/sci/ - Science & Math

A logical explanation I think

fine argument

OP here, just to clarify I'm not saying that the tools that we are now using in the biological sciences are not based on principals from chemistry and physics.

On the contrary much of what we use now like Electron microscopes and confocal microscopes are based on and use principals from physics and chemistry. They were probably even developed by an engineer or physicist, but it is these tools that are causing an explosion of knowledge and discovery.

So thanks for those guys.

>>951773

Beats confcal microscopes.

>>951785
I'm not sure what this has to do with my argument, but it's a cool picture. Although I'm not sure it is more useful than a confocal.

why hate on biology when astrology exists

I don't like biology because you have to study a lot.

The deeper you get into biology, the more it becomes physics. Same goes for chemistry.

> It's harder to pinpoint a specific time frame chemistry but there is probably more already known than there is left to discover.

Presumption is our natural and original disease.
-Montaigne

>hate biology
fuck yea
>discount it as a science
not at all

biology is just too much of a pain to study in college because its mostly memorization

>>951812
I smell a troll.

Fuck yeah. I just used the physicsfags powder toy to make an ecological simulation (rain shadow...kinda [and then I ruined it]). I was much pleased.

Hmm, what to do next?

>>951831
Come at him bro

haters gonna hate

>>951825
>biology is just too much of a pain to study in college because its mostly memorization

This is kinda true, but we do have general rules. For example, all monomeric GTPases function approximately the same. Oh, and species diversity decreases as you move toward the poles.

Most of the time....

Biology just has a lot of exceptions to our rules.

>>951742
>but there is probably more already known than there is left to discover

I don't agree with OP.

1. I know plenty of physicist (scientists, not underage /sci/fags) that are very interested in biology and work in interdisciplinary teams on biological problems.

2. Most people that really like chem and phys don't like biology because biology is mostly descriptive and because it's too complex to be described by elegant mathematical descriptions like typical physical systems are.

3. Biology is entering its golden age because it's becoming more and more quantitative. This is because of advances in theoretical tools - mathematical modeling and computation, not just experimental tools.

ITT:

>Unscientific juvenile subjective opinions based on the current whim.

>>951742
>Physfags and chemfags are upset that they won't have much new to discover once they're out of school

we still don't know what 95% of the universe's matter is
we still don't haven't got over Planck's Wall

I'm afraid the main questions are not to be ansewered by biologists.

>>951861
>1. I know plenty of physicist (scientists, not underage /sci/fags) that are very interested in biology and work in interdisciplinary teams on biological problems.

Biophysicist here

>2. Most people that really like chem and phys don't like biology because biology is mostly descriptive and because it's too complex to be described by elegant mathematical descriptions like typical physical systems are.

Depends on the field, not all biology is descriptive, physiology is for instance tightly related to chemistry and physics and perfectly quantitative

>3. Biology is entering its golden age because it's becoming more and more quantitative. This is because of advances in theoretical tools - mathematical modeling and computation, not just experimental tools.

Agreed, though the non-quantitative methods used before were also necessary to develop the actual methods.

>>951878
>still haven't

fix'd

moar like they dislike docfags that go into fields because of their parents and bio majors are often similar to them

>>951878
Yea, but biologists don't necessarily care about those questions just like physicists don't care that much about the plasticity of adult stem cells

Quit it with the drug store psychology, OP. Look for conscious motives before trying to extrapolate obscure sub-conscious ones. Wanna know why someone hates something? Ask them.

>Tl;dr Physfags and chemfags are upset that they won't have much new to discover once they're out of school so they have an irrational dislike for biology and related fields which are just now coming into their own.

not much to discover, you say?
[citation needed]

>>951880

I should have said that biology, as most non-biologist know it, is descriptive.

Of course there are quantitative fields (that should have been obvious from point #3.).

Compbiofag here

>>951926
So we should be bullied by what non-biologists think of the field?

>>951942
No, I was just trying to clear up where the hatred is coming from.

>>951926
>I should have said that biology, as most non-biologist know it, is descriptive.

I think tthat there are some problems with how biology is taught at school, too...

>>951925
I'm a nigga!

>>951973
yes you are

chemistry is a very specific form of phsyics and biology is a very specific form of chemistry

>>951989
lol reductionism

>>951983
It's a gay!

>>951989
Reductionism only applies to how the world works, not how to study it. What the body does is based on what our cells do, and what our cells do is based on what happens at the level of the sub-atomic, but no medical researcher uses quantum mechanics to figure out how our organs work and how to treat them (except maybe when designing microscopes and scanners and so on).

>>952051
Reductionism is an approach, i.e. it has EVERYTHING to do with how you study something.

>>952051
You are basically saying hes right.Which he is.

what about this?

http://www.razerzone.com/getimba-share-n-win/uc1947r

My dad was a biomedical scientist.

He considers industry "real science" and research to be "buggering around in a lab".

He is a global warming denier based on the fact there's a few people who deny it. He's also a moon landing denier.

He thinks science and religion are equally valid sources of information.

He thinks that a theory being proven wrong is a failing of science rather than the workings of the scientific method.

He knows nothing of Quantum physics beyond the pop culture "facts" like schrodingers cat. He thinks he understands and uses arguments like "well if electrons don't exist then homeopathy is true".

The only thing he really knows is a load of blood testing methods that he repeated for 13 years, yet acts like the authority on everything scientific.

>>952148
He obviously wasn't a scientist

>>952148
what is a scientist really?

>>952148
Makes me think of that survey among scientists that has 5% believing in young earth creationism. Twas the biomen.
Fascinating developement....

>>952148
>My dad was a biomedical scientist.

Well, this explains everything

>>952195
Fuck you, what does being a biomedical scientist have to do with anything?

>>952197

Biomedical scientist detected.

>>952197

>>952197
70% of "biomedical research" is just lulzy statistics rehashing and looking for correlations, now not all research is like that but a big part of it is chuckle-inducing

>>952215
herp a derp yea actually I technically going to be one. I'm going to be in grad school for an interdisciplinary "biomedical scientist training program" which encompasses the school's biochemistry, genetics, neurosciences, molecular nutrition, physiology and biophysics, pathology, and cell biology, molecular virology, molecular biology, & microbiology PhD programs.

>>952233

I wouldn't classify nearly any of the research that I saw when I visited the school to be anything like that

>>952148

Oh and I forgot:

He argued with a doctor who works at CERN.

He claimed CERN was searching for god.

He thinks the Higgs Boson particle is the "god particle" because some newspaper called it that.

He has no idea what a hadron is.

He doesn't know a single thing about the LHC.

Yet, he was arguing with someone who worked there with nothing in his arsenal aside from a media buzzword.

Oh, and when he was clearly losing, he resorted to "well if electrons can be at opposite ends of the universe and send faster than light messages then how do we know what is going on in the LHC?"

It's like listening to a troll, only he isn't trolling.

>>952215
herp a derp yea actually I'm technically going to be one, or something like that. I'm going to be in grad school for an interdisciplinary "biomedical scientist training program" which encompasses the school's biochemistry, genetics, neurosciences, molecular nutrition, physiology and biophysics, pathology, and cell biology, molecular virology, molecular biology, & microbiology PhD programs.

>>952233

I wouldn't classify nearly any of the research that I saw when I visited the school to be anything like that

I think the OP is just addressing that /sci/ seems to troll Biology the most out of scientific studies, usually saying that it isn't a 'real' science and things like that. I know I hardly ever see any Bio threads around here.

Is it because we don't use math nearly as much?

>>952148
>>952265

This has nothing to do with your dad being a biomedical scientist. It has to do with him being retarded.

>>952265
Even if youre trolling i have no problem imagining this being true based on several encounters of my own. The kind of stuff that laughing and crying at the same time is made of.

>>952273
Well, there are evolution threads now and then. Then it becomes obvious that /sci/ doesn't understand it.

>>952272
>I wouldn't classify nearly any of the research that I saw when I visited the school to be anything like that

No, not in schools luckily. But the major part of biomedical research is done by private companies and foundations.. and then the level usually falls greatly.

One day I had to start my practices in a biomedical company, shit was so crazy I had to ask permission to go to a different company (genetics filed this time).

Unluckily my fellows didn't have much luck with other biomed companies either...

Please make a big effort and get good grades in order to have a staff position at a school or university, you may have a bad surprise otherwise

>>952294
I suppose, but evolution threads always seem sort of basic and always end in a shitstorm for some strange reason or another.

>>952287

I just propose the most insane stuff in respose to him now.

He doesn't accept counter arguments and will twist the opposing argument and then claim the opponent is "backpedalling" when they correct him. For example:

Dad: The most abundant element in the Earth's crust is Aluminium.
Me: No, it's oxygen.
Dad: So you're saying oxygen is a metal?
Me: What? No. You said element, not metal.
Dad: Stop backpedalling, you're wrong!

Might as well go along with it as there's no winning against him.

>>952277
lemme get this straight, I said that because I was amazed at how he did get his degrees with such a mentality, but well it may have been relatively easy if he came from the medicine side.

>>952325
Huh, it's oxygen? I thought it was silicon. Learn something new every day.

>>952265
tell him to watch the lhc rap
very informative

>"God particle"

People who say things like this (one field is more useful or better than another) fail to understand the way science fields are organized. Physics restricts itself to the more small scale phenomena (forces, particles etc), Chemistry is concerned with the medium scale (elements, compounds and their interactions etc) Biology is concerned with the large scale (Structures, like proteins, made out of many molecules, cell physiology and the processes occuring inside the cell, bodily processes etc), Ecology is concerned with the mega scale (populations, communities, ecosystems, biomes etc) and all of these fields, as well as other scientific fields, use math. Everything is intertwined and to say that one field is more "useful" than another betrays not only ignorance of the work done by scientists in other fields but of the inseparable relationship between the fields.

tl;dr You can't study compounds in Chemistry without knowing how small particles behave, you can't study physical phenomena without encountering math and whatever you discover is useless, physiologically, without knowledge of how a cell works.

>>953030

Samefag here,

Also, people who say biology is just memorization are people who took ecology 101 as an elective and are so stupid they think one university course is representative of an entire field or they only know what they're taught in high school biology, which is dumbed down because of how many stupid fucks there are in the public school system.