Re: [asa] Bullying Janice, and almost an apology

Lawrence Johnston wrote:

> It seems to have developed into an intramural sport here to bully Janice
> because she brings a viewpoint that is unpopular on this List. Yes, bully.
>
> Fortunately she has a thick skin and perseveres.
>

I see, _completely_ unprovoked?

Granted, that is certainly no excuse for me to return in kind,
and I am sorry about that, but the name calling begin on this
list with me.

If a scientist has an idea that is unpopular with his/her
peers, he/she can expect to be bullied. It is not fair,
it is mean, and it can even be dishonest. I know that first
hand. Why then does one pursue a course like this? For
other people, I don't know, so as with Janice, I should not
make opinions. (Noted and observed.) For that reason, I
have tried to refrain from just dismissing her views; though
I have fallen short recently.

But what about whether we should fight for a view. With
faith, it is less clear, but with science, there are things
that are true, and things that are false. Many things lie
in-between. The environment issue does seem to have a certain
degree of uncertainty, and especially for policy issues,
doing something too hasty is an economic nightmare in the
making. So getting to the bottom of how important it is,
what are some possible measures, and what are the ramifications
in the economy (a big reality when it comes out of my pocket
and my job), are real issues.

But let's take Glenn for a moment. He is pretty unpopular
amongst some here, and maybe less of a thick skin. Certainly
more likely to go volcanic anyway. His is a faith issue,
but nobody here I think seriously questioned his science.
I do wish he could be treated a little more gently, as I
sometimes fear for his faith, but whenever I have asked him
anything, either publicly or privately, he is sure to lay
down a detailed case for his view. He has answered anything
I have ask, and I have no question about the integrity of
what he is thinking, even if I cannot for sure know if that
is everything I need to know. I'm pretty sure I can trust that
if there is something he doesn't know, he will rectify his
thinking accordingly. So when I don't know, I can let it go.

But again, for him, it is a faith issue, and when it comes
down to the interpretation, some people disagree with him.
When the theology hits in, I really have to say "I don't
know", and I definitely have to drop off there. For me,
I don't care if it was 5 M yrs ago or 5000 yrs ago for
that matter. In general, I think it safe to say that
his science does make sense even if his interpretation
of scripture may prove disagreeable to some or many.

With science however, how do you judge?

There is not any easy way, and unfamiliar ideas can get
the best of people to screw up. Einstein derided QM, but
as strange as it is, it seems that it is true. The matter
of EPR was not settled until about 10 years ago. I had
already oscillated a couple times myself in and out of the
thought of hidden forces before that. So that was a really
tough call.

However, as evidence accumulated, we first saw that we could
build semiconductors and superconductors with QM, we saw
that we could make lasers and do two photon absorption
experiments. We saw that size effects were rearing their
ugly heads in nanostructure experiments. We saw the
slow transition to features of band structure when we did
Hartree Fock calculations on large molecules. So some
philosophy was not clear, but the facts were pretty strong
that much of QM was true at the atomic/molecular level.

Plate tectonics has a very bitter history too that someone
posted a couple months ago.

The thing is that there is evidence of a very clear form that
emerges and becomes less and less questionable. Where the
environment issue is, is hard for me to judge being outside
this field, but the evidence so far accumulated does seem to
be pointing in the direction that it is warming up.

If a scientist has an idea, well ideas are cheap, the problem
is carry through. Still, the measure of a good idea is that it
brings deeper insight into what is going on, it explains
everything that the old could, and generally does at least
as well, and sometimes even better. One should be able to
show that the new idea can reduce to the old one if the
proper approximations are used, because it is sure that the
old idea was true within limiting cases. It should be applicable
to more than just the one situation covering far more ground
with some measurable success -- particularly when the old
model covered only one patch of ground. Finally, each attack
on it only reveals how much superior it is and cleans up even
more confusion.

So it is not entirely bad that scientist violently oppose a
new idea, but it does mean that the investment for pursuing
it should be considered very seriously up front. It does mean
that good ideas can get squashed out by overly violent and
oppresive scientists who are unwilling to listen for some reason
or too busy with their own matters to care. Boltzmann had a very
difficult time, and ended up commiting suicide, though it is not
clear that it was over the violence done on him, or his own
personality that lead to that. His contribution is noted 100 years
later and going strong with kB and S = kBln(W). But we also can
test that expression and work with it, and it demonstrates its
predictive power, even though he was (sadly) violently opposed
in his own day.

Now, what do I see wrong with the environment thing so far?
I don't see a model. At most I see pointing at flaws. If you
don't have a model, you don't have a better idea.
Either work with the model you have, or build a better
one that demonstrated predictive power. Since I do not see
any model I can test and probe with my own mind, I am not
impressed, and that is all.

by Grace we proceed,
Wayne

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Received on Mon Jan 8 19:00:47 2007