/sci/ - Science & Math

not at all

>>6479144
How do you know for sure?

>>6479133
It is not censored. The scientific method is just not taught in most public schools.

Everyone graduates. Failing students is racist, and it gets your funding cut.

>>6479144
>>6479166
Rind et al. have something to say about that. Also, what about censorship by the public? For example J.P. Rushton. I read somewhere that a study was going to come out that showed pigs are highly aware and self-aware and the meat industry paid off the scientists. This happens with climate change science as well.

Bump for a potentially interesting thread.

>>6479144
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh you pathetic little idiot. Keep believing that.

>>6479166
Most schools? Where I am, it is required in all schools.

>>6479144
hick states teaching ID/creationism?

>>6479170
If you really looked at Rushton's works, you'd know his methodology is totally idiotic and twisted to fit his narrative

>>6479314
>>6479297

> not knowing what censorship is

>2014
>internet
>braindead hippies think they don't understand science because of govt censorship conspiracy.

holy fuck, this thread makes me reconsider Hitler

>>6479658
No, they don't understand science because it's racist to teach something that might fail a student and get the schools funding cut even more.

>>6479296
> Where I am, it is required in all schools.
Not in American public schools. It depends on where you are. Some public schools can get away with teaching it, but some schools have to graduate every student they can, no matter what. They'll even graduate students who are in prison.

>>6479680

garbage in - garbage out. The crappy system of education funding has little to do with shit pedagogy and a lot to do with the culture which openly mocks intellectuals and salutes "folks".

They read Lockhart's Lament, nod, and proceed to wipe their ass with it. But who the fuck am I kidding? -" they read "?

>>6479731
When you HAVE TO graduate students or your funding gets cut, then it it certainly is the fault of "The crappy system of education funding".

Oh, wait. Are you blaming culture? You know, blacks get pissed when you say they didn't know what they were doing when they didn't study in school.

You're racist.

The real problem is with easy access to a large amount of technical data every layman figures themselves an expert after reading up online. The problem is they only get bits and pieces without context. And they learn from non accredited venues. Then they dive in and misinterpret scientific findings. Can't tell you how many times otherwise level headed people tell me how some plant from China can cure all cancer but the USA government in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry is hiding it from the people. How vaccines cause autism. How vitamin C cures colds. How natural supplement FSKC#51034124 improves cognitive abilities and health and it makes your hair grow and it prevents cancer and here is all the research papers, look official journal articles claiming this is all true.

Listen, no.

>>6479508
>If you really looked at Rushton's works, you'd know his methodology is totally idiotic and twisted to fit his narrative

Perhaps the 'expert' above can tell us what is wrong with e.g.:

Rushton, J. Philippe, Jelena Čvorović, and Trudy Ann Bons. "General mental ability in South Asians: Data from three Roma (Gypsy) communities in Serbia." Intelligence 35.1 (2007): 1-12.

>>6479777
That is more related to the fact that they don't learn the scientific method in school. If they actually did learn it, then they would be able to consider what they are doing.

>>6479789
Very few people understand statistics, or really any higher level math. The idea that you are 1% less likely to develop cancer of X variety looks good, but many people don't realize that means their chances go from 1:100,000 to 1:99,000. A statistically insignificant amount can be made to look more significant with clever (unethical) marketing.

>>6479777
No not at all. Real research is immensely complicated to follow if you are a scientist and are reading out of your field, forget about it if you aren't even a scientist. It's not as simple as having grounded logic and "correlation not causation".

In fact I'm complaining about all the smarties that did pay attention in school, they're the ones that think they have it all figured out. They come up with such weird things trying to make order out of all the information in their head that they confuse me to the point I forget what the hell we were arguing about.

>>6479789
meant >>6479820

>>6479789
"the scientific method"
still can't get over the fact that people think this is like a well-defined thing you can be in possession of and adhere to

there's been like, a couple hundred scientific epistemological arguments for like a minute

>>6479837
It actually kind of is a well-defined thing. The only people that don't understand what the scientific method entails are either people that refuse to learn it, or social "scientists" that honestly think their fields of study are just as valuable as the hard sciences. Here's the cliff notes version:
Ask a Question
Do Background Research
Construct a Hypothesis
Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
Communicate Your Results

An important part of that is the understanding that if your experimental data doesn't fit your hypothesis or theory, then your hypothesis or theory is flawed. You then need to adjust your hypothesis, run another experiment, and check those results. Your experiments should not be designed to confirm your opinion, they should actually test the validity of your ideas.

>>6479170
Rind et al. isn't really censored, it's just controversial. That said people on both sides of it tend to misinterpret the results to be stronger than they actually are so most times you see it cited in an argument it's being applied incorrectly.

J.P. Rushton is now considered pretty much pseudoscience from before we had proper genetics research. Even the concept of "race" itself is considered unscientific because you can't rigorously define it in a consistent way that isn't just totally arbitrary.

That said there is censorship, here's some going on right now that scientists are fighting against.

http://www.endsciencecensorship.org/

>>6479680
What the fuck are you talking about you idiot? Are you one of those /pol/esmokers who think common core is some conspiracy by jews to hold society back?

>>6479807
>Very few people understand statistics, or really any higher level math

>Implying statistics are "higher level math".
>Implying statistics are even math.

mfw

The rest of the stuff you said is a good point though and I have no problem with it.

>>6479892
It tends to be higher level math than most people with a B.A. ever get to.

>>6479897
It's not math. You don't prove theorems through statistical methods.

>>6479133
>Do you have the English translation?
Physik der Zeit Reise-Vorschläge und Experimente
Physics of Time Travel-Suggestions/Proposals and Experimets

a theoretical physics book?

>>6479166
>Everyone graduates.

LAUSD has like a 40% dropout rate.

There's a taboo in racial studies and eugenics.
Sure you can find information about them but a lot of scientists will say "this is bullshit, it is AGAINST Human dignity" And blablabla.
Good luck talking about these topics in academia, it's practically a death sentence.

>>6479133

>>6479915
This is what people who don't know anything about modern genetics actually think.

>>6479875
You think you can publish if your experimental data doesn't fit your hypothesis?

Ok, example, you read a research paper that says that there is an increase in some cancer gene expression (p<.00000000001) in xxx cell line and in tumor grafted yyyy mice. Their drug down regulates expression in xxx cell line but not zzz cell line, and increases life expectancy of yyyy mice.


Everything is kosher, stats, modest conclusions. Drug is actually an herbal supplement available at 711. Questions non scientists will be oblivious to that make all the damned difference: what cell lines specifically were used -what is the typical cell line for these types of experiments and are they using it, how is expression assayed, what were the controls not for +drug -drug but to account for differences between sample preps, tumor grafted mice is already a let down because it's not a great model for in vivo experiments. What about expression of other genes, maybe some are upregulated increasing cancer incidence, is that why they didn't use the typically used cell line because that's the case? And most importantly, does this make sense in the context of current research on the subject? If not, what's the impact factor of the journal, what lab did it come from, who are the authors, what is their reputation.


Can't expect a layman to sit there pouring over every detail, but this is how it's done. If you read some woman's blog claiming to be an expert and she misinterprets everything telling you it's undeniable that vaccines=autism, you're going to start believing her. Because she's going to teach you how to understand the data the way she does. But her way is wrong. Anyone that says so, however, is part of the conspiracy machine.

>>6479919
I know we are calling it in another way, faggot.
But if you begin to call it the way it's really called "EUGENICS" your career is over.
Am i lying?

>>6479915
It isn't a “death sentence”, it is a “you are fucking dumb!” sentence.

This applies to all retarded debunked bullshit, including creationism, flat earth, eugenics, etc.

If you believe in retarded bullshit, then scientists with think you are retarded and treat you as retarded. Simple as that.

>>6479936
I don't even know where the fuck your reasoning is even coming from or going. Does your understanding of genetics research come from the 1930s or from youtube videos? I mean seriously, what the fuck is "racial studies"?

>>6479936
Yes, your scientific career is over as soon as you talk about retarded bullshit.

It destroys your credibility.

>>6479938
>>6479944
>Retarded bullshit

I'm implying you are not a troll...
So tell me, scientifically why it is stupid?

>>6479875
uh so like as a brief introduction to the world of scientific epistemology: ex post facto research design (no hypothesis, no experiment, big data analysis) is EXTREMELY influential right now, especially in machine learning, where it had led to a minor revolution in natural language processing

here's peter norvig in a giant angry debate with noam chomsky as to whether this design constitutes a "valid" scientific method (for various definitions of valid)
http://norvig.com/chomsky.html

many data scientists are now arguing from a bayesianist perspective that correlation == causation, or perhaps more accurately that causation can't be known except by correlation. this is not some abstruse philosophy debate, this is angry arguments data scientists have over wine at conferences

>>6479934
>Can't expect a layman to sit there pouring over every detail, but this is how it's done. If you read some woman's blog claiming to be an expert and she misinterprets everything telling you it's undeniable that vaccines=autism, you're going to start believing her. Because she's going to teach you how to understand the data the way she does. But her way is wrong. Anyone that says so, however, is part of the conspiracy machine.

This, it's basically how the entirety of /pol/ and every other circle jerking group of non-scientists functions. People don't understand scientific rigor and basic logic. They don't understand what types of conclusions you can reach and which types you can't given some data. They don't understand how easy it is to be wrong and how difficult it is to truly know something.

>>6479951
honestly you need to read about a dozen papers in a field at absolute minimum before you're qualified to comment on them at more than a "gee whiz" level

>>6479936
Words have both denotations and connotations.

Eugenics, meaning the modification of genes/the gene pool to benefit individuals/humanity, then yes there's research into that.

But nobody mentions it because the connotation is trying to do that by sterilizing bunch of people and generally being horrible.

Which means that if you go around talking about eugenics it's going to sound terrible to uninformed people (read, a large percentage of the population), so people don't want you to do that.

Also, with how the meaning of words can change over time, the second "connotative" definition involving killing/serializing people is becoming more and more accepted as the standard one and thus "correct." Nobody wants to have to explain what they really mean every time they use a word and still be misinterpreted.

>>6479949
You want to know why creationism is retarded?

Why Flat earth ideas are retarded?

Why Eugenics are retarded?


Really? You don't know this stuff? Why didn't you learn this basic shit in highschool? Or are you from the third world?

>>6479951
>People don't understand scientific rigor and basic logic

Right, but just to clarify, my point is it has nothing to do with logic. I wouldn't tell a plumber how to do his job, he's been looking at pipes longer than I have, he has tacit knowledge built on years of experience.

Why then do so many people today think they can understand what scientists do without spending the 8 years for all the degrees.

>>6479958
Why is eugenics retarded?

(I agree with the other two, of course)

>>6479878
>J.P. Rushton is now considered pretty much pseudoscience from before we had proper genetics research.

People like calling results they don't find palatable ("inconvenient truths") pseudoscience because that's their last line of defense when they're unable to refute the science. (Name-calling itself being pseudoscientific.)

>Even the concept of "race" itself is considered unscientific because you can't rigorously define it in a consistent way that isn't just totally arbitrary.

Genetic clustering analysis works just fine. Unless of course if you think raising k to 4 and then stopping because allowing for more than four clusters did not yield stable results is "arbitrary":
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372

We have even started to identify some important alleles (related to academic performance and IQ) and these have much higher frequencies among Europeans and East-Asians than Sub-Saharan Africans:

>Frequencies of 10 SNPs found to be associated with educational attainment

>East Asian populations (Japanese, Chinese) have the highest average frequency of beneficial alleles (39%), followed by Europeans (35.5%) and sub-Saharan Africans (16.4%).

http://www.ibc7.org/article/journal_v.php?sid=312

Since this research is too "controversial" for the west, we'll have to wait for Beijing Genomics Institute to get to the bottom of it for us though. But I guess population genetics is the new "pseudoscience"...

>>6479949
I'm not that guy but there's a ton of reasons. Since the turn of the millennium we've made huge strides in genetic research. As it turns out the old notions of "race" are more or less unfounded, genetics are much more complex than people thought back then and people are much more similar than anyone expected. Race can't even be rigorously defined without using circular logic + non-convergent clustering algorithms. Human rates of speciation are measured in millions of years. Epigenetics are real. I could go on and on but the real problem, the fundamental problem, is that it works against the principle of natural selection. We don't know what traits a human 100,000 years from now will need to survive. It's like asking a kindergartner what career they want to go into when they grow up and expecting a precise answer, only much much worse.

>>6479949
It is a shame that you didn't pay attention in middle school. But there is hope! Neil Degrasse Tyson has a new show that goes over basic middle school science for you. Good luck! Episodes free online!

http://www.cosmosontv.com/watch/222974531915

>>6479984
>As it turns out the old notions of "race" are more or less unfounded
>more or less unfounded

I do not grasp this.

>is that it works against the principle of natural selection

How so?

>>6479977
>Genetic clustering analysis
Clustering algorithms are non-convergent. If you train the algorithm again on the very same data set you will get a different set of clusters. It's worse if you change the data-set. Clustering algorithms aren't designed for this kind of thing. Furthermore, there is no 1:1 correlation between the clusters produced in clustering algorithms and the old notions of races. I like that you then proceed to misinterpret results to be much stronger than they actually are.

Population genetics is not "racial studies", please learn to scientific rigor.

>>6479977
Here's a live example of what I'm talking about. An expert in genetics of race. He has a phd in this, you should read his thesis, it's brilliant!

>>6479997
>Population genetics is not "racial studies", please learn to scientific rigor

>scientific rigor

Don't you mean euphemistic rigor?

>>6479977
>People like calling results they don't find palatable ("inconvenient truths") pseudoscience because that's their last line of defense when they're unable to refute the science. (Name-calling itself being pseudoscientific.)

No, it's being called pseudoscientific because he didn't do the science right. There are numerous, very good rebuttals of the "science" being published, which clearly show why it is inaccurate. A few examples include:
>Citing a fucking internet article from Penthouse and a porn book as references to scientific literature.
>Failing to account for and generally ignoring a variety of well-known factors that would have had serious impacts on his work if he left them in, essentially leaving way too many uncontrolled for variables for anything to be not junk.
>Use of non-similar groups as test samples.


>Everything else you said.
You're "understanding" of everything you just said is seriously flawed.

>>6479994
>>more or less unfounded
>I do not grasp this.

That's fair. By that I mean that there have also been large strides in population genetics and though the public often confuses them they aren't the same thing.

>>6479994
>How so?

Natural selection is basically just "whatever lives long enough to pass on its genes". It doesn't just suit the most "optimized" version of an organism for the current state of the world. Here's a simple though somewhat contrived example, compare a wooly mammoth and an elephant. Would a wooly mammoth be able to thrive in our modern era? If it did, it would definitely not be the optimal organism of that type. A eugenics program might suggest wiping it out and replacing it with elephants. However, if there were to be a sudden shift in the ecosystem that brought on much colder weather or even an ice age the tables would flip and the wooly mammoth would be the better organism.

>>6480001
Rushton is one of those retarded people who basically lost all his scientific cred for talking retarded bullshit (see >>6479938 ) . He acted retarded so people now treat his as retarded. His math is complete shit and his ideas are even worse. They have been debunked ad infinium already, and are not taken seriously by actual biologists.

The only people that buy his bullshit are racists who don’t have an education past high school (they are just trying to justify a pre convinced bias). Honestly kid, his story is no different from a creationist. It is just retarded nonsense.

Don’t believe me? Go to your local university, ask the biologists about him and watch as they laugh at your face.

If he can't even convince his colleagues (actual biology experts) of his piss poor ideas, why is he able to convince a complete biology layman like you? Are you just naturally gullible?

WTF is wrong with your reasoning ability son?

>>6480054
>>Citing a fucking internet article from Penthouse and a porn book as references to scientific literature.

You mean citing data from the Kinsey Institute published in Forum (pic related)? Data that is only somewhat relevant to his r/K hypothesis and a complete red herring to the race and intelligence issue (the actual topic)? That data?

Are you saying the Kinsey Institute data on phallic size was fabricated or something? (I don't know nor care tbh.)

>>Failing to account for and generally ignoring a variety of well-known factors that would have had serious impacts on his work if he left them in, essentially leaving way too many uncontrolled for variables for anything to be not junk.
>>Use of non-similar groups as test samples.

Funny how you don't elaborate on these. How is for instance Rushton & Jensen, 2005 junk?

>>6480066
That was my point, you missed the sarcasm. Let's not be so quick to name calling.

>>6480084
>You mean citing data from the Kinsey Institute published in Forum (pic related)?

I read the criticism in a critique of his work, and it did not specify which article exactly (though it cited an article that probably had more detail but I couldn't find it).

>Funny how you don't elaborate on these. How is for instance Rushton & Jensen, 2005 junk?

http://medicine.yale.edu/labs/kidd/www/440.pdf

>>6480084
>wanting to debate creationism

Really kid? Honestly? Various anons have given you examples of the retarded shit that Ruston does. And you still want more? Read the paper you just mentioned, it is clear as day, see it for yourself. There is direct evidence of:

>Failing to account for and generally ignoring a variety of well-known factors

>Use of non-similar groups as test samples

>Use of nonsensical math techniques

>Use of meaningless debunked biological concepts

>Faulty use of mathematical induction

And this is just a few examples of Ruston’s obvious foolishness. Why can’t you understand this? Why do you seem to need someone to hold your goddam hand and go through ever fucking detail with you? Why do you not understand the answers the Anons are giving you?

That is the fundamental problem isn’t it. You aren’t a scientist, you aren’t a biologist, you aren’t a mathematician, hell you aren’t even a decent critical thinker. You literally have no fucking clue what you re talking about. You would fail even the most basic of college biology tests, yet you want to discuss shit you honestly don’t have the ability to understand at this moment. You want to discuss shit that is just way above your head (look at the goddam thread kid). You don’t know shit. You literally can’t understand the answers people are telling you! You are literally incapable of discussing actual biology and genetics, because you know jack shit about biology and genetics!

So, get your head out of your ass, and go pick up an “intro to genetics” book (a “intro to biology” book too). As soon as you actually educate yourself on even the most basic shit, it will be completely clear how foolish this Ruston creationism nonsense is. Good luck!

>>6480307
this

>>6480268
>http://medicine.yale.edu/labs/kidd/www/440.pdf

You do realize the article you linked (Jan 2005) was published almost a year before Rushton & Jensen, 2005 (Nov 2005)?

The abstract is basically a combination of Lewontin's fallacy and other outdated notions. (Proper "races" are a red herring too, all it takes for Rushton's race differences in intelligence to exist is for Whites (think Northern Europeans or even CEU) and Blacks (think Sub-Saharan Africans or even YRI) to be disparate genetic populations and they are.)

As for:
>No gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence

This is really outdated. Davies et al, 2011 established through GWAS that narrow-sense heritability for intelligence is at least .5 (probably higher):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21826061

(Broad-sense is the one that's roughly .8.)

As for specific alleles:

>Two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) whose associations with intelligence seem to be robust because they have been replicated in several independent studies were chosen as representative of intelligence increasing alleles.

>The first is rs236330, located within gene FNBP1L, whose significant association with general intelligence has been reported in two separate studies (Davies et al, 2011; Benyamin et al, 2013). This gene is strongly expressed in neurons, including. hippocampal neurons and developing brains, where it regulates neuronal morphology (Davies et al, 2011).

>The second SNP is rs324650. It was included because its association with IQ has been replicated in four association studies (Comings et al, 2003; Dick et al, 2007; Gosso et al, 2006, 2007). This SNP is located in the gene CHRM2 (cholinergic receptor, muscarinic #2), which is involved in neuronal excitability, synaptic plasticity and feedback regulation of acetylcholine release.

http://www.ibc7.org/article/journal_v.php?sid=312

>>6480307
I read it years ago. The meta-analysis is fine.

Ad hominem seems to be all you got.

>>6480342
>Northern Europeans
(as in Non-Southern Europeans btw)

>>6479170
> the meat industry paid off the scientists
Research grants to some are considered bribes to others.

>>6480123
> Let's not be so quick to name calling.
Welcome to 4chan.

>>6480342
>all it takes for Rushton's race differences in intelligence to exist is for Whites (think Northern Europeans or even CEU) and Blacks (think Sub-Saharan Africans or even YRI) to be disparate genetic populations and they are.)

Holy shit you really don't understand what you're talking about even a little bit.

>>6479968
it implies we understand how to breed for favourable traits while avoiding the unfavorable ones.

Protip: we don't

Give china 20 years and we will though

>>6479658
>wants to get rid of brain dead people's conceptions of censorship.
>considers a regime known for censorship.

wut.

>>6480417
i see nothing ironic about it. There's no "want to get rid of censorship" as he perceives there to be none. ponyfag go plz

>>6480421
I'd rather live in a country where people think censorship exists when it doesn't versus one where they don't think it exists and it does.

I understand that the anon doesn't "want to get rid of censorship" but he is clearly addressing the fact people "think" there it exists because they don't know how to find information for themselves.

It'd be like me saying, holy fuck I wish these people would understand how technology impacts the earth's ability to sustain the human population. Maybe Malthus has a point.

Id say its impossible to know for sure but I woulf say that its very probable that the government hides all sorts of knowledge from us. Scientific knowledge? Maybe a little but its really a futile effort in my opinion.

If someone wants to learn something, they will learn it. There are some incredibly smart people out there.

Realistically they probably just keep the potentially dangerous knowledge go themselves. Like how to split an atom or some shit.

>>6480366

>it implies we understand how to breed for favourable traits while avoiding the unfavorable ones.

>Protip: we don't

? it's really not that hard

>>6479997
Averages have been invented and results from many different databases strongly agree on the general clusters. So while you are technically correct, you are wrong about the interpretation.

There is no requirement of any 1:1 'correlation' (that's now how correlations work, they come in the range [-1:1]). There is pretty good agreement from pre-genomic era racial groupings to the results from protein, genome analysis, etc.

Again, this stuff is well-known to anyone who wants to know. It's not exactly hidden away.

>>6480342
More genes have been found since that Piffer paper. Newer findings give similar results:

http://openpsych.net/OBG/2014/04/the-genetic-correlation-between-educational-attainment-intracranial-volume-and-iq-is-due-to-recent-polygenic-selection-on-general-cognitive-ability/

>>6479296
>Implying the cientific method was used with global warming

>>6479133
>How censored is scientific knowledge in U.S?

"Censorship" is often a battle cry for crank scientists who have had their stuff rejected because it's so far out there. Just look at flat-earth guys, etc. That being said, while there has been fake science put out to combat real science (such as the stuff put out by the tobacco industry when people were starting to figure out how shitty smoking is for health) but I can't see wide scale censorship in the US being very possible.

>>6480916
>Implying you can predict million of years into the future.

We as human have only become scientifically aware in the past 500 years (Since the Renaissance age). Everything we know and consider fact is merely repetitive observations that we have come to record and expect.But remember, while we can extrapolate a few steps forward no one can predict the future in the long run.

>Read complex systems and chaos theory on Wikipedia.

To expand on little we human know, we can't even guarantee whether the laws of physics will remain constant or whether they will collapse in the minute and everything will be restored. As crazy as that may sound. Its true. Science only records observations of patterns nothing else.

Thus, you are mistaken if you think that you know what nature will favor in the distant future.There are just too many factors.

TL;DR: You're are better off predicting the stock market than predicting what genes nature will favor in the long run. In fact, its possible that all humans will selected out one day despite how superior you think you are.

>>6479878
>Even the concept of "race" itself is considered unscientific because you can't rigorously define it in a consistent way that isn't just totally arbitrary.

>implying there exists no consisten taxonomy of human skullshapes

>implying there exist no such things as racially prevalent conditions and symptom

but anon, that's just genetics and heredity

well yes dumfuck that's how evolution works

>>6481121
That's different from how we think of "race" though, which is a social construct. There do exist ethnicities/demographics or what have you, but those aren't the same thing as race.

>>6481128
Use whatever euphemism you want for race, genetic cluster, population, ancestry group, breeding population, subspecies, ...

>>6481128
>That's different from how we think of "race" though, which is a social construct.
SOCIOLOGIST PLEASE GO.

No anon, thats EXACTLY what normal people(with the exception of activists and SJWs) mean when they talk about race. Not cancerous 'cultures' that ascociate based on shared phenotypes and certain responses to milk.
Also, race-ism has nothing to do with contexts of power. Thats exclusively an academic definition. Normally the term just means discrimination based on race(IE, ethnicities/demographics)