Seriously thoughtful In science we Trust.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

What about those particle pairs that change to match each other, so if one goes left, the other goes right (or something like that) regardless of how far apart they are - would that not work if they were either side of an event horizon? If it did would that not be considered transmission of information?

Very, VERY good question. The honest answer is that I don't know! I'll talk to a friend of mine, whose specialist field this is, and see if he has any ideas about it. I would suspect that the answer is no, because there is an absolute "ban" on transmitting information across the event horizon.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Well of course there is Hawking radiation... That's pretty much you are talking about I think.

No, Hawking radiation is something different to what Sparrow's talking about, although it does also involve pairs of particles (or rather, a particle and its antiparticle).

[Sparrow]

I think I'm talking about quantum entanglement - but I'm not pretending to have more than the vaguest notion of what it's all about.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I think I'm talking about quantum entanglement - but I'm not pretending to have more than the vaguest notion of what it's all about.

Thanks - that's the expression; I couldn't remember the name of it.

I rather suspect that my friend's answer is going to be "I don't know". As I'm sure you know, there is a fundamental flaw in modern physics in that general relativity (which is purely a field theory) and quantum mechanics just don't play together nicely, and our current understanding of black holes is purely in terms of GR. People have been searching, thus far largely unsuccessfully, for a way to unify GR and QM for the last 60 or so years - a so-called "Grand Unified Theory" (GUT), or "Theory of Everything".

[ardeegee]

Here is an experiment that was published a few days ago that relates:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...king-radiation

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

That stuff is dangerous! I hear that's how he ended up in that chair...

That's what happens when you get too "Close to the Edge"

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, Hawking radiation is something different to what Sparrow's talking about, although it does also involve pairs of particles (or rather, a particle and its antiparticle).

Here's the wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

I thought it resulted from a particle split, but I'm apparently wrong.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I'd love to hear them as well.

Certainly in the popular/public/news media there is spin and trickery etc. But there have been very few cases of outright bias or fraud in the peer-reviewed journals and the few times it has happened it has been revealed and dealt swiftly.

Maybe he is referring to this sort of thing:

http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54893/

http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~wstarbuc/Writing/Prejud.htm

and a whole raft of google results:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=...=1&oi=scholart

Didn't some British organisation recently admit to massaging results, including flawed data or omitting good data they didn't like, defrauding the peer review process and a bunch of other questionable things with regards to climate change science?

Mind you, I'm not arguing against climate change.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by kennyc

A poll done by Scientific American and Nature:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-we-trust-poll

A couple of things..........

1: A poll of a bunch of people who read Scientific American and Nature is of course going to show a high level of trust in what scientists say about certain issues. Just as a poll of people who read Rock magazine in Australia will show a high level of trust in what Dan Osman has to say. Doesn't really say much.

2: Do the readers even have any interest and any knowledge in all of the issues asked about? I'm making an assumption here but it seems to me that many of those issues would have a wide ranging and conflicting set of views espoused by scientists in those fields. So how could anyone trust what "scientists" say on the issue without first knowing if there is a general consensus and then knowing what that consensus states?

Cheers,
PKFFW

[TGS]

I've often wondered what happens to all the data that doesn't get reported. I recently worked with a cognitive scientist working on elucidating the specific function of a bit of the brain in language processing. Sometimes his experiments didn't support his theoretical position. Of course, these experiments didn't get written up - his explanation was that the data was screwed or the experimental design was wrong. I'm sure he is not unique.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Didn't some British organisation recently admit to massaging results, including flawed data or omitting good data they didn't like, defrauding the peer review process and a bunch of other questionable things with regards to climate change science?

That was the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia. They were accused of having done these things, but cleared by an independent investigation (although the investigation did find that the unit had a "culture of withholding information"). Wiki article about it here.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by TGS

I've often wondered what happens to all the data that doesn't get reported. I recently worked with a cognitive scientist working on elucidating the specific function of a bit of the brain in language processing. Sometimes his experiments didn't support his theoretical position. Of course, these experiments didn't get written up - his explanation was that the data was screwed or the experimental design was wrong. I'm sure he is not unique.

Experimental results which don't match what you expected are what lead to advances in science. A classic example is the 1887 Michaelson-Morley experiment, the completely unexpected results of which triggered a revolution in physics.

[MrPLD]

On the same topic, there's also the "Rutherford's gold foil" experiment ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger%...den_experiment ) which completely shocked them.

"""It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you"""

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Experimental results which don't match what you expected are what lead to advances in science.

While I think that's true, it seems to me that it runs counter to the 'scientific method' that scientists like to promote - where existing knowledge is used to uncover further knowledge.
Here, existing knowledge is overturned, and further knowledge is uncovered more by accident than design.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

While I think that's true, it seems to me that it runs counter to the 'scientific method' that scientists like to promote - where existing knowledge is used to uncover further knowledge.
Here, existing knowledge is overturned, and further knowledge is uncovered more by accident than design.

Absolutely. But that's what being a good scientist is all about. You come up with a theory, make predictions from it, and then perform experiments to see if those predictions are accurate. If they aren't, you revise your theory.

I imagine it must be more difficult in fields like neuro-science. Experiments are probably less reproducable than those in fields like physics.