Everything posted by swansont
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Challenging Science - split from The Selfish Gene Theory
I don't see the distinction you are drawing, but yes, Phi answered the question that was asked. So you are bringing up a different topic, and yet claim that Phi gave an incorrect answer. The best you can say is that it is an unanswered question. There is no guarantee that you will be able to collect data for any arbitrary set of conditions, but that is not required. It doesn't stop some people from demanding it, of course, but they often have an agenda (in my experience) Gravity is not questioned, either. You reach a point where the weight of evidence is sufficient that it's a waste of time and effort to confirm the basic theory. You then move on to more advanced topics — but that doesn't mean that you have stopped testing the theory. It just means you have moved on to indirect tests, i.e. where the experiment would fail if the underlying paradigm were wrong, and will only succeed if the new idea (based on that paradigm) is correct. We see this all the time in physics. You don't need to confirm e.g. time dilation with every experiment, but can run experiments that would fail if relativity were wrong. It's a matter prioritizing your limited resources. The smart money is on a well-tested theory being right. You don't abandon that theory based on one outlier of a data point. We didn't chuck relativity in the trash when the Gran Sasso experiment indicated superluminal neutrinos, because we had over 100 years of experiments, combined with a solid theoretical framework, telling us that relativity is correct. By the time we'd gotten there, a contradictory result became an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and a single experiment isn't that. Nevertheless, relativity was being tested with that experiment, even if the purpose of the experiment was something other than testing relativity.
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Challenging Science - split from The Selfish Gene Theory
So in what way does this not agree with Phi's response, that current science is questioned all the time? That the answer is often "yes, current science is consistent with what we know" does not mean that it is not being questioned. We only occasionally find answers that require adjusting the current paradigm.
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Banned/Suspended Users
JoeH banned as yet another mpc755 clone
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Banned/Suspended Users
dhimokritis has been banned as a sockpuppet of Kramer
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Banned/Suspended Users
electricalelectronics has been spam-banned for posting vulgar and pornographic material. Apparently he either had a meltdown after being warned about some marginal posts, or was planning on being a jerk all along. Spam-banning removes all of his posts. Apologies if this disrupts any ongoing discussion, from before he decided to react like a child.
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Banned/Suspended Users
eggman2 has been banned as a sockpuppet of Achilles
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Banned/Suspended Users
Kafei has been banned at his request. We thank him for cutting the red tape, since it would have been a few hours more before other mods could have weighed in and agreed to that action. Also for the lesson that claiming you haven't broken any rules means nothing when you don't actually know/understand what the rules are.
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Banned/Suspended Users
This has been extended indefinitely, for using a sock puppet account to evade a suspension. Pock Suppet has been banned as well.
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Banned/Suspended Users
Bean_Spiller has been banned as a sockpuppet of inSe
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Members in the Mod Queue
Arkangel Daniel has been added, possibly setting record for fewest posts necessary to make the list.
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Banned/Suspended Users
Ted Watson has been banned as a sockpuppet of mpc755 et al.
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Banned/Suspended Users
prashant akerkar and prashantakerkar have been banned. One for sockpuppetry, and since a second account was used to circumvent the mod queue, the other has been banned as well. David Hine's vacation has been extended indefinitely.
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Banned/Suspended Users
wwlad has been banned as a sockpuppet of wlad Taingorz has been suspended a week for massive trolling
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What is Space made of?
No, not so much. If the theory predicts a clock will show a certain amount of elapsed time in an experiment, or the frequency will shift a certain amount, and that's what you measure, there's not a lot of room for "interpretation" Argument from personal incredulity is about as effective as a nerf® vibrator.
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What is Space made of?
Fortunately, your comprehension is not the metric we use. Does a spherical or cylindrical coordinate system curve? GR uses non-Euclidean geometry. It is what describes spacetime, and it is curved. No. What makes it true is that experiment agrees with the theory.
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Cosmo Basics
! Moderator Note No, that's not going to happen. Big Bang is mainstream physics and discussion of it and the lines of evidence that support it can and should be discussed in the science sections. And you should stop hijacking discussions to air your dissatisfaction with the situation.
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Banned/Suspended Users
SamCogar has been suspended 3 days for repeatedly going anywhere and everywhere but on-topic.
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Cosmological Principle
! Moderator Note If you wish to discuss this, start up a thread in the speculations forum. Be sure to bring more evidence and detail than you have presented here. In this thread, it's hijacking. edit: since you've hijacked another thread, it has been split. Make your case there https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/115265-dark-matter-split-from-is-this-the-dark-matter-particle/
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Banned/Suspended Users
Tom O'Neil has been suspended for repeated hijacking
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Derivation of neutrino mass from neutrino scattering...
P = E/c only applies to massless particles
- Political Humor
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Banned/Suspended Users
Ant Sinclair has been suspended three days for personal attacks and thread hijacking
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Banned/Suspended Users
Vvi has been suspended for abusing the PM system
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Comments on Moderation
Threads that end up in the trash are effectively locked; no further posting is allowed. This will happen for a variety of reasons. One common one is hijacking, where the hijacker has violated other rules (or has used up their goodwill) and the thread is not simply split off. (A warning point might accompany such an action, or it may be the last unofficial warning for repeated hijacks) If that's the case, this does not preclude other members from raising that topic of discussion in a new thread. If a thread has been trashed because it's clearly unscientific or otherwise nonsensical, then it should not be resurrected. We trust your judgement in this.
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Banned/Suspended Users
Philostotle has been banned as a sockpuppet of conway