> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 8:39 PM > To: brin-l@mccmedia.com > Subject: Re: 9/11 conspiracies (WAS RE: What should we believe when there > is no reliab... > > In a message dated 9/18/2006 11:06:33 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > Assuming that a large number of people can't be wrong about something >>> because they are smart and well-connected is a tautology. I think >>> there are many examples of large numbers of smart, well-connected >>> people who turned a blind eye to an inconvenient truth. Not that I >>> arguing that that's the case with 9/11... but I've generally found it >>> more profitable to question authority than to make the kind of >>> assumption that you are arguing. > >> Isn't that not a tautology at all, but one of the basic assumptions >> about peer-review in science? > What is the assumption? That one must always question authority or that > peer review has is based on consensus and not open to new data?
The assumption is not that experts are always right, and not that new data should not be the basis of a revaluation of the present consensus. Rather, it is that the consensus of the professionals in the field represents our best understanding of the available data and analysis. > The essence of peer review has to do with assessment of evidence. Most > reviewers try to be fair even when they don't agree with the results > of the paper. It is an imperfect process but it does better than most > other ways of deciding things. We agree substantially here. The point of my post is to answer the question of "what is the assumption." JDG, of course, can correct me if I'm wrong. I see the question as "what provides our best understanding of the available information?" Peer review is based on the assumption that the scientific community does not operate on an inherently dogmatic or political basis. While new ideas may not initially get all the credit they might objectively deserve, the fact that additional data tends to support the correct theory results in the consensus shifting towards good new ideas. I think it might be helpful to look at several examples before reapplying this principal to the 9-11 conspiracy theories. These examples will be listed in increasing confidence in the scientific consensus. They are: 1) Global Warming 2) Cold Fusion 3) Young Earth 1) Global Warming Our understanding of global warming is still incomplete. We have not verified our climactic models the way, for example, we have verified numerical models that predict responses of electromagnetic systems. The various models have assumptions built in. Different models have different results because they are based on slightly different assumption sets. We do not have a complete set of data. Our data sets from before 1850 are incomplete, and depend on some assumptions concerning the properties of layers of ice that have been recovered from glaciers. Our recent surface temperature measurements suffer, to some extent, from the heat island effect. Until recently, there was a significant discrepancy between the satellite data and the surface data. Yet, given all these uncertainties, a consensus has formed, and is improving. About 5 years ago, it was generally agreed that the human induced global warming would have a -0.5C to 4.5C effect over the next century. Now, there is general consensus that the effect is 1.0C to 3.0C effect. However, there are professionals who are outside of the consensus. Some folks still think the effects will be next to zero or very high (>=5C). They site different difficulties with data sets, different unknowns, etc. These folks should not be considered crackpots. Rather, I'd see them as holding several sigma positions on the spectrum of scientific understanding. Do I think that their views are influenced by their political beliefs? Yes, that's my opinion. Yet, I don't think that they hold impossible positions. The chance that the consensus may move one way or another to include their positions within the limits of the consensus is small, in my opinion, but not close to zero. 2) Cold Fusion When Ponds and Fleischman made their claims 15+ years ago, I was very skeptical from the start. Not one, but two previously unseen laws of physics would have had to manifest themselves at a fairly high level...at least compared to the levels we have been observing by that time. Now, after 15 years of their inability to either provide a recipe for duplication of their observation, or duplicate the work themselves in a well controlled environment, the scientific consensus that this was a spurious report is all but universal. IMHO, Ponds and Fleishman do deserve the title "crackpots." First, if validated, their results would have required overwhelming changes in the theory of physics that would have dwarfed the changes made with the advent of QM, Special Relativity, and General Relativity. It would be hard to see how modern physics would survive as a "special case" of the new theory. Second, their results could not be replicated in a controlled environment. Calorimeters have improved tremendously since the late '80s, and excess heat in the amounts they originally reported should be very obvious now. Yet, it's still impossible to duplicate the results. For their report of cold fusion to be accurate, the physics/chemistry community would have to be practicing denial on a vast scale. They would have to deliberately ignore the evidence in front of their eyes. Not just one or a few, but basically everyone would have had to exhibit bad faith. This is, of course, theoretically possible. But, if one accepts this sort of argument, it would be hard to refute any experimental claim. One other thing worth noting here is that it is far more likely that cold fusion will be found by some unknown technique in the future than it is that Ponds and Fleishman actually have demonstrated it. The former only requires some unlikely future input data, while the latter requires a phenomenal breakdown in the scientific method as well as some unlikely input data that has already been taken. 3) Young Earth Quoting JDG: >> This argument is very similar to the argument used by Creationists when >> I start pointing out the tremendous geological evidence against the >> young-Earth hypothesis. This got me to thinking about the requirements for both the 9-11 conspiracy theories and for Creationism. One that is very similar is the total breakdown of the scientific method, which is also required for the acceptance of cold fusion. This is where I see the arguments as similar. I think that a young earth (<10k years old) would require something more than cold fusion would. It isn't just one area of physics that would be rejected like the caloric theory of heat, the failure of the scientific method would require failures in a number of disciplines. I tink a young earth is, more likely than a classical universe (with a crystalian sphere made of aether rotating around the center of the universe (the earth) once a day), but its existence is more problematic than cold fusion. In particular, if the present data really supports a young earth instead of evolution and standard cosmology, the psychological problems of virtually every scientist, including Charlie, Rich and myself, would have to be overwhelming. And, we'd have to be very very lucky to have all these bad ideas result in things that work so well. :-) Looking at this progression, I see the 9-11 conspiracy theories matching best with cold fusion. Both require deliberate blindness to the obvious by a wide range of professionals. (I'm considering it blindness to the obvious because both the big conspiracy sites: loose change and scholars for 9-11 truth state that the data available to everyone shows that the conventional explanations _cannot possibly_ be true. If a member of the general public is expected to be able to make this determination from the publicly available evidence, then all those well versed in the field must be ignoring something that is obvious by the standards of folks well versed in the field. This doesn't mean that we know exactly what happened, BTW. There is still enough room in the data for a scenario that we are not thinking about to be the one that...after all is said and done...to be considered the best model. I wouldn't expect a structural engineer to be able to properly determine the relative importance of things like damage to the inner core, weakening of the metal, differential heating stresses, the influence of the anti-sway tank of water....by just looking at publicly available data. I can't imagine that Gautam's dad would make such a claim. But, the requirements to determine that the data are consistent with planes crashing into the WTC, fires resulting, and the towers collapsing without bombs are far weaker than the requirements to determine the exact cause. Finally, this post isn't really meant to counter your post so much as look at the answer to the question you posed. I think JDG's comparison is valid...and that the basic assumption of peer review (that the professional community as a whole is the least likely group to ignore the implications of valid data) do apply to both the question of 9-11 conspiracy theories and creationism. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
