swansont

People may not check every source. There may not be any indications that the material was misrepresented (whether intentionally or no) or it may jibe with information I already know. As long as the citations check out for things I do check on, I'm willing to trust the poster. If there are no references to check, I am just less prone to give the benefit of the doubt that the material is valid; especially so if there's a history of some information being low in quality. It's an issue of credibility. But when the alarm goes off that there's an issue — and we see a lot of this with "evolution is wrong" or other crackpot posts — it's almost certain I will check up on the sources. They are invariably not credible or have been misrepresented.

If you have the choice, open access is preferable — but there are always libraries. I think it's great if you've gotten to that point in a discussion, because you aren't relying on some science reporter's summary, and if you have that level of motivation you can obtain the material. By providing the reference, you eliminate the problem of figuring out where the material might be located, even if obtaining it still requires some effort. But textbook material is often available from multiple sources, unless it's very specialized information.

I think it boils down to general vs specific knowledge, and areas of proficiency. If someone asks me to cite a reference for F=ma , then my immediate response is going to be "Bite me" because that's general knowledge anyone posting on a science board should have and I have the title of physics expert. In something like that, I am a source. If someone asks me to cite a reference for something I post in, say, a global warming discussion, I should be prepared to provide it: I am not an expert in that area, and there's a decent chance that details of the discussion are not part of general knowledge. And the implication of that is that I read the information somewhere (rather than use it repeatedly) and may not have parsed it properly. So a lot of posters (and I think I'm in this category) will often have already included the citation as part of their post, simply because it's good practice and it saves the effort later, in case it's difficult to find again. And if I've made a claim, the burden is upon me to back it up. If I am indeed wrong — either through misunderstanding or because I've latched on to an unreliable source, I want to correct the situation, and I'm best served by having my sources available to anyone who wants to check them. The problem is that you don't have to be mistaken very often for your credibility to suffer enough that people simply can't trust that you've properly distilled the essence of some article, or are careful about the reliability of the source.

Sione has been suspended for a week for continued rules violations; circumventing a closed thread by posting a response in a new thread (trolling and hijacking)

Sione has been autosuspended for has rapid collection of infractions, including trolling, thread hijacking and ad hominem attacks.

frankcox has been auto-suspended for 3 days for amassing too many infraction points. Thread hijacking, trolling and persistent strawmanning that are the hallmark of that sort of creationist arguments.

Tom Vose has been banned, as a sockpuppet of a previously banned user. (Graviphoton)

Why? Is there an unanswered question here?

big314mp has been banned for a month, at own request, to focus on other tasks.

traveler has been banned for persistent rules violations. Trolling, thread hijacking and circumventing a locked thread by bringing up the material in the hijacked thread.

jerrygg38 has been suspended for persistently invoking his speculative theory in science discussion, outside of its own thread.

Tsadi has been banned for being a sockpuppet of a previously banned user. (Graviphoton)

traveler has been suspended for one week for trolling.

Yellow invisible (to the naked eye) dots have been around for a while http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/secret_forensic.html

Doesn't seem to bother Wile E. Coyote, though.

Motor Daddy has earned an automatic three-day suspension for his latest infractions, for inappropriate remarks and trolling. ————————— Tsolkas has been suspended for two months, for opening a new thread on exactly the same topic as a thread that was locked, and the old thread was locked because the user would not engage in discussion on the topic, ignoring corrections and objections. The suspension is unusually long because the user makes only an occasional hit-and-run post, and a short suspension would have no effect on behavior. —————————————————— Chandrakanth has been banned, after admitting that the user is merely drumming up buzz for a new book, and that no discussion of claims was being contemplated.

Motor Daddy has been suspended for one week for trolling. This includes deliberately dragging out discussions to an absurd degree. This disruptive behavior persisted after being warned several times.

But one must take into account how many people you have to share your lab with.

Having posts moved to Pseudoscience & Speculations is not a punishment; it is meant to provide, for any casual reader, a clear divide between mainstream science and that which is still inadequately tested. By posting you have invited objective criticism, and if your post is moved, consider that one critique. Most posts moved here often fall under one or more of the following: No maths. Science requires specific predictions to be made so that a theory may be tested and falsified if it is wrong. Work that needs but lacks a legitimate mathematical framework is almost certain to be moved. Incomprehensible. Science uses well-defined terminology, so if you have made up your own, or you have equations and calculations but they are not explained so that anyone can understand them, the material will be moved. The burden is upon you to present the material using the framework that already exists. You are contradicting accepted science. Accepted science has a large amount of data supporting it, so if your thesis runs contrary to experimental results, you have basically pre-falsified your work. If you are proposing a new theory, it has to do better than the one it's supplanting. Remember, you have to be consistent with all of what has been observed, not just some small subset of it. No evidence. You have presented no scientific evidence to support your claims. In this context, this means data or observations consistent with your thesis, and also not predicted or explained by accepted science. Vague predictions that can be satisfied by a wide range of results carry little weight. No physical basis A reasoned rationale to justify the hypothesis must exist. A bunch of unconnected numbers or unjustified statements is not science. Obvious errors. A quick inspection shows statements that are not true. Your conclusion can't be valid if based on a flawed argument. It's not science. Science concerns itself with empirically describing how nature behaves. There must be a means by which the hypothesis can be proven false. Philosophy and metaphysics are separate topics, and for these purposes, considered speculation. I have evidence, from this book and article Books, especially by someone writing outside of their area of expertise, and popular articles, are not peer-reviewed. Anybody can write them. They often carry little or no weight in a discussion. When you are asked for a citation to support a claim, these are not what are being requested. Edit (10/20/10): X is wrong! posts are likely candidates to be moved, if X is a well-established theory, such as relativity, quantum mechanics or evolution. Such posts typically ignore the vast amount of evidence in support of the theories, and fail to cite any actual contradictory experimental evidence. Edit (10/4/16): We generally draw a distinction between posts that ask a question and posts that make an assertion that is contrary to mainstream science. "Is the moon made of green cheese?" is a question that can be addressed by science, and so it is legitimate to post in the appropriate science subforum. The answer happens to be no, and we have evidence that can be cited to support that answer. "The moon is made of green cheese!" is an assertion, and something that would be moved to speculations, where it would be refuted, though the author would be expected to post evidence in support of his/her claim.

Graviphoton suspended for seven days for personal attacks/flaming.

DavyJonesLoquet suspended (3 days) for multiple counts of thread hijacking.

graviphoton suspended for three days for a combination of recent violations: flaming, thread hijacking, and copyright violation

tsolkas suspended for one week for continued trolling; violations of rule 2.8: posting essentially duplicate messages without engaging in discussion of the original topic.

tsolkas has been suspended for repeated violations of rule 2.8: posting without engaging in discussion of the original topic

Zephir again suspended for multiple rules violations, 2.3.5b and 2.5. Two weeks