comments on the intersections of science and !science
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Hobbits; a sick and twisted folk?
It’s going to take me a little while to get back into the rhythm of writing in this blog, so forgive me if I start out a bit slowly. I was going to begin with a story about prehistoric fashion, but a search for primary sources showed that the archaeologist only published in Russian.
I found an interesting story about TB in Homo erectus, but it’s either too recent to have hit the web or is available with a subscription only. Just be aware that the inference that the infected Homo erectus had dark skin is questionable.
Then there’s the whole hobbit issue. Ever since they were discovered there has been debate back and forth about whether the Homo floresiensis were a race of humans or a separate species has been lobbed back and forth. A recent article in Science, “Mutations in the Pericentrin (PCNT) Gene Cause Primordial Dwarfism“, with over two dozen authors, suggests that the hobbits were humans suffering from a particular form of dwarfism. Here is some criticism by blogger Greg Laden, be sure to check out the comments.
In other news - some of you may have noticed that some of my web badges have gone. I’ve moved them to my new craft blog Eye of the Beholder. In the I’ll be adding ‘yarn work’ posts over there, so if that’s your interest update your blog rolls…
I’m posting this declaration of how I’ll handle comments here, and edit this post as things change. Discussion of the reasons I have a policy follow *.
Comment Policy
Try to be polite, even when you are replying to a comment or post you disagree with. The aim is to have a friendly conversation and exchange of ideas, not a series of arguements.
The form allows for a link to your web page. I don’t expect to be checking those links at all (but it’s always possible that experience will change my mind). If you must advertise a web page unrelated to the post the appropriate way to do it would be to use that field to link it.
Lengthy advertisements will be deleted or disemvoweled.
Flames and personal attacks will be deleted or disemvoweled.
I will reply to many comments using the ‘respond to’ link, but some may become the seeds for future posts.
Science for Your Amusement
Earliest chocolate drinks were alcoholic (but they already knew that), and 500 years earlier than previously thought. Archaelology Online and Dogfish Head Brewery may try to ‘reconstruct the brew. They previously did the same thing with Chateau Jiahu, which just might (probably not) be still available…
Finally, the US Government is suggesting that, in case of a deadly influenza pandemic, Homeland Security gets preferential treatment - as though they’d be ‘on the front lines’ in response to the pandemic? Doesn’t make sense to me.
* Blog.com allows only two ways for a blog owner to handle comments. Either allow them all, or approve (possibly edit) them. There is no ‘bot test screen option. I switched to the ‘approve’ method after someone made a one line comment with a four line advertisement at the end (if I’d been a regular Boing-Boing reader I would have disemboweled the ad, as it is, I deleted it). I have to ‘approve’ of every comment before it gets posted, so I’m going to take some level of responsibility for every comment.
I understand that certain, potentially interesting, conversations can’t happen if I choose to actively moderate. I also understand that there are certain, potentially interesting, conversations which can’t happen in a ‘blog culture where every conversation must be a confrontation. The internet is a big place, and there’s plenty of room for all styles of convesation. If you have trouble finding a science blog with a sufficiently ‘lively’ environment to fit your own style, ask and I’ll post a list.
Last week, my youngest got a text message from her cousin-in-NYC that he was going to Haiti to deal with “A Voodoo Curse”. This week, she got another one from him, about going to Haiti because of “…the Zombie Curse”. I couldn’t convince her it was the same thing.
I can, however, point you to archaeological evidence for zombies*. I can also point out that Max Brooks is not the only zombie researcher (zombologist?) to refer to. An especially dedicated one has taken this video of Zombies in central park.
… I would be remiss were I not to share this with you -
It’s got a creative commons attribution-noncommercial license, so if you just ripped it from me that would be OK, but I hope you’ll get it from Jonathon Coulton instead. It’s my newest ringtone!
The Scientific Method
…and here you thought I’d find a way to link the two! I just wanted to make sure that I had a definition of what the scientific method actually is somewhere in the blog, and not just a working definition of science as a whole. So here it is, right below the Zombies!
First of all, there are lots of different ‘methods’ involved in science, it’s an organic process (as in it grows naturally from one step to the next). For a good discussion, see the Wikipedia Article or find a Science Fair Guide online.
The basic, bare boned description follows.
Collect data and observations (CAREFULLY)
Come up with an idea which works with the data you have (well label this phase hypothesis)
Make predictions from your hypothesis (if this really is true, then that will happen when I…)
Perform experiments to test those predictions, this generates more data
Really check that the results fit the hypothesis
EVERY point in the method should be documented, every experiment should be verifiable, and others should have enough information about what you did to repeat the experiment. Sometimes other hypothesis might also predict the same experimental results, in which case it should (hopefully) be possible to develop experiments where the results differentiate between the two… Basically, there’s a whole ‘peer review’ process, which means that other scientists get to pick apart your hypothesis, experimental design, data and conclusions before they hypothesis is generally accepted. At that point it becomes a theory.
Rinse, repeat.
String Theory, for example, is often denigrated as being ‘non scientific’ because it doesn’t make verifiable predictions. So maybe it’s better described as being a hypothesis than a theory. Except that it did the string model did ‘predict’ gravity, which is pretty impressive. Except that we all knew about gravity before then, didn’t we? Yes and no. I’ll be getting to String Theory eventually (I hope), but not until I’ve worked through more quatum mechanics here. In any case, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) (which should go online in May of next year) will make all kinds of experiments possible. As I understand it, there is at least one string theory variant which makes predictions suitable for testing in it.
This really should have had a post of it’s own, yesterday, but I didn’t know it was coming. Fans should check it out. I’ll mark my calendar for next year…
* I really should give you more credit, but I don’t know how late at night you’ll be reading this.
Before you ZOMG!!!’ too much, read the article carefully, and note that “Mr. Brooks obviously has access to others” is not exactly a ringing agreement… they’re amused, folks, and think the books a good read.
