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It's called "serious science" but its articles don't even cite sources for their claims. So it's actually less serious than wikipedia. Why should anyone use thi
by jesuscrust 13y ago
It's called "serious science" but its articles don't even cite sources for their claims. So it's actually less serious than wikipedia. Why should anyone use this over wikipedia?
- ivarrr 13y agoI guess cauz it provides knowledge directly from scientists
- jasallen 13y agoThat would be our high priest caste of "scientist" from which all knowing is given. We needn't evidence or studies, people, the 'scientists' said it is so. (FWIW, not a commentary on source link, just on parent comment)
- wrongc0ntinent 13y ago1+1=2[0] Happy now? [0] http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=umhistmath&cc=umhistmath&idno=aat3201.0001.001&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=401 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=umhist...
- kghose 13y agoThat's what science is. Stuff said by scientists, often referring to other stuff said by other scientists before.
- jasallen 13y agoI can't think you really believe that to be true. Your description says you are a neuro-scientist. So science is just something you say? If you say it, it is true? Or do you usually try to provide supporting documentation? Show statistical evidence and provide the parameters under which such figures were gathered? Encourage others to reproduce such results rather than merely relying on 'stuff you said'? In this age research fraud run amok I think "its science cuz scientists said it" is a particularly dangerous viewpoint.
- ivarrr 13y agoDangerous viewpoint is when science is provided by anonymous wikipedia, but not by scientists themselves.
- judk 13y agoIt's how we avoid cult of personality and the fallacy of argument from authority.
- tokipin 13y agoi think you're jumping the gun. he means that science is vetted by consensus. and this particular website has a casual tone and the videos look like layman explanations for people who aren't afraid of getting a teeny bit technical. though, i would agree that citations wouldn't hurt if particular claims are being made, but a lot of the videos look like overviews of generic knowledge
- kghose 13y agoLectures often don't have citations. It breaks up the flow. Basic text books often don't have citations. Citations by themselves are also meaningless. The ideal of science that we are taught boils down to one premise and one premise only: as part of a scientific statement there will be a recipe. By following this recipe we can replicate the findings of the author. This ideal is met less and less the more complex and expensive our science gets. (Thanks for the support and clarification btw!)
- alan_cx 13y agoDoes the phrase "cite source troll" exist?
- lake99 13y agoSome people [1] [2], have coined "Citation Nazi" , analogous to Grammar Nazi. [1] http://www.bigbible.org/blog/2008/05/citation-nazis-get-u2_03.htm http://www.bigbible.org/blog/2008/05/citation-nazis-get-u2_0... [2] http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=2998 http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=2998
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pervycreeper 13y ago> Why should anyone use this over wikipedia? A better comparison would be one with mainstream science journalism.
- toufka 13y agoI don't think this is a serious question here. On the other hand, I think it's an intriguing question in general. There is nearly no way for a PI (head scientist) to cite everything that they say. Knowledge at the forefront is cobbled together from little whispers, tastes of failed experiments, hearings-ons from colleagues, intuition, guesses and literally decades of thinking. And so when speaking abstractly (as these videos are), they are often less wrong than anyone else (Clapper, this is how you use that term...). If you were to press them on specifics, they would become mostly correct and dig up where they got that nugget of wisdom, though simultaneously losing much of the power of generalization. In that sense - the generalities are always slightly suspect, but of far greater quality than anyone else's generalities. And usually the generalities you'd like to hear about from the cutting edge are those that there is no consensus about anyway. So in that respect, I'd say the generalizations of cutting edge scientists are usually the least wrong, rarely perfect, always insightful, and nearly impossible to source. They are the tenuous 'hypothesis' writ large to which their career is attesting. Citation of such is nearly a moot point, as no generalizable experiments yet exist. On the other hand it'd be a great resource if they listed to the side a paper or review about some of the stuff they just spoke of. It'd be trivial for them to name a paper or two that they find dominating their perspectives here.
- ivarrr 13y ago>it'd be a great resource if they listed to the side a paper or review about some of the stuff they just spoke of. Great idea! We'll put it unto the to-do list.