Talk:1574: Trouble for Science - Revision history

92.23.2.228 at 23:12, 20 July 2025

2025-07-20T23:12:59Z

24.15.87.6: I think one of the commenters found the real joke.

2025-07-20T22:26:02Z

I think one of the commenters found the real joke.

92.23.2.228 at 20:21, 20 July 2025

2025-07-20T20:21:48Z

2402:B801:3878:6300:5855:3BA7:47B8:DEF6 at 11:02, 20 July 2025

2025-07-20T11:02:51Z

Gunterkoenigsmann: Thermodynamics doesn't completely guarantee that temperature increases...

2020-12-29T12:09:22Z

Thermodynamics doesn't completely guarantee that temperature increases...

Davidy22 at 19:39, 17 October 2016

2016-10-17T19:39:51Z

172.68.35.73 at 17:45, 17 October 2016

2016-10-17T17:45:53Z

108.162.216.77 at 06:52, 23 September 2015

2015-09-23T06:52:37Z

Shanek at 16:46, 15 September 2015

2015-09-15T16:46:58Z

Davidy22 at 15:52, 15 September 2015

2015-09-15T15:52:44Z

@@ Line 72: / Line 72: @@
 CAS [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.149|173.245.55.149]] 23:37, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
-:I think this is exactly it, it's the one clear through-line at least on the ones I understand.
+:I think this is exactly it, it's the one clear through-line at least on the ones I understand. {{unsigned ip|24.15.87.622:26, 20 July 2025}}
 There's another interpretation. All of these articles are headlines in newspapers. Reporters will only bother to write and publish news articles about highly controversial or exciting results, framed in the most inflammatory way, regardless of their reliability or applicability. So we have carnival barkers in the news media cherry-picking and misrepresenting results they really don't understand.

@@ Line 71: / Line 71: @@
 In each case, the joke is that the study results discredit the method that would have been used to prove the result.
 CAS [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.149|173.245.55.149]] 23:37, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 There's another interpretation. All of these articles are headlines in newspapers. Reporters will only bother to write and publish news articles about highly controversial or exciting results, framed in the most inflammatory way, regardless of their reliability or applicability. So we have carnival barkers in the news media cherry-picking and misrepresenting results they really don't understand.

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:21, 20 July 2025
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	A Bunsen burner could be used to drive an absorption chiller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator). In that case it could be said to indirectly "make things colder." {{unsigned ip\|172.68.35.73}}		A Bunsen burner could be used to drive an absorption chiller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator). In that case it could be said to indirectly "make things colder." {{unsigned ip\|172.68.35.73}}

−	I think these explanations of the punchline are overthinking it and missing the joke. It's not about the unusual circumstances in which a Bunsen burner could realistically make something cold, or about ambiguities in science reporting. It's about how so many of the bases of modern science are proving unreliable - lab rats aren't good subjects, p-value doesn't indicate significance, studies can't be replicated - that the most basic assumptions (like that a Bunsen burner will heat things) might not be true.	+	I think these explanations of the punchline are overthinking it and missing the joke. It's not about the unusual circumstances in which a Bunsen burner could realistically make something cold, or about ambiguities in science reporting. It's about how so many of the bases of modern science are proving unreliable - lab rats aren't good subjects, p-value doesn't indicate significance, studies can't be replicated - that the most basic assumptions (like that a Bunsen burner will heat things) might not be true. {{unsigned ip\|2402:b801:3878:6300:5855:3ba7:47b8:def6\|11:02, 20 July 2025}}

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:02, 20 July 2025
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	A Bunsen burner could be used to drive an absorption chiller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator). In that case it could be said to indirectly "make things colder." {{unsigned ip\|172.68.35.73}}		A Bunsen burner could be used to drive an absorption chiller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator). In that case it could be said to indirectly "make things colder." {{unsigned ip\|172.68.35.73}}
		+
		+	I think these explanations of the punchline are overthinking it and missing the joke. It's not about the unusual circumstances in which a Bunsen burner could realistically make something cold, or about ambiguities in science reporting. It's about how so many of the bases of modern science are proving unreliable - lab rats aren't good subjects, p-value doesn't indicate significance, studies can't be replicated - that the most basic assumptions (like that a Bunsen burner will heat things) might not be true.

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:09, 29 December 2020
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	::That was me. Trying to get my 2 cents in on my phone before I forgot. http://www.propane101.com/propaneregulatorfreezing.htm as an example. [[User:Mattiep\|Mattiep]] ([[User talk:Mattiep\|talk]]) 13:45, 7 September 2015 (UTC)		::That was me. Trying to get my 2 cents in on my phone before I forgot. http://www.propane101.com/propaneregulatorfreezing.htm as an example. [[User:Mattiep\|Mattiep]] ([[User talk:Mattiep\|talk]]) 13:45, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
		+
		+	::: Thermodynamics actually doesn't '''guarantee''' that a lit Bunsen burner always heats up a cold object. It just tells us that the probability of it doing so is so high that you can trust any number of controlled trials to be unable to find a counterexample. --[[User:Gunterkoenigsmann\|Gunterkoenigsmann]] ([[User talk:Gunterkoenigsmann\|talk]]) 12:09, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

	:Correct me if i'm wrong here, but doesn't burning flame from a Bunsen burner cause the temperatures of the flame and the target object to equalize? Sure in most cases that results in a temperature increase in the target object, but I don't see why that would be true in all high temperature cases. The comment about "reducing the rate of heat loss in 2000K+ temp objects" would only be true if the gas (assuming any atmosphere at all) surrounding the target object was cooler than the flame from the bunsen burner. This gets worse in a perfect vacuum. If a 5000K object was in a perfect vacuum and somebody set a lit bunsen burner (assuming the tip had an Oxygen source) to spray across the target object, then the Flame would get hotter as it touched the hotter object and the object would cool as the two temperatures attempted to equalize. No reduction of heat loss would happen. Can we remove the comment about "reducing the rate of heat loss in 2000K+ temp objects" ? [[User:Harodotus\|Harodotus]] ([[User talk:Harodotus\|talk]]) 22:20, 7 September 2015 (UTC).		:Correct me if i'm wrong here, but doesn't burning flame from a Bunsen burner cause the temperatures of the flame and the target object to equalize? Sure in most cases that results in a temperature increase in the target object, but I don't see why that would be true in all high temperature cases. The comment about "reducing the rate of heat loss in 2000K+ temp objects" would only be true if the gas (assuming any atmosphere at all) surrounding the target object was cooler than the flame from the bunsen burner. This gets worse in a perfect vacuum. If a 5000K object was in a perfect vacuum and somebody set a lit bunsen burner (assuming the tip had an Oxygen source) to spray across the target object, then the Flame would get hotter as it touched the hotter object and the object would cool as the two temperatures attempted to equalize. No reduction of heat loss would happen. Can we remove the comment about "reducing the rate of heat loss in 2000K+ temp objects" ? [[User:Harodotus\|Harodotus]] ([[User talk:Harodotus\|talk]]) 22:20, 7 September 2015 (UTC).

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	[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.77\|108.162.216.77]] 06:52, 23 September 2015 (UTC)		[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.77\|108.162.216.77]] 06:52, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

−	A Bunsen burner could be used to drive an absorption chiller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator). In that case it could be said to indirectly "make things colder."	+	A Bunsen burner could be used to drive an absorption chiller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator). In that case it could be said to indirectly "make things colder." {{unsigned ip\|172.68.35.73}}

← Older revision		Revision as of 17:45, 17 October 2016
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	I figured that this comic was mostly making a joke about how often newspapers describe things as "Trouble for Science!"... when most of the things being reported are merely niggles in one narrow area of one scientific field. Whereas this is a list of things which actually would be "trouble for science" in that that they would invalidate huge areas of scientific "knowledge". A few of them are real, most are not.		I figured that this comic was mostly making a joke about how often newspapers describe things as "Trouble for Science!"... when most of the things being reported are merely niggles in one narrow area of one scientific field. Whereas this is a list of things which actually would be "trouble for science" in that that they would invalidate huge areas of scientific "knowledge". A few of them are real, most are not.
	[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.77\|108.162.216.77]] 06:52, 23 September 2015 (UTC)		[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.77\|108.162.216.77]] 06:52, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
		+
		+	A Bunsen burner could be used to drive an absorption chiller (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator). In that case it could be said to indirectly "make things colder."

← Older revision		Revision as of 06:52, 23 September 2015
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	I think the bunsen burner part might be a reference to a demonstration a teacher once did. I can't find the reference, but when her students came in she showed them a metal plate next to a lit bunsen burner. The students observed that the side closest to the flame was colder, and she asked them to write down what they thought was going on. They wrote non-answers like, "because of heat conduction," and none of them came anywhere close to guessing the correct answer, which was simply that the teacher turned the metal plate around just before they came in. [[User:Shanek\|Shanek]] ([[User talk:Shanek\|talk]]) 16:46, 15 September 2015 (UTC)		I think the bunsen burner part might be a reference to a demonstration a teacher once did. I can't find the reference, but when her students came in she showed them a metal plate next to a lit bunsen burner. The students observed that the side closest to the flame was colder, and she asked them to write down what they thought was going on. They wrote non-answers like, "because of heat conduction," and none of them came anywhere close to guessing the correct answer, which was simply that the teacher turned the metal plate around just before they came in. [[User:Shanek\|Shanek]] ([[User talk:Shanek\|talk]]) 16:46, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
		+
		+	I figured that this comic was mostly making a joke about how often newspapers describe things as "Trouble for Science!"... when most of the things being reported are merely niggles in one narrow area of one scientific field. Whereas this is a list of things which actually would be "trouble for science" in that that they would invalidate huge areas of scientific "knowledge". A few of them are real, most are not.
		+	[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.77\|108.162.216.77]] 06:52, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:46, 15 September 2015
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	But most scientists are also dependent on having a steady stream of published, novel results so they can get their grant money from the government. Which means "sexy" results that are publishable and impactful- i.e. worthy of mention in the non-scientific press. So ''of course'' we have sloppy methods and irreproduceable results-- those are the methods most likely to produce the kind of excitingly counter-intuitive results that get published and catch the notice of the mainstream media. Disciplined labs that publish properly vetted results will hit dry periods when their results are unexciting or their theories don't check out, and their grant money will dry up, and they will fall apart. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.171\|108.162.237.171]] 14:34, 15 September 2015 (UTC)		But most scientists are also dependent on having a steady stream of published, novel results so they can get their grant money from the government. Which means "sexy" results that are publishable and impactful- i.e. worthy of mention in the non-scientific press. So ''of course'' we have sloppy methods and irreproduceable results-- those are the methods most likely to produce the kind of excitingly counter-intuitive results that get published and catch the notice of the mainstream media. Disciplined labs that publish properly vetted results will hit dry periods when their results are unexciting or their theories don't check out, and their grant money will dry up, and they will fall apart. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.171\|108.162.237.171]] 14:34, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
		+
		+	I think the bunsen burner part might be a reference to a demonstration a teacher once did. I can't find the reference, but when her students came in she showed them a metal plate next to a lit bunsen burner. The students observed that the side closest to the flame was colder, and she asked them to write down what they thought was going on. They wrote non-answers like, "because of heat conduction," and none of them came anywhere close to guessing the correct answer, which was simply that the teacher turned the metal plate around just before they came in. [[User:Shanek\|Shanek]] ([[User talk:Shanek\|talk]]) 16:46, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

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 Sentence case, or down style, is one method, preferred by many print and online publications and recommended by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The only two rules are the two rules mentioned above: Capitalize the first word and all proper nouns. Everything else is in lowercase. http://www.dailywritingtips.com/rules-for-capitalization-in-titles/ [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.154|173.245.50.154]] 12:30, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
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 In each case, the joke is that the study results discredit the method that would have been used to prove the result.
 CAS [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.149|173.245.55.149]] 23:37, 11 September 2015 (UTC)