In 2010 NASA hold a press conference that they made a discovery that supposedly expands the definition of life. Today the consensus among scientists seems to be that the finding is bullshit.
While incompetence is likely the better explanation than malice, it’s still a fake.
Myself, I accept that I’m really trusting a network of people and that I can’t practically verify almost anything I’m told.
The point is that the network you are trusting was likely wrong about a big discovery that NASA claimed to have made in this decade. Maybe even the biggest claimed discovery of NASA in this decade.
the network you are trusting was likely wrong about a big discovery that NASA claimed to have made
I have no idea exactly what network Kenny trusts how much, but just about everything I read about NASA’s alleged discovery was really skeptical about it and said “yeah, this would be amazingly cool if it were true, but don’t hold your breath until it’s been confirmed by more careful investigation”. And, lo, it was not confirmed by more careful investigation, and now everyone thinks it was probably bullshit.
Much the same story for superluminal neutrinos (more so than the arsenic-using life) and CMB polarization due to inflation (less so than the arsenic-using life).
Much the same story for superluminal neutrinos (more so than the arsenic-using life) and CMB polarization due to inflation (less so than the arsenic-using life).
In the case of the neutrinos the announcement there was much more skepticism on the part of the people who made the discovery.
In the case of superluminal neutrinos, pretty much nobody including the people who made the announcement believed it; and the real announcement was more along the lines of “we’ve got some problematic data here; and we can’t find our mistake. Does anyone see what we’ve done wrong?”
Good point. But my trusting a network of people, or really many (overlapping) networks of people, doesn’t mean that I trust every specific claim or theory or piece of information. It just means that I’ve learned that they’re overall trustworthy, or trustworthy to a specific (perhaps even quantifiable) extent, or maybe only trustworthy for certain kinds of claims or theories or information.
In 2010 NASA hold a press conference that they made a discovery that supposedly expands the definition of life. Today the consensus among scientists seems to be that the finding is bullshit.
While incompetence is likely the better explanation than malice, it’s still a fake.
The point is that the network you are trusting was likely wrong about a big discovery that NASA claimed to have made in this decade. Maybe even the biggest claimed discovery of NASA in this decade.
I have no idea exactly what network Kenny trusts how much, but just about everything I read about NASA’s alleged discovery was really skeptical about it and said “yeah, this would be amazingly cool if it were true, but don’t hold your breath until it’s been confirmed by more careful investigation”. And, lo, it was not confirmed by more careful investigation, and now everyone thinks it was probably bullshit.
Much the same story for superluminal neutrinos (more so than the arsenic-using life) and CMB polarization due to inflation (less so than the arsenic-using life).
In the case of the neutrinos the announcement there was much more skepticism on the part of the people who made the discovery.
Yup, but I don’t think that’s relevant to how reliable the people Kenny trusts to tell him about scientific research are.
In the case of superluminal neutrinos, pretty much nobody including the people who made the announcement believed it; and the real announcement was more along the lines of “we’ve got some problematic data here; and we can’t find our mistake. Does anyone see what we’ve done wrong?”
Good point. But my trusting a network of people, or really many (overlapping) networks of people, doesn’t mean that I trust every specific claim or theory or piece of information. It just means that I’ve learned that they’re overall trustworthy, or trustworthy to a specific (perhaps even quantifiable) extent, or maybe only trustworthy for certain kinds of claims or theories or information.