Getting Lost In the Scientific Woods Is Good For You 51
StartsWithABang writes: Wandering into the woods unprepared and without a plan sounds like a terrible idea. But if you're interested in scientific exploration at the frontiers, confronting the unknown with whatever you happen to have at your disposal, you have to take that risk. You have to be willing to take those steps. And you have to be okay with putting your best ideas out there — for all to see — knowing full well that you might get the entire thing wrong. Sometimes, that's indeed what happens. Some of the most revered and famous scientific minds in history confronted the great mysteries of nature, and came away having done nothing but set us back many years by leading the field down a blind alley. But other times, the greatest leaps forward in our understanding occur as a result. The article shares some notable examples, and explains why this is vital for scientific progress.
Re:Blablablabla (Score:4, Funny)
The hardest part.. (Score:1)
..is finding the paths untread.
Re: (Score:2)
No, that is easy. Most paths in science have never even been tried.
What is hard is to find a path that leads to somewhere. Then just as hard it getting the somewhere you discovered to be accepted by the scientific community. Think plaque tectonics, relativity, quantum mechanics, even something as fundamental as cosmology, and so on.
Re:The hardest part.. (Score:5, Funny)
Where dentistry meets geology.
Re: (Score:1)
What is hard is to find a path that leads to somewhere.
FFS.. give us a car analogy. All this hiking is getting us nowhere.
Re: (Score:3)
Quantum mechanics were proposed by Max Planck in 1900, 1905 it was used by Albert Einstein to explain the phot
Re: (Score:2)
Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty much the definition of what science is. I'm not even clear what they think the alternative might be that would still qualify as science.
And it works whether 'lost in the woods' is meant literally and metaphorically.
Re: (Score:1)
And you have to be okay with putting your best ideas out there — for all to see — knowing full well that you might get the entire thing wrong
Don't we all love trying to get work done with that guy standing behind us, trying to be helpful.
It's a bit like using Windows 7 or getting help from a retarded child, It's nice of you that you want to help, but I'd rather you didn't.
*knock knock knock* Clippy has noticed that you're trying to make a point. Would you like some help with that?
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people think that scientist are strange people who have amassed a huge amount of very precise facts about an extremely specific field, some of which might be useful (facts or fields), but most of which are useless to the common people. The prototype is the scientist lady in the TV series "Bones". Scientists are assimilated to dorks who have not only not an ounce of creativity in them but also no social skills.
In reality scientists need to be extremely creative in their work, and need to have the humility to accept that they know or understand only a tiny amount of the world that is around us. It is very easy and quick to tread into the complete unknown. We cannot at present even reconcile the most established theories we have about the way the world works (relativity and quantum mechanics).
Re: (Score:2)
That's pretty much the definition of what science is. I'm not even clear what they think the alternative might be that would still qualify as science.
Well, there's lost, and then there's LOST. I can get a little in lost my own city for a few moments, then drive around, see a familiar landmark and get my bearings rather quickly. But getting totally lost in somewhere that's completely unexplorered is a very different experience.
The author is talking about the latter experience. Getting a little more concre
Re: (Score:2)
shooting through slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
So now I first check the poster before the summary. There's a couple that can be safely ignored. Either because they don't have anything to say, or because they insist on summarising other people's work on an unreadable hipster website. NEXT!
Re: (Score:1)
>unreadable hipster website
I read that and figured that could only mean one thing: medium.com. And sure enough...
Re: (Score:3)
However, ignorance is also the domain of the ignorant.
It's okay not to be aware that someone has investigated an area before, or even to ignore people because you have a hint they may be wrong because of some anomaly. But ignorance of the in-depth side of what you're ignoring is dangerous.
As such, you aren't aware that information cannot travel faster than c (lower-case). The wavefront of a particular wave might be seen to but it cannot be usefully used to transmit information (or objects, or anything) fa
Re: (Score:3)
However, ignorance is also the domain of the ignorant.
It's okay not to be aware that someone has investigated an area before, or even to ignore people because you have a hint they may be wrong because of some anomaly. But ignorance of the in-depth side of what you're ignoring is dangerous.
There has rarely (I would state never but I'm a scientist in my mind, so I can't without proof that's true) been a time in history when someone has found something that everyone else had totally ignored
I am not saying your statements are wrong, merely giving one example I have learned of that it the contrary to the norm. The inventor of the Frazier lens wanted to make a lens that could have infinite depth of field. He wanted the closest things and the furthest thing to all be in focus at the same time. He was an amateur in the field and didn't know the physics or math of how lenses work. When he went around to universities asking about how to do what he wanted he was told over and over that it was impossi
Re: (Score:2)
A paper about the 12th decimal place of a century old observation written by 35 authors so the university/employer market can keep expanding?
You ought to read up on some of the crazy things you have to account for in order to make extremely accurate observations. It's not as trivial as you make it sound.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But it's hardly "new", is it?
If it weren't new, then that digit would already be known.
Re: (Score:2)
About 300 experiments have tried to determine the value of the Newtonian gravitational constant, G, so far, but large discrepancies in the results have made it impossible to know its value precisely. The weakness of the gravitational interaction and the impossibility of shielding the effects of gravity make it very difficult to measure G while keeping systematic effects under control. Most previous experiments performed were based on the torsion pendulum or torsion balance scheme as in the experiment by Cavendish in 1798, and in all cases macroscopic masses were used. Here we report the precise determination of G using laser-cooled atoms and quantum interferometry. We obtain the value G = 6.67191(99) x 10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2 with a relative uncertainty of 150 parts per million (the combined standard uncertainty is given in parentheses). Our value differs by 1.5 combined standard deviations from the current recommended value of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology. A conceptually different experiment such as ours helps to identify the systematic errors that have proved elusive in previous experiments, thus improving the confidence in the value of G. There is no definitive relationship between G and the other fundamental constants, and there is no theoretical prediction for its value, against which to test experimental results. Improving the precision with which we know G has not only a pure metrological interest, but is also important because of the key role that G has in theories of gravitation, cosmology, particle physics and astrophysics and in geophysical models.
I agree, but... (Score:1)
What doesn't kill you... (Score:2)
I'm an old bugger by now, and I can tell you this is quite right. It's like teaching a kid the difference from right and wrong, from bad and good, the kid touches the stove...burns himself a little - life lesson learned, sure beats hearing about it in theory.
Same thing with me, instead of always being politically correct here at Slashdot, I throw some stuff out there. I know how to hoist easy modpoints, any one who have been here for a long time
Every good scientist already know this (Score:2)
"Science is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." -- Werner von Braun
unprepared is a dumb way to live (Score:2)
this attitude will get you killed in space.
Like Columbus (Score:2)
Often in science discoveries are made different from the original goal. Much like Columbus looking for a shorter route to India and "discovering" the Americas. With Einstein as mentioned in the article, it was more like asking the right question such as, "What if the speed of light is independent of the observer?"
You're in a maze of twisty little passages, (Score:2)
All different.
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
This was so vapid and banal, I checked to see if the byline was Bennett Haselton.
Then again, it wasn't a 6000-word opus, so I should have known better.
Yes, it's intellectually useful to be challenged. And?