
I agree that the metric system is a lot easier to use than imperial, but you guys are nerds and should be able to do simple math. Too
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By number. Not by weight.
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Discovery claims to be all about science, so they should have put the kgs in there.
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50,706 pounds
Not only is this not a discovery but an estimation, but this truly has little to do with science, and the unit is not the problem
What about an estimation of 64,623.34712 Kg ?
Those figures are ridiculous by themselves, and put togther they are pathetic, how do you make an estimation down to pound-level accuracy when the second guess is about a third the first one ?
Re:Elephant metric system (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough 50,706 pounds is amlost exactly 23,000 Kg. Leading me to believe that the Kg was the original unit of the study
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We therefore suggest that it is a robust method of estimating body mass where a mounted skeletal reconstruction is available and demonstrate its usage to predict the body mass of one of the largest, relatively complete sauropod dinosaurs: Giraffatitan brancai (previously Brachiosaurus) as 23200 kg.
Minimum convex hull mass estimations of complete mounted skeletons [130.88.90.147]. That's the preprint version; it may have been revised prior to publication.
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Of course it was. Nobody does science in pounds, not even in the US. If you submitted a paper with non-metric units the editor would tell you to fix it.
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Not true. It really depends on your field. eV, kcal/mol, and Hartrees are all common energy units in different areas of chemistry and physics, even though Joules are the SI unit (unless you're equating the metric system with non-SI units, but if so the definition of "metric system" is really unclear to me).
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An eV is a Je/C, which, though technically not an SI unit, is a lot closer than a pound. It IS essentially a metric system unit - it's used with the metric prefixes. The kcal is also a metric system unit, predating the SI. The mol is similar to the eV: defined based on SI units and fundamental quantities and used with metric prefixes. Ditto with Hartrees.
So yes, my one liner wasn't perfectly accurate, but pretty close.
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Mod up. This is an annoyance I have with National Geographic, too.
In any article referencing primary sources, the measurements used in that source should be listed first, with "local" units in brackets afterwards.
E.g. "A huge Brachiosaur, once thought to weigh 80,000 kg (176,370 pounds), is now believed to have weighed 23,000 kg (50,706 pounds)."
Discovery.com could have done worse, by only giving the imperial measurement *and* rounding them to the nearest 1000 pounds without saying "approximately," since th
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You would think the editors would give the writers a 10 minute talk on meaningful digits-- 80,000 kg (170,000 pounds) would be the correct way to do the conversion.
I could understand the Daily News doing this but Discovery?
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It has been a long time since Discovery has been a "science" organization. It's mostly about light entertainment with some vague reference to science. Mythbusters is the prime example... mostly about blowing stuff up and otherwise crashing/destroying stuff... very little actual science.
Not surprising that they "dumb down" the science units for their clueless audience which doesn't understand metric (and also blow the conversions by adding three digits of precision to a very rough estimate).
Know your audience (Score:2)
I have mod points now, and frequently, and I can tell you that I do not give one crap about your opinion as to whether a post should be modded up. It has become commonplace here, and is almost shorthand for "if I had points, I would mod you up, but instead I'll add marginally more value by restating your comment more concretely".
Read the parent post, and then your own, and ask yourself what specifically you added? A formatting suggestion?
I came in to post essentially this post linked below, and the logic
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"Mod Up/Funny/whatever" = "+1" = "This". I rarely use it here, but that's the reality, better get used to it.
Second, *my* reason for doing this is to highlight the parent for what I felt was a very good point, in case my comment is later modded up but theirs isn't and so it's hidden due to viewing threshold (as is the case here). You might not like it, but if it makes people expand the parent comment then it's served its purpose.
To the rest of your post, I agree, and I pointed out the conversion they obvio
Re:Elephant metric system (Score:4, Insightful)
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And as far as I know, even in the US, for science related things, you use SI units.
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For the actual research, and for academic publication, sure. But for relating as news it's all converted to common-use units. We don't buy anything by the Kg, nor do we know our own body weight in Kg. Lb just conveys more easily understood scales to us to be compared in relation to everyday weights we deal with.
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The only US contributions I recognize, are those with the spelling errors.
The comma you used does not belong there. Could you please let us know where you're from? I need to know which nationality introduces superfluous commas.
Re:Elephant metric system (Score:4, Funny)
Badly, if their use of apostrophes is anything to go by.
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Or wasn't growing up but is now (sort of a reverse Mel Gibson - probably rants about how the Arabs own everything when he gets drunk).
Or was shifting his dialect to match his guess of where the post to which he replied originated.
Or (given his comma usage) was politely suggesting that his OP mate (frel in Farscape-ese) with himself.
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Ah, you're logged into slashdot.org.us ? Yet bizarrely when I'm logged into the international site (slashdot.org), I can also see your comment.
It seems that you've been contaminating your precious bodily fluids by posting to an international site, when you thought that you were posting to a Good Ole All 'Merkin site. My commiserations. I suggest a wire brush and Dettol [wikipedia.org] for decontaminating your fingertips and retinas.
Precision (Score:5, Informative)
The masses given equate to 80000 kg and 23000 kg respectively. Or 80 and 23 (metric) tons. Two significant figures. Not more. No doubt those were the numbers originally supplied by the scientists, and the author of TFA converted it to pounds for the typical American reader without understanding how precision works. This happens all the time in the popular press. Clearly you can't estimate the weight of a creature you've never seen to within 1 lb. Your standard human's weight fluctuates by more than that over the course of a day.
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Clearly you can't estimate the weight of a creature you've never seen to within 1 lb.
Oh, you can estimate it to within 1 lb, all right, but your estimate will almost certainly be wrong. ;)
Re:Precision (Score:4, Funny)
"This happens all the time in the popular press. Clearly you can't estimate the weight of a creature you've never seen to within 1 lb"
I went to the museum and saw a big Tyrannosaurus skeleton and I asked the guide how old it was.
He said: "75,000,013 years."
I said: "Wow! Since when do they know the age up to the year?"
He said: "Well, it was 75,000,000 years old when I got this job and that was 13 years ago."
Not necessarily (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not necessarily (Score:5, Insightful)
The huge difference in results from this technique and older estimates made me sceptical already.
If one method comes to say 80 tons, and another to say 70 tons, then I say sure, both sound reasonable, and not too far away. But if the other method comes to 23 tons, then I start to wonder what is wrong. One of the methods is wrong for sure, just the question is which one.
Interestingly the article you link to says that the weight of this particular dino was previously estimated at just over 23 tons. Almost exactly what the new method predicts. The 80 ton weight is suggested to be an old figure, and already long since relegated to the history books. The value in the new method is not as much in that the dinos get a lighter weight, it's that it confirms current weight estimates, and will allow for much faster and cheaper measurements on other dino skeletons.
So while your comment is technically correct, it's also slashdot-style suggestive into suggesting that the new technique is wrong, while in fact the new technique confirms the consensus weight of just over 23 tons for the animal. And that would also suggest that current ecosystem calculations are already done with the lighter weight - making the summary even more sensationalist.
Re:Not necessarily (Score:4, Informative)
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Did you just -- in the same comment -- show yourself sceptical of the new technique, provide some evidence for your scepticism and approval for the old, then cast doubt on the old technique and provide evidence why the new was superior to the old?
Sir Humphrey?
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As a scientist you must be sceptical about both techniques if a big difference is found. Try and find evidence both for and against each technique, and see which one is better.
In this situation, you start with method 1, which at the time is considered a good method. Then you come with method 2, and find wildly different results. Then you know that one of them must be wrong - the question being which one. Having four different methods, three giving similar results and one giving a very different result, is a
60s "science"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Even without computer simulations, I imagine they'd compare dinosaur skeletons to that of elephants, horses, giraffes, rhinos and even birds (which are supposed to be descended from the dinosaurs) to develop some reasonable bone mass or skeletal girth to weight ratios, no? Off by a factor of 3 1/2 seems ridiculous, even if we're talking research that was done in the 60s.
And in response to myself... According to the article (which I just skimmed), a common method was to take an artist’s reconstruction
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And you wonder why people don't trust science...
If that's the problem, then why trust medicine, which had such fun with leeches, phrenology and humours!
There was a time arsenic and mercury were the cure for what ails you!
Which the doctors justified by saying they had no repeat complaints!
Re:60s "science"? (Score:4, Informative)
Off by a factor of 3 1/2 seems ridiculous, even if we're talking research that was done in the 60s.
I don't think that research was done in the 60s, and I certainly don't think this is up-ending the previous best estimate by such a large factor. I'd bet that guess was made closer to the time Brachiasaurus was discovered in the very early 1900s, and that's why it says "once thought" and "estimates have been as high".
WP suggests the most recent estimate (from 2009) was 28.7 metric tonnes.
While this new figure is still appreciably lighter, it doesn't make it sound as shocking to use the most recent estimate as the comparison point, does it?
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It's not ridiculous, because: A) reconstructing skeletons is challenging enough (look at the historical changes in understanding of the posture of dinosaur hips), B) reconstructing muscle mass, bone internal structure/density, lung volume, etc. is even more challenging, and C) the 80 tonnes estimate for Brachiosaurus was an upper limit, not the median estimate (which was closer to 40 or 50 tonnes). Being off by a factor of 2-3x is not ridiculous given the significant uncertainties, and you can't blame arti
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Accuracy of estimate? (Score:4, Informative)
"A huge Brachiosaur, once thought to weigh 176,370 pounds, is now believed to have weighed 50,706 pounds."
Those figures seem to imply they knew the weight to an accuracy of a few pounds, why don't they 175,000 and 50,000 pounds?
Did they measure the depth of the footprints?
While we are mentioning dinosaurs, a sad farewell to the Author of "A Sound of Thunder" Rest in Peace Ray
Re:Accuracy of estimate? (Score:5, Informative)
Because the original weights were in kilograms (80,000kg and 23,000kg respectively), and Discovery helpfully converted to the Imperial system for its American audience without properly sourcing the original figures.
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Ah, that's exactly what I was going to guess. Anytime I see a figure with far more significant digits than it ought to, I suspect a unit conversion done improperly.
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When you're dealing with numbers that big and that rough why not just divide by 1000? A megagram is a ton, near enough.
kg to lb (Score:2)
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The original estimate could've been in 5879ary, and it only looks like there is more than 1 significant digit because of a sloppy conversion for printing purposes.
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Dear discovery channel, (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Dear discovery channel, (Score:4, Funny)
Low accuracy and high precision. Now this is a scientific article that has some credibility.
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It sounds like programming. Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with a chain saw.
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Reminds me of one of my first university-level chemistry labs, when instructed to "accurately measure approximately 5g." Took me a moment to work it out.
overblown as usual (Score:3, Funny)
Re:overblown as usual (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate it when people deride dark matter without having the first clue about it. Neutrinos interact only through the weak force and gravity. Maybe another particle interacts only through gravity. No EM emissions would make it dark, no strong or weak interactions would make it essentially undetectable on earth. It would only show up on astronomical scales. Oh, and humans (who are very biased towards the types of particles we're made of and interact regularly with) would think the whole thing was voodoo.
And maybe not. There are numerous explanations for dark matter ranging from various forms of exotic matter to fundamental problems with existing theory. So far there are no clear winners. Making a "mathematical error vs. magical substance" dichotomy is so oversimplified it would be better for you to simply be quiet on this topic.
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Making a "mathematical error vs. magical substance" dichotomy is so oversimplified it would be better for you to simply be quiet on this topic.
This ... is ... SLASHDOT!
Long time to miss that one (Score:3)
That is a hell of a long time to miss that concept. We wasted a lot of time
and resources predicting a lot of things that are off by several magnitudes
believing that they were of a different weight.
There will be a flood of new data from related sciences following this. And
probably a number of other studies trying to disprove it.
-AI
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Assuming you mean "orders of magnitude," you might want to familiarize yourself with what that actually means. 80 tonnes and 20 tonnes are not different by an order of magnitude. Not even one.
Also, the 80 tonne estimate seems to be from the distant past. More recent estimates are in the high 20s, so the difference with this estimate isn't even 50%.
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Assuming you mean "orders of magnitude," you might want to familiarize yourself with what that actually means. 80 tonnes and 20 tonnes are not different by an order of magnitude. Not even one.
Also, the 80 tonne estimate seems to be from the distant past. More recent estimates are in the high 20s, so the difference with this estimate isn't even 50%.
Assuming you mean "orders of magnitude," you might want to familiarize yourself with what that actually means. 80 tonnes and 20 tonnes are not different by an order of magnitude. Not even one.
Also, the 80 tonne estimate seems to be from the distant past. More recent estimates are in the high 20s, so the difference with this estimate isn't even 50%.
Man, you are a dick... lol
If I would have fuckin meant orders of magnitude, I would have fuckin said it.
I didn't say it, cause "orders of magnitude" is incorrect, as you brilliantly
pointed out, after you changed the meaning of what I said by adding words.
magnitude [mægntjud] n.,
1. relative importance or significance
2. relative size or extent
3. (Mathematics) Maths a number assigned to a quantity, such as weight, and used as a basis of comparison for the measurement of similar quantities
Yes, when you add
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Oh, okay, so you didn't make a typo, you just don't understand how to use common words. You can't "be off by magnitudes." It's not a countable item.
Nice try at covering though.
The brachiosaur you write about... (Score:3, Funny)
I don't see how that's possible. (Score:2)
He ain't heavy... (Score:2)
tweeeeeeeet (Score:2)
While we're at it, are they closer to an explanation on why birds tweet and chirp,snakes and lizards hiss and their dinosaur ancestors are always shown in movies roaring like lions?
Nonsense mass units (Score:2)
Here it is for people that can't make sense of that pound unit, which value depends on country and time period:
New study estimates that the Brachiosaur, once believed to weigh about 80 tons, may actually have only weighed 23 tons.
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because it's patently bullshit?
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because it's patently bullshit?
Which is why I do not believe it. But *lots* of people do, and they hold the reins of power; thus, we can't just dismiss them as unimportant.
Re:And geeks wonder why Joe Six-pack disbelieves.. (Score:5, Informative)
10/10 for using the ol' "science is like Religion because they claim to have Truth and banish those who disagree with their Orthodoxy" line in an article about scientists at a major research university up-ending the "orthodoxy" and publishing their "heresey" in a Royal Society publication. I love this kind of irony.
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I do not think that Science is like Religion. Like I said, this article is a Good Thing. The only reason that the West has advanced stupendously in knowledge and (besides Capitalism) wealth is Science.
However, you can't deny that scientists are imperfect and sometimes act that way. (Well, you *can*, but then you're deluding yourself.)
In order to overcome growing public growing, rationalists must be like Avis and "Try Harder" at being humble and not so dogmatic.
Penn Jillette is who I admire, not Richard
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I do not think that Science is like Religion. Like I said, this article is a Good Thing.
You made it sound like this is the exception to the rule ("I'm glad that some..."), rather than the rule itself.
However, you can't deny that scientists are imperfect and sometimes act that way.
The scientific method is premised on the idea that scientists are imperfect.
In order to overcome growing public growing, rationalists must be like Avis and "Try Harder" at being humble and not so dogmatic.
I'm not sure that's so. Look, you point at this article saying "Is it any wonder people don't trust science?", then point out how science is always changing its mind. You said it's Dogmatic when as a rule it isn't, but then again the people you're talking about don't have a problem with Dogma, do they? They just don't l
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My ultimate point is that I think there should be more public assertions by scientists of scientific uncertainty (especially in the non-hard fields of study). But who -- especially if you're an expert in your field -- wants to be perceived as not knowing what you're talking about?
Maybe, though, the real problem is with journalists, textbook authors and University press offices.
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My ultimate point is that I think there should be more public assertions by scientists of scientific uncertainty
Like all the "estimate", "could", and "suggests" lines from TFA?
There are plenty such assertions. People just tend to ignore or forget them -- particularly because all the caveats won't fit in the headline, and our soundbite ADD culture can't handle that. See how many people complain on /. that the headline -- not the summary, but the headline -- is "misleading" because it doesn't fully explain the entire story?
Maybe, though, the real problem is with journalists, textbook authors and University press offices.
Primarily the first. It was the article (and thus summary) that chose to compare this new esti
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What's so wrong with a changing belief anyway? Why this fixation on having an unchanging and un-adaptable view of the world?
I've changed a lot since I was born. My home town has too (though not as much some other places!). Very little in nature stays the same over a lifetime; rivers get different flow paths; lizards stop laying eggs and go placental. How I knew the world to work when I was seven is very different to how I knew the world to work at age 21 or how I know the world works at age 35. Things
Re:What if they were filled with Hydrogen? (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't the buoyancy reduce their weight even more? Really, is there any reason they can't?
And I presume they'd outgas the excess hydrogen as burps which their gizzards (full of flint and iron ore) would ignite?
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It's good to know that someone thought the same and followed through with it.
How do you know that's what they thought? Sure there's been a trend of weight decreasing from early estimates, but maybe they thought it would confirm the latest estimates, or even show them to be heavier. Maybe they just thought that they had a novel new method of estimating the weight and should see what it says.
Which, regardless of their expectation of the result, was what happened. That's the key, going where the results suggest, not where you expected.
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When you were a kid, you thought they were the heaviest badasses on the planet
I kinda thought the dinobots sucked compared to Optimus Prime.
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T-Rex was not a hunter. He was a scavenger and oportunitstic hunter. For whatever reason, people get upset thinking he's not some mighty hunter. He wasn't. Even more so, they lived in family pods. They were not the loners everyone presents them to be.
T-Rex was almost certainly a hunter. He was quite mobile, and had the tools to kill just about anything he could catch.
He was also a scavenger. But nearly every large predator is a scavenger. Eagles, for instance, are regular eaters of carrion, and notorious for stealing kills from other birds of prey. It's one of the advantages of being big, you see.
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nonono everyone knows the dinosaurs disappeared long before. It's the unicorns that ceased to exist after Noah's flood, because they were too silly to do anything but play in the rain :-)
(with apologies to The Irish Rovers)