This is like the second or third post I have seen in the past week talking about “belief” in science. Science isn’t about belief, it’s about understanding. Maybe this post should be, “What facts are you questioning because you don’t understand the underlying data?”

Chill science should be questioned otherwise it’s not science

The top comment is a proper debate about leading scientific theories, and the most downvoted comment is somebody who thinks the moon landing is faked, both of which have healthy and honest debate with goodwill from both sides.

This entire post is about Skepticism, which is an integral part of Science. To shut down the conversation would be Anti-Science.

It never was.

My mum has a severe bad back and she had to go on a fortnight physio retreat thing. There were a couple of people there that had a mild back problem, went to a chiropractor and ended up with severe chronic pain. Ill never forget that and have never been to one because I don’t see it as worth the risk

Those two examples were mostly joking, I think by now we don’t need to detect black holes either. We’ve seen them.

I’m going to give you a couple examples:

1. A study showed Dementia brainscans heavily correlating with a form of Plaque. For decades people believed it, but then it was debunked. Someone expressing disbelief in it before the debunking would not have been “flying in the face of everything we know about logic.” They would have been right.

2. A researcher made a study where Aspartame used to sweeten Gatorade correlated with fast developing terminal cancer in mice. The researcher who developed Aspartame shot back by saying they fed the mice daily with the equivalent to 400+ Gatorades. Of course, a French study later showed at large scales people who consumed aspartame were slightly more likely to develop cancer in the following decades, but the outcome was still preferred to the consumption of sugar. This is an example that is much more clearcut in the favor of science, but I think there is still room for skeptics to express doubts.

I think talking about these things in a welcoming environment can both alleviate certain less scientific beliefs while also giving a great idea of how the general public views certain topics. Also it’s fun. There is a guy in here who thinks maybe a dude can fight a bear, not that they should.

The reason for this is that we tend to sleep deeper now than our ancestors. Because of this, we are more prone to roll onto a baby, and not wake up.

It can still be done, you just have to avoid things like alcohol, that stop you waking. You also need to make sure your sleeping position is safe. Explaining this to exhausted parents is unreliable, however. Hence the advice Americans seem to be given.

Fyi, if people want a halfway point, you can get cosleeping cribs. They attach to the side of the bed. Your baby can be close to you, while also eliminating the risk of suffocating them.

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You can read the dawn of everything book which is a very interesting take at a lot of those assumptions which are indeed false. This book goes deep into the ideological bias scientists have when interpreting evidence.

I always assumed that hunter gatherer division was mostly down to the individual, some traits make some better at hunting than others.

I struggle to locate static objects, I for the fucking life of me just can’t see it. I’ll be looking for something and either look right over it or walk past it multiple times

But if I go outside and look in the trees I can spot all the squirrels within seconds. Not like that’s a talent or anything special, but my point is that I’d starve if I had to look for food in the brush, and likely I imagine these types of traits are what defined who did what job, meaning who was good at what, and likely considering lots of hunting was endurance based and not skill based at all, then most adults probably participated to some degree.

I’ve also gone shroom hunting and had to come back empty handed because I can’t see the god damned things.

I don’t think I ever heard that hunters and gatherers would have been divided by gender.

Hunting was mostly running a marathon while tracking until the animal collapses.
No reason to believe women didn’t participate in that.

I am pretty sure that modern archeology agrees with you in at least some ways (know an archeologist, not an archeologist). I don’t have any specific evidence for mammoth trapping but there are these really interesting stone funnel traps that were used to trap gazelle herds https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2011/04/ancient-gazelle-killing-zones.html

Also consider how long humans have walked the earth as hunter gatherers. Agriculture goes back to around 10.000 BCE. The entirety of time between 300.000 BCE and 10.000 BCE was likely (mostly) spent as hunter gatherers. Imagine in how many ways local roles and culture could have differed in that time!

The hunter-gatherer gender division is actually proven wrong now.

Also, hunting mammoths was a very rare activity. I would expect it to be some kind of desperate activity in fact. People weren’t more crazy than we are, they would rather live than to be trampled by a mammoth.

If the moon was made of spare ribs, would you eat it? I would. It’d be delicious!

I call on the FDA, USDA, or whatever agency to use their power to add lunar regolith and all otger moon constituents to the accepted definition of cheese. I also suggest all other countries to just take our word for it since only us and the nazis have set foot on the moon and who are you going to trust? Us or the nazis?

So obscure opinions are made visible and we can talk about them?

If you can’t be questioned, you’re not science.

Economics is purely based on assumption, at it’s core. There’s no proof the assumption is true, and recent trends seem to point towards it being false.

Economics assumes people are rational spenders.

But the “economy” is often just represented by the stock market, which is both not rational, and not a good measure of the economy. It’s a great indicator of how much wealth is being extracted from the working class, but it’s shit at representing how most of the money is being spent.

Economics all makes sense when you understand that they are being paid to produce data backing up the position of the person paying them.

Social “sciences” are the epitome of opinions being pushed as fact via the appeal to authority fallacy. Much of what falls under that label are baseless belief systems built upon towers of lies

I tend to take things very literally so I will say: it’s got a lot more hoops than that comparison. Anybody can become a writer if they have the bare minimum tools, imo. They can’t all be good writers but that hardly matters given the low risks.

To play the devils advocate, almost everywhere these days regulates chiropractors requiring licensure with an organization who themselves require degrees and comprehensive knowledge testing.

For example, Doctors of Chiropractic (admittedly a 3 to 5 year program just like most entry level Engineers) are licensed in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and many U.S. territories. They are also regulated in many other countries throughout the world. Just a random specific organization, the California Board of Chiropractic Examiners require:

1. The Aforementioned Degree

2. NBCE. Chiropractic students must pass parts I, II, III, IV, and physiotherapy of the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners (NBCE) exam to be eligible to apply for a state license.

3. A full criminal background check with fingerprinting

4. CCLE. The California Chiropractic Law Examination (CCLE) is administered through computerized testing on a continuous basis. Once the board determines the applicant is qualified to take the CCLE, the applicant will be notified by letter.

As well as a bunch of associated fees and insurance requirements.

So, no, it’s not as easy as publishing comments on Lemmy.

Do I think there should be non-medical doctors twisting people’s necks and giving X-Rays? No, I goddamn don’t, but we can say that without bullshitting.

Curses! You’ve found me out! I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME! MYA~HEHEHE!

First they came for the black hole detection chambers and I said nothing because I was researching Computer sciences.

Then they came for my HPC clusters

It’s not thought to be genetic otherwise it would be heritable and its clearly not. It would also have self extinguished before too long if it ever got a foothold in the first place.

It’s likely a construction issue having something to do with something that happens in the womb rather than to do with the blueprints.

As a member of the LGBTQ community, I fully agree.

I’ve believed that we are a mix of nature and nurture for as long as I can remember, and it stands to reason that sexuality is a part of that. I also think the vast majority of people are far more sexually fluid than they would admit due to cultural stigma. Not everyone is bi, but I do think there’s a bell curve.

That said. I do also believe that people are born the way they are and the nurture aspect is more of a determining factor for how they express not who they are. I was raised and socialized as a straight male but realized in my 30’s that I’m queer and non-binary. Realizing that put so much context to the struggles I had growing up on a Christian environment and solidified for me that this is who I am, despite how I was nurtured. But had I not gotten out of the religion, I’d have never changed and just silently suffered and struggled until I died. My expression wouldn’t have changed who I am, only how I acted.

You can believe what you want to believe, you didn’t say it in a hateful way at all.

I’m curious about what your opinion would be of trans people going through HRT though. When starting hormone therapy you are warned of potential changes to your sexuality. I am transfem, and prior to transitioning I was bi. Since starting HRT, I tend to have an aversion to men sexually and am more lesbian aligned now.

I guess that is fluidity and environmental factors, but biological factors even still.

Other people meanwhile experience the opposite effect (which is what I expected) or none at all.

First, let me start off by saying that I agree with what I believe your actual premise is (or should be) - that articles in science journals should not be behind paywalls. I’m strictly against the practice, I think it’s a massive scam, and so does everyone I know who does research. I have paid to open source every paper I’ve published. Well, not me personally. But thank you taxpayers for funding me to not only do my work but to make sure you have access to it too. I’ll talk about this more at the end.

With that out of the way, I’d like to mention a couple of things. First, the scam is on the part of the academic journals, not the researchers or the journalists writing the articles. It’s not part of some scam to hide the fact that the journalist is making crap up. If the authors were unwilling or unable to pay the fees for open sourcing their papers ($3-5k when I was doing it several years ago), then you’re either going to be in an institution that has a subscription to the journal or you’re going to have to find some way of acquiring it.

Search for the exact title in quotes. Sometimes the Google Scholar engine will return with the default link to the pay walled page, sometimes it’ll have a link to a prepublication server. Arxiv is one of the more popular ones for physics, math, and computer science of all stripes. Step 2 is to go to the institution web page of the first author. Very often, researchers will keep an updated list of their publications with links to the PDFs. If that still doesn’t work, you can write the author and request the paper. We love those emails. We love it when people read our work, especially when they’re so excited that they wrote to request a copy. None of these involve copyright infringement. That prepub that you get is the same paper (usually but you can confirm with the author if that’s a question), but possibly without the masthead and layout from the journal. It’s still cited the same.

So, why are so many journals behind a paywall? Because the publishers want to monetize what today should be a cost free (or minimal) set of transactions. Here’s what happens:

1. I have an idea for some research. If it’s good and I’m lucky, I get money from the government (or whomever) to do the work, and I use it to pay my expenses (salaries, materials, equipment, whatever). I also get taxed on it by my institution so they can pay the admins and other costs. When submitting a proposal, those are all line items in your budget. If you’re doing expensive research at an expensive institution, it’s pretty trivial to set aside $10-20k for pub fees. If your entire grant was $35k, that’s a lot harder to justify.
2. You write the paper after doing the work. You don’t get paid to write the paper specifically - it’s part of the research that you are doing. The point here is that, unlike book authors, researchers see zero of any money you’d pay for the article. If you do locate a copyrighted copy, you’re not taking a dime out of my pocket. Again, just thrilled someone’s reading the damn thing.
3. You pick a journal and send it in. The journal has a contact list of researchers and their fields, and sends out requests for reviewers. They usually require 2 or 3.
4. The reviewers read the paper making notes on questions they have and recommend revisions before publication. Reviewing is an unpaid service researchers do because we know that’s how it works. The irony is that it challenges the academic notion of the tragedy of the commons. You could be a freeloader and never review, but enough people do it that the system keeps rolling.
5. You revise, reviewers approve, publisher accepts and schedules date. There can be some back and forth here (this is a legitimate publisher expense, but the level of effort and interaction isn’t like with a book editor).
6. Your paper comes out.

As you can see, the role of the publisher is very small in the overall amount of effort put into getting an idea from my head into yours. At one point publishers had an argument that the small circulation numbers for things like The Journal of Theoretical Biology justified their $21k/year institutional subscription price.

And I shouldn’t have saved this til the end, but for the one person who skimmed down to see where all of this was going:

Any science article / press release that cites a paper whether or not you have access to it at least is citing something that has undergone peer review. Peer review can only do so much and journal quality has a wide range, but it’s about the best we have. If it’s a big enough deal to actually matter and the media in question has wide enough reach to care, then it will get back to the author who can then clarify.

To add onto that, whenever a newspaper says “based on the findings of researchers at [Random University]” but they don’t list the citation anywhere at all. That is just evil, but somehow industry standard.

Unfortunately, most scientific papers are behind paywalls, especially the most prestigious journals. So this doesn’t make much sense.

I made a laser radio once - hooked up the transmitter half of it (AM) to a laser pointer, then beamed it across the room to a photoreceptor which then turned that back into sound played from my phone. Was a cool way to learn a bit of electrical engineering