Reply to: Keep your opinions to yourself sir!

[malvolio]

This is how the "scientific method" is described at middle/high school as a caricature and, therefore, mostly how the general public understands it. It isn't how science actually works, not remotely. Science is a very messy process, regardless of discipline, and not linear at all in the way this caricature implies; also, "proofs" have very different meanings in different contexts (e.g., mathematical proofs in closed systems vs. statistical/sigma levels in open systems) and little meaning in many contexts where "proof" isn't even a relevant goal.

Right. So my early career in applied microbiology and biomedical research was all wrong then and all my training was based on the wrong process. Fair enough. I'm well aware of the practical difficulties in research thanks, having observed many unexpected results in the various lab experiments.

But what makes you think I'm trying to make any kind of final statement. Perhaps I'm just highlighting the absurdities in the earlier posts.

[NigelJK]

Managed to skip the bit where I pointed out the peer reviewed experiment that proved you lived longer on Fat alone than either Carbs or Proteins alone I notice.

I can see from that you failed to apply the most primitive of scientific reasoning to your argument. Remember it's Test, Results, Conclusion.

Contrary to the the biblical proverb: you can live on meat alone. You can not live on wheat alone.

[jamesbrown]

The chain is observation, theory, experimentation, hypothesis, demonstration, proof, fact.

This is how the "scientific method" is described at middle/high school as a caricature and, therefore, mostly how the general public understands it. It isn't how science actually works, not remotely. Science is a very messy process, regardless of discipline, and not linear at all in the way this caricature implies; also, "proofs" have very different meanings in different contexts (e.g., mathematical proofs in closed systems vs. statistical/sigma levels in open systems) and little meaning in many contexts where "proof" isn't even a relevant goal.

[d000hg]

When something occurs over a timescale too long to perform an experiment is tricky too. Evolution being a good example - you can't really make a hypothesis. And of course cosmology. You can't watch a star for 10 million years but you can find one that (as far as you can tell) is 10 million years older but otherwise identical. 'Proof' being a very specific thing as you know, but it gets tossed around "that isn't proven" to support whatever argument someone wants to make. Evolution isn't proven, neither is global warming or God so they are all equally valid from a scientific standpoint, yada yada.

[malvolio]

You can't 'prove' many real life things in the formal sense. You can only draw empirical conclusions. Every cow you investigate will produce less food than it consumes because cows are not 100% efficient but you can't write a formal proof of a cow.
This is the sort of reasoning people use when they say "evolution is just a theory", or "you've never seen a black hole so you can't prove they are real".
It's great for trolls and deniers who don't understand science but it doesn't help a great deal.

You think I was being serious? There is always fun to be had with semantics.

But yes, you can prove things. That chain of actions I posted cna and will lead to an inescapable truth. It works for Chemistry and macro-physics, for example, but it doesn't work for Biology because you always run into something that doesn't apparently really make sense or micro-physics because we don't yet have the tools to turn theory into hypothesis at that level.

[d000hg]

Yes, but up until about 400 years ago it was merely an observation, nobody knew why. And even now, it is only just beginning to gain a demonstrable scientific explanation.

The chain is observation, theory, experimentation, hypothesis, demonstration, proof, fact. Your chosen argument is actually still at the observation stage.

HTH. BIDI...

You can't 'prove' many real life things in the formal sense. You can only draw empirical conclusions. Every cow you investigate will produce less food than it consumes because cows are not 100% efficient but you can't write a formal proof of a cow.
This is the sort of reasoning people use when they say "evolution is just a theory", or "you've never seen a black hole so you can't prove they are real".
It's great for trolls and deniers who don't understand science but it doesn't help a great deal.

[malvolio]

It's the accepted truth of the entire farming community for centuries. A farmer doesn't look to theoretical studies, he knows how many tons of wheat he can harvest from his land and he knows how many sheep/cows/goats he can support on it. Find yourself an almanac.

If you want something that is accepted science, well ask yourself if the food chain is lossless? Nope, entropy. If it's not lossless, then every level in the food chain means your return is smaller - a cow eats as much food as 20 people but only provides enough food to feed 10 (or whatever).
This is why your silly "show me a peer reviewed study on the very specific question I ask" shows a fundamental lack of scientific understanding. From first principles some things are self-evident. We don't have studies "if I throw rocks in the air will they come back down" because we already answered it.

Boring now. Go get yourself some chickens for your garden and do some empirical research. Come back in a couple of years.

Yes, but up until about 400 years ago it was merely an observation, nobody knew why. And even now, it is only just beginning to gain a demonstrable scientific explanation.

The chain is observation, theory, experimentation, hypothesis, demonstration, proof, fact. Your chosen argument is actually still at the observation stage.

HTH. BIDI...

[d000hg]

Asserting your opinion as truth is also a troll tactic.

It's the accepted truth of the entire farming community for centuries. A farmer doesn't look to theoretical studies, he knows how many tons of wheat he can harvest from his land and he knows how many sheep/cows/goats he can support on it. Find yourself an almanac.

If you want something that is accepted science, well ask yourself if the food chain is lossless? Nope, entropy. If it's not lossless, then every level in the food chain means your return is smaller - a cow eats as much food as 20 people but only provides enough food to feed 10 (or whatever).
This is why your silly "show me a peer reviewed study on the very specific question I ask" shows a fundamental lack of scientific understanding. From first principles some things are self-evident. We don't have studies "if I throw rocks in the air will they come back down" because we already answered it.

Boring now. Go get yourself some chickens for your garden and do some empirical research. Come back in a couple of years.

[NigelJK]

Asserting your opinion as truth is also a troll tactic.

To my knowledge the only peer reviewed experiment on nutrition was conducted at the outbreak of WWII. It proved, in mice, that deprived of each of Carbs, Fat and Proteins. The mice deprived of Carbs and Proteins died a lot quicker than those deprived of Fat.

Setting fire to foodstuff to give the calories is an outdated approach to nutrition.

[d000hg]

So you don't have any then? ?

Do you have scientific studies that show fire is hot, trapping you hand in a car door hurts?

The "show me proof" line is one of the most basic troll lines, come on at least make an effort.

[NigelJK]

Are you genuinely this thick? How many calories does a field of wheat provide? How many cows/sheep can be supported on that field? Cow many calories do you get from a cow.

So you don't have any then? Thouth so. Repeating the food industry mantra about Calories just shows how far from the tree you have fallen.

See if you can guess which nutrient, the lack of which will kill you quickest, is?

[OwlHoot]

Catch-22. The person leading the discussion has a limited and not-fully informed view of the world, plus the usual prejudices of the modern Left (I know many teachers, they are almost all cast from the same mould). As a proto-Neanderthal grammar school pupil myself, I was involved in many discussions and debates, but I was taught by teachers who had been out in the real world (almost all would have done National Service at the very least) and were working to a much looser curriculum that they could deliver in any way they thought best.

Yes, there was rote learning but only of the basic mechanics of words and arithmetic which were then used to understand deeper subjects. They did no harm since they were not the end objective unlike, say, schools ipre-1939. Mr Gradgrind was redundant a long time ago.

So yes, I admit my views are almost certainly well out of date in the modern world; but I suggest I had a far better and wider education than any current 20-year old.

The snag is there are so many career opportunities for bright and/or competent people these days, especially women, that were not available say 50 or more years ago that teaching as a profession no longer has the cachet or talent pool to draw on that it once did.

So, on average, teachers these days are probably are not as competent as they once were, although no doubt some are and of course there were some pretty dire teachers in the past as well.

Maybe advances in AI and VR will soon lead to a resurgence of better quality "cyber assisted" teaching.

[SueEllen]

Thing is in universities you only hear the vocal minority, everyone else is busy getting on with their lives.

[jamesbrown]

Having taught in several universities, the idea that they (the institutions, the staff, the students) are more lefty or woke today than they were several decades years ago is stupid. They've always been dominated by, er, young people, who tend to be more left leaning and academics are mostly a bunch of lefties too and they always have been.

[d000hg]

They'll come back with all sorts of crazy ideas in their heads. If you want to be immersed in complete wokery then Uni is the best place for it now.

I hear people claim this in the US, that colleges are "factories for wokeness" but I'm not sure how. You get a lot of like-minded people squished up who never had a lot of people like them before, but that's not new. You don't get taught lessons on politics at uni unless you choose to join a society, though I think some now might have mandatory fresher sessions on topics like "how not to rape anyone".

Just seems to be the older people forgetting what their youth was like and decrying the young for acting as they once did to me.