I'm working on a pet theory about "slowness" in user interfaces... triggered in part because of issues in a new-ish Oracle product that shall remain nameless...

I'm sure other UI gurus have noticed this before, but when you are clicking buttons or other UI tasks, and it takes longer than about half a second, you will perceive it to be "slow." Why? Who knows! Is it a hard and fast rule? Or just an approximation? I think the root of this answer lies in neurobiology...

I recently devoured the book The Brain That Changes Itself. Highly recommended... It contains some amazing stories about a phenomenon called Neuoplasticity, or essentially the brain's amazing ability to re-wire itself. They told many stories about people with learning disabilities, strokes, cerebral palsy, autism, or even blindness, and how these people "rewired" their brains to heal themselves!

In one section about amputees, they mentioned that it takes 300 milliseconds for a brain signal to reach the hand. That made me think... I wonder if there is a co-relation with that number, and the threshold for when people get annoyed with "slow" computers? Maybe your brain "thinks" that the computer is actually a part of your body, and if it doesn't respond in 300 milliseconds, you get the feeling that something is wrong?

In a section about pain, they emphasized the fact that your brain doesn't "know" where your body ends and the world begins. For example, you can perform the following experiment to prove it to yourself:

• Place your right arm on a table, behind a screen so you can't see it.
• Place a fake rubber arm in front of the screen, aligned with your arm, and so you can see it.
• Have an assistant gently stroke both the rubber arm and your arm in the same way for a few minutes.
• Next, have them just stroke the rubber arm.
• Your brain will actually "feel" your arm being stroked when you see the rubber arm being stroked!

This doesn't just work with rubber arms... it also works if you just stroke the table in front of you! Doctors have used similar kinds of trickery to cure amputees of phantom pain that they "feel" in their amputated limbs. Chronic muscle pain might have similar roots, but they didn't go into it much.

Anyway, since the brain doesn't "know" where the body ends, it probably reacts as if the computer is a part of your body. In other words, if your brain wants to make the computer do something, and you don't get feedback within 300 milliseconds, it might trigger some anxiety because it "thinks" something is wrong with your body! It doesn't know that its just a computer... your brain is probably wired to trigger genuine anxiety when your computer doesn't behave as naturally as your hand! In this case, something should happen in under 300 milliseconds.

In practice, this means many things for better user interface design... but at the very minimum it means that computers should give feedback at least every 300 milliseconds. If something can be done in under 300 milliseconds, then it always should. If not, then you absolutely must give some kind of feedback that stuff is happening: a spinning wheel, a progress bar, maybe dancing frogs.

Either way, 300 milliseconds is a pretty good rule of thumb to ensure your users avoid feeling anxious and ill while using your products...

Once in a blue moon I pick up a Wired magazine... then I usually am reminded why I so rarely read it...

This month, they came out with a terrible article about The End Of Theory, all about how the deluge of digital information will make the scientific method obsolete.

WHAT?!?!

It started out OK, with info about how Google was doing well not by making theories about trends, but instead by collecting massive amounts of data on behavior. True enough, and no complaints there... but Wired then extends this in bizarre directions, saying that this means an end to all scientific analysis: there are no more grand theories, its all just statistics now.

Further proof in the article? Quantum physics stopped trying to find out "why," and instead just focused on gathering tons of info on the "what." He also uses the "shotgunning" approach to DNA sequencing as the prime example of the end of theory. The whole thing was tons of useless "data" that didn't even come close to supporting his "theory" that data trumps theory.

How ironic... but what else would you expect from somebody with only a passing knowledge of science?

Firstly, every single example in the entire article is a false analogy. Either massive amounts of data were supporting existing scientific theory, or they were giving guidance where theories needed massive amounts of recent data. Is there a theory for what trends will be popular with 13-year olds? Sure, there are tons... but they are all based on the ability to quickly acquire recent data. The article claims that knowing the raw numbers is all you need... its a decent first approximation, but anybody with a passing knowledge of marketing knows that spotting trends are about two things: how many, and who? Google knows how many, but if you can determine if the "who" includes trendsetters, then the trend can turn into an epidemic.

The hard sciences -- like physics and biology -- also have well-established models that serve us well, which are pretty accurate even if based on old data. These models are great estimates in the absence of new data. That's the whole frigging point! Sure, you can tell which plane will crash by building 1,000,000 virtual models, and test flying them all... you'll sure get tons of data! But its a lot more cost effective to analyze data, make models, and test just 1 model at a time.

You should never be tempted to put data ahead of theory... do so, and I guarantee you will be destroyed by those who understand both. For example, there was a 10-year old article in the Atlantic Monthly warning about how the digital age will create an over-reliance on data instead of theory... one researcher demonstrated something like how over the past 50 years, the ups and downs on the S&P 500 nearly exactly mirrored milk production in Burma.

According to Wired, just watch milk production in Burma, and you'll be a billionaire! Of course, that advice is total crap... because next year cotton output in Egypt might be a better example. Or perhaps the length of Warren Buffet's fingernails is even better. If you just rely on data, your "model" changes too quickly to be useful... unless its based on a theory that depends on up-to-date data as an input, and can give guidance when you only have old or contradictory data.

Google makes the process faster, but ultimately changed nothing about the process itself. The discovery of useful knowledge still follows the scientific method:

1. gather initial data
2. make an initial hypothesis
3. test the hypothesis with new data
4. if the hypothesis is validated, it graduates to become a theory
5. use the theory in lieu of up-to-data data, but
6. continuously refine your theories with newer data, data in a different context, and data acquired with more accurate techniques

Seems to be what everybody is still doing... and apparently the editors of Wired were asleep during Science 101.

I love of energy... I always thought environmentalists got it wrong about energy. The problem isn't overconsumption, its unsustainability. So, go ahead and drive your Hummer, as long as it runs biodiesel from sources like algae or bacteria. If Big Oil was sharp, they would stop denying global warming, and embrace new carbon-negative oil technologies before the high tech venture capitalists steal all their business...

To add insult to injury, it seems that some prominent scientists want to put Big Oil on trial for global warming. At first, I believed that these kinds of trials would go exactly nowhere. Until I found out about one case backed by a dream team of trial lawyers: Steve Berman and Steve Susman.

The former was the lead lawyer representing 13 states against Big Tobacco in their historic defeat in the 1990s. The latter was the man who defended Big Tobacco. Now, they have teamed up and are taking on Big Oil, with pretty much the same strategy...

The Atlantic outlines the logic of the case quite well. There have been dozens of lawsuits against Big Tobacco, dating as far back as the 1950s. The plaintiffs were all the same -- people who got addicted to cigarettes, and got health problems, and were now suing the tobacco industry for selling an unsafe product. Early anti-tobacco lawsuits all ended the same way: the judge would declare that every consumer product has some danger, but its not the judge's responsibility to decided an acceptable level of safety.

Defining what is an "acceptable level of safety" is up to Congress... who are always on top of things...

This of course led Big Tobacco in the past -- just like Big Oil right now -- to funnel millions of dollars to "skeptical" scientists, and use them to pass off PR as genuine research... and use that to influence congress and the media into inaction. Not to mention the millions in campaign contributions, free trips, lobbyist jobs, etc. etc. etc.

Unfortunately, Big Tobacco finally realized the flaw in that plan:

• When you pass of PR as genuine scientific research, it is a lie.
• When you lie about consumer products you sell, it is fraud.
• When you defraud consumers, class action lawsuits are not far behind.
• When you get sued, you have to produce old memos, emails, and data relevant to the case... which are usually very incriminating

The Steves' plan is not to claim that oil is causing "too much harm." The plan is to prove that Big Oil used both licit and illicit means to downplay the actual harm of their product, whatever that harm may be. Essentially, when companies engage in fraud, they make it impossible for a consumer to make a reasonable choice about whether or not to use their product... and congress has a long list of laws against that...

Essentially, even if oil is 90% safe, if the Steves can prove that Big Oil claimed it was 95% safe, and that Big Oil downplayed evidence to the contrary, then Big Oil is guilty of both fraud, and conspiracy to commit fraud. That exact tactic brought down Big Tobacco, and it seems like it would be pretty easy to do the same to Big Oil...

I, for one, am curious to see how all this pans out...

File this one under "whoops":

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis. The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Why the difference? Well, its simple... it takes a REALLY long time to genetically engineer plants. By the time you have one new viable generation of frankenstein foods, traditional breeding techniques could generate dozens of new varieties... in which case, the best traditional crop will almost always outperform the best genetically modified crop. If not now, then probably in a season or two.

I'm not as paranoid about the label "genetic engineering" as some folks -- probably because I did it once in a lab and it wasn't what people think -- but what always bugged me was the woefully unscientific methods that Monsanto used to promote modified crops.

At best, Roundup-Ready crops introduce a new dimension to the arms race between farmers and pests... and one that has much more collateral damage than others. As pests inevitably grow resistant to pesticide, then only the second generation of modified crops and will survive... what then happens to traditional farmers? Or organic farmers?

If they want to use superorganics techniques to grow drought-resistant, flood-resistant, or salt-resistant crops, they have my support... but pesticide-resistant crops make absolutely no sense in the long term. And now it appears that they can't even keep up with the food yields of traditional crops...

Back to the drawing board, I guess.

OK, I hate cell phones, so I'm no fanboy... but I hate junk science even more.

No doubt you've heard some rumblings about an award-winning neurosurgeon named Dr Vini Khurana who reported that cell phones double your risk of brain tumors. The web is all a flutter trying to make you scared of your own shadow, yet again... so I thought I'd add my two cents.

First of all there have been numerous numerous cell phone cancer studies before, none of which found a causal link. Dr. Khurana noted that these studies were flawed, because brain tumors take a very long time to develop... so any such study should restrict itself to people who have used cell phones for 10 years.

woah... that narrows the field... so much so that I'm not certain if Dr. Khurana had a large enough sample to support his claims. I've looked all over the internet, and I couldn't find any info on his sample size. The most recent study that cleared cell phones of any wrongdoing had 420,000 test subjects. If Dr Khurana is using anything less than a sample size of 2,000, then the odds are good that he found nothing more than a statistical anomaly.

In other words... that's like trying to gauge the number of rowdy drunks in the US, but restricting your research to a bar during the Superbowl. You aren't going to get a reliable number that way...

Also... even if his claims are true, what's the actual increase in risk? Brain cancer is very rare... and this increase is not nearly as bad as the tenfold increase in lung cancer due to smoking. Brain tumors cause 13,000 deaths per year in the USA, out of 2,400,000 total... or about 0.5%. This new study -- if true -- means that if you've been a cell phone freak for ten years, your odds of dying from a brain tumor shot up a whole half percentage point.

Pump up on the broccoli and Omega 3s and you'll push that back down, I'd wager...

Although, there might be something to it... perhaps the analog cell phone technology from 10 years ago was much worse for you... or perhaps there was some chemical in old cell phone batteries... or some cancer causing flame-retardant in the ear pieces. It warrants more study, and perhaps you should use a hands-free system for a while.

Until they discover BlueTooth turns you into a zombie...

How aware are you? Take this quick one minute YouTube test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

Its based on a book by Richard Wiseman about gaps in human awareness that we don't even know are there...

Oh, snap! Zombie Richard Feynman agrees, string theory sucks. And Mythbusters, despite being flashy and frequently dragging out a concept for waaaaaaay longer than needed, deserves some love.

This is damn freaky...

Some UK scientists accidentally discovered that by stimulating a specific part of the brain with electrodes, they can significantly improve a person's memory:

The accidental breakthrough came during an experiment originally intended to suppress the obese man's appetite, using the increasingly successful technique of deep-brain stimulation. Electrodes were pushed into the man's brain and stimulated with an electric current. Instead of losing appetite, the patient instead had an intense experience of déjà vu. He recalled, in intricate detail, a scene from 30 years earlier. More tests showed his ability to learn was dramatically improved when the current was switched on and his brain stimulated... Scientists are now applying the technique in the first trial of the treatment in patients with Alzheimer's disease. If successful, it could offer hope to sufferers from the degenerative condition, which affects 450,000 people in Britain alone, by providing a "pacemaker" for the brain.

The work is similar to previous work done to treat Parkinson's disease: 40,000 sufferers currently have similar implantations in their hypothalamus, stimulated by external battery packs. However, its very strange that stimulting the same region improves memory.

The early work with Alzheimer's patients is promising... but I'm still wierded out by the fact that some Dr. Nick Riveria was doing frigging brain surgery to cure obesity!

Oh well. Gift horse. Mouth. I see nothing...

You may have heard of an affliction called Munchausen syndrome by proxy, also known as Fabricated or Induced Illness. It was first diagnosed by a pediatrician, who observed that some mothers intentionally harm their children in order to get attention and praise from doctors.

Some now believe that Munchausen has infected the workplace! Harvard Business Review recently came out with the article Munchausen at Work after observing some very odd behavior:

Georgia Tech professor Nate Bennett studied team performance in over 30 companies and was struck by cases of employees creating fictitious organizational problems in order to solve them and receive praise for it. He calls the phenomenon "Munchausen at Work" -- a workplace version of the psychological disorder Munchausen by proxy -- and explains how managers can diagnose it.

Think about it... some idiot at your work decides to invent emergencies, just so he'll be the hero who fixes them. I've seen several of these folks in the software industry: they'll bad mouth the product in front of customers, exaggerate the danger of bugs... then they'll apply an already existing patch so they can "save" the sale, and make the customer happy.

Those people really tick me off...

This isn't without precedent... Firemen have been caught setting fires, just so they can be the hero who puts it out. Security guards have been known to phone in bomb threats, just so they can be the hero that uncovers the bomb. Political pundits invent problems -- like the "War on Christmas" -- so they can be praised for bravely fighting their straw man enemies.

I believe this phenomenon might even extend to Washington... Think about it: politicians are reasonably bright, and yet they sometimes implement unbelievably stupid policies. Some of this could be due to an imperfect political system rife with compromises... but I'm unconvinced. Might politicians intentionally create crises just so they can save us? Are they just desperately trying to demonstrate that they are still relevant?

Its pretty clear that politicians want us to be scared of something highly unlikely but newsworthy -- like SARS or Terrorism... even though the real threats are the highly likely but boring -- like Staph Superbugs or car crashes. Maybe its to get them votes... or get their names in the paper. Or maybe its just another aspect of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Maybe politicians intentionally cause fiscal problems, stir unrest, etc., just so they can be the ones to make everything better.

Or maybe I'm just a bitter cynic...

(Hat Tip: Know HR Blog)

yep... some yurt-toting-frisbee-chucking-chiba-monkey has claimed to unlock the secrets of this ginormous universe... in between long moments on his surfboard. Graeme Thickins should be pleased.

From the Telegraph: Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.

gnarley...

E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape." What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.

totally...

Lisi's breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8's structure matched his own. "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"

party on, dude!

Seriously... I'm a believer that the universe is a chaotic, dynamic system. I've never seen any evidence that the fundamental rules of physics must be immutable: believing so just makes the math easier. In short: as soon as we invent a theory of everything, somebody will discover a new everything.

Nevertheless, everybody seems excited about E8. Whether its the right answer, or just the next right answer, it's still very innovative.

UPDATE: There's a video of E8 rotating online. (Hat Tip: Ze Frank)

Look at the mathematical puzzle below... in it you should be able to move one single matchstick to create a mathematically correct statement with Roman Numerals:

Single slanted sticks are not allowed: there must be 2 slanted stick in a V to represent 5, and a single non-slanted stick to represent a 1. You have 3 minutes... GO! The original blog article has the answer.

Next, try this one:

A bit tougher, huh? In studies, only 43% of people could solve the second puzzle in under 3 minutes. However, 80% of people with lateral prefrontal damage to their brain could solve it! Mental patents get all the fun...

In theory, that part of the brain is important for determining how to solve a problem, which is called cognitive guidance. It's essential for doing ordinary math quickly, but it hinders problem solving when you don't have a rigid framework to help you. In other words, a healthy brain makes it difficult to "think outside the box".

Heh...

Thus, some brain damage patients are better at letting their minds wander and solve problems in any way that seems to work for them... which on occasion helps them see things that other people do not. In other cases, it makes it extremely difficult for them to solve problems within a framework with apparently arbitrary rules. I bet Kafka would have nailed the second puzzle...

So, chime in, folks! Who else here solved the second puzzle quickly, and might need color-coordinating tips for their tin-foil hat?

Slate Magazine has a pretty good list of the top 5 brain-related news stories of 2007. I'd say that's a bit premature, since its only May, but I'm not in the magazine business... They are, in order:

1. Software that can use a MRI to read your mind 71% of the time,
2. You can change what people think is moral by altering their brain chemistry,
3. The ability to genetically predict sexual orientation in mammals,
4. The sedative Ambien wakes people up from a vegetative coma,
5. Generally significant progress in artificial intelligence.

Yikes on the mind reading one...

I like number 5... but the full article missed one of my favorite examples: cognitive researchers at IBM have reproduced 10% of a mouse brain in a computer! They created simple software that behaved like neurons, and painstakingly connected them together in a massively parallel application. They've gotten it to behave like 10% of a mouse for about 10 seconds.

However, if these mouse guys succeeded, it makes the Chinese Room Argument in cognitive science a tiny bit problematic... John Searl argued that by definition a computer cannot have human consciousness, since a computer can only do symbol manipulation. A human who knows Chinese know the meaning of the question 怎么样您, which is "how are you?" Whereas a computer would just see the Chinese symbols, and reply with other symbols like 我很好, which would mean "I am well."

In a computational machine there is no context, therefore no true knowledge, therefore no true consciousness.

But... a neural network of computers might not suffer from this limitation. The binary ones and zeros are just the building blocks upon which neurons are created... and the structure of the digital neurons grant context, and perhaps consciousness. I see this as analogous to how physical neurons are composed of atoms and molecules, and consciousness is just an emergent property.

Of course, we could all just be fooling ourselves, and conscious might not really exist... its merely an illusion of an extremely complex system. Philosophers call this reductionism, and the thought makes most people uncomfortable... but that doesn't make it wrong!

If that title didn't bore the pants off of you, then the rest of this blog will!

The San Francisco Gate recently published an amazing article on retrocausality, which is the idea that things we do in the present go backwards in time to affect the past.

Naturally, many scientists think its silly to think you can go back in time: that would require something to go faster than the speed of light.

Plus, what about causality? Say I got my hair cut today. Then say I went back in time to yesterday to burn down my barber's place (no offense Scott, its just an illustration). Would my hair instantly grow back?

In general, this debate is between Einstein and his General Relativity fans, and the Quantum Physics fans. The former say time travel and faster-than-light travel is impossible, because that leads to incredibly weird paradoxes and a breakdown of causality.

The Quantum Physics folks basically reply, "Boo hoo! We've been dealing with incredibly weird paradoxes and a breakdown of causality for a hundred years... AND we've invented the laser, the computer, and superconductivity. What do you got?"

As you may have guessed, I side with the latter camp...

I am glad to read about a fearless quantum physics geek who may actually be able to prove time travel on a small scale is possible.

Boring physics experiments aside, the article goes into detail about the possibility that there is nothing strange at all about retrocausality. Quite possibly, time travel happens every day in small ways, and we are just not aware of it.

My hero, Richard Feynman, famously noted that a positron behaves exactly like an electron traveling backwards in time. Others have expanded on his observation with very interesting results. Perhaps these particles even go back in time all the way to the big bang, to affect the fundamental nature of our universe!

Paul Davies at the University in Sydney took this idea one step further... he and many other scientists have always been surprised at how unusually hospitable for life our universe is. If you look at how many ways it could have evolved after the big bang, its remarkable that we exist at all.

One theory is that this is nothing remarkable at all: there could have been an infinite number of big bangs before this one. If it was inhospitable to life, there would be no observer. The most recent kaboom just happened to work out well, and therefore we just happen to be around to observe it. Its just a numbers game. Fair enough...

However, if retrocausality actually happens, that means that we may live in a self tuning universe. Perhaps an unstable universe would have a lot of time traveling particles, affecting how the big bang happened, and it eventually settled down into the universe we now observe... if there is such a thing as "now".

It also leads to the possibility that disastrous time paradoxes may only exist in an unstable universe. In our universe, if somebody tried to do too much time travel, it might cause a flood of positrons to go back in time to make things more stable again... possibly by annihilating the time traveling anomaly before he does any damage.

Bad news for Dr. Who, I guess...

I blogged last week about a company named Allerca, which claimed to have bred hypoalergenic cats.

It turns out, not so much.

BoingBoing reported some very weird things about the company... such as the cats have a license agreement, so you're not allowed to sell them to other people! There was also an article at the San Diego Tribune that questioned their credibility.

Perhaps this was a publicity stunt for somebody who is close, but needs some extra capital before finishing... but that's a risky gabit, even if it is true.

One alert Boinger mentioned that the president of Allerca offered to breed a two headed cat for his father.

Creepy... and just in time for Halloween!

Oh well... its a good idea, but perhaps Allerca just doesn't have the stuff yet.

New Scientist recently put out an article on preliminary tests of the space elevator.

I am not pleased.

For those who don't know, a space elevator is a half baked idea about how to launch vehicles into space more cheaply. Basically, you put a huge rock in orbit around the earth, one big enough to destroy a whole country if it fell out of orbit. Then you tie a big rope around it, and climb up the rope to get to space.

Its only a little less crazy than it sounds.

In theory, an elevator would need to expend a great deal less energy than a rocket in order to get to space. Some numbers I saw a few years back made it sound like you could deploy something into orbit for about 100 times the cost of sending it via Fed Ex.

Neat! but there has to be a catch...

What concerns me is that nobody in the news seems to be talking about how incredibly dangerous it would be to have a rope 20,000 miles long stretching into space. What if something goes wrong? Weather? Asteroid? Terrorist? That tether could do considerable damage, even if the giant rock stays in orbit...

What concerns me more is that they are doing these initial tests without resolving the problems with nanotube toxicology! All of these tethers are made with nanotubes, since they are light and incredibly strong... but they have a nasty side effect of killing fish even in minute quantities. Many scientists ignore this, despite the fact that every proposed construction site in the middle of the ocean.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

I must say shame on New Scientist for not mentioning this fact in their latest article, because their own website posted two articles about how nanotubes cause brain damage in fish, and suffocate other marine creatures, one in March 2004, and again in April 2004. Don't they read their own articles?

It is reckless and irresponsible for scientists to be performing tests out in the open environment with materials known to be this toxic. They need to discover what species are effected by nanotubes, and why, so we can either create better nanotubes or try something else. Preliminary data suggests that there may be even inhalation toxicity for mammals... which means the asbestos problem all over again.

We don't need the space elevator any time soon... but we sure do need fish in the ocean!

The BBC is reporting that the company Allerca will soon be selling hypoalergenic cats.

At first I was skeptical, since Allerca is a biotech company. However they used the super organics technique I discussed last week to create these cats.

They tested the DNA of hundreds of cats, looking for those that naturally lack the glycoprotein Fel d'1, which is what causes alergic reactions in some people. Then, they used standard breeding techniques (catnip and Barry White?) to get them to mate.

In other words, these are not frankenstein cats... these are bred with normal techniques, but genetic testing was needed to determine which mating pairs were optimal.

Sounds good so far but hold on... In general, I'm weary of pure breeds. In many cases, they do not live as long as other mixed breed animals, and have more health problems. Hopefully, Allergca will continue to screen new cats, and keep breeding new one to keep the gene pool growing. Otherwise in a few years inbreeding could be a problem...

I might get one some day... but since they are $4000 and have a waiting list, I might wait for Klean Kitty 2.0.

UPDATE: This company might not be telling the whole truth... It might be a scam.

As some of you know, I really hate String Theory... and I wish it would just go away...

How do you know when an esoteric Physics theory is on the ropes? Clearly, when even USA Today thinks its silly.

Some quotes from the article:

Physicists always argue, says historian Spencer Weart of the American Physical Society's Center for the History of Physics in Greenbelt, Md. Respectable physicists disagreed about the existence of atoms until the 1950s, he notes, until experiments settled the issue.

String theory differs from those cases historically, Weart says, in an inability to come up with experiments. "In the end, physicists like a theory only if it will help them to do some research," Weart says.

Damn straight... but of course the defenders of the theory shoot back with this searing missive:

Ultimately, Carroll says, "the only way for someone to kill string theory will be to come up with a better one."

huh... That's a woefully illogical and unscientific statement... clearly it came from a String Theorist.

That's like me saying the universe is made up of tiny tiny Gnomes... smaller than atoms... smaller than quarks... smaller than anything we will be able to detect for a hundred years... and its up to you to prove me wrong, otherwise I'm right.

Sorry, boys... back to the drawing board with you.

My friend John just posted a great article on misconceptions about science. I liked his four points. I didn't like his graphic, but whatever.

The primary misconceptions are:

1. Scientists are all out to push a particular agenda like everyone else.
2. Statistical studies aren't as "real" as direct observational science.
3. I don't trust it because you can't really know what happened a million years ago.
4. Scientists used to think X and now we know it's Y, so you just can't trust them.

However, I think he missed the fifth most common misconception of science... that any scientific theory is "just a theory."

This is because the word theory means something completely different to scientists than it does to everybody else. Most people call any crazy idea a theory, but in science, a crazy idea is a crazy idea, or more correctly a hypothesis. You do not get the privilege of calling it a theory until many many scientists have demonstrated that it is very likely to be based in fact.

Whenever science challenges the political or social status quo, you tend to hear "well, its just a theory." This is particularly true when talking about climate change, or evolution.

In typical language, any time you have a crazy idea about what happened, you would say "I have a theory." Not scientists. They don't have that luxury.

Why is this the case? Well, primarily because science is not about the truth, its about the facts. There are no laws in science: they have long abandoned that concept... everything that was once believed to be an irrefutable law has been disproven or seriously challenged:

• Newton's laws of gravity - Very massive objects give off gravity waves, as predicted by General Relativity
• Galilelo's laws of motion - Invalid for very fast or very small objects
• Laws of thermodynamics - Must entropy always increase? Not according to Quantum Physics...

These are only called laws for historical reasons. Nowadays the best scientists can do is get a theory named after them. However, many scientists go years without ever successfully generating a theory! Despite tons of ideas and research, it takes a long time for others to consider it worthy of being called a theory.

Scientists have ideas, make observations, generate hypothesis, run experiments, and publish results. Some of them work entirely in the realm of the theoretical; basing their ideas off of the research of others.

If they are lucky, other scientists replicate their experiments under multiple conditions. If they are really lucky, the additional research supports their claims. If enough scientists can reproduce your results, maybe, just maybe it will become a theory.

Is there some sort of judge and jury about when something can be called a theory? Sometimes... when its based on the work of multiple people there are rules about who gets their name on it. However, sometimes not.

Nevertheless, few scientists are over-eager to turn something into a theory. If they were the first to make the hypothesis or observation, their name will be on the theory when the time is right. If they rush it and call it a theory too soon, they run the risk of destroying their reputation if the theory is disproven.

Its an imperfect system, but over time it yields data and models that serve mankind quite well, thank you.

So don't dismiss a scientific theory just because its only a theory, and you happen to disagree... unless, of course, you have more evidence in support of your position. Then by all means, publish your data and crush the prevaling theory!

That's what scientific progress is all about...

I consider myself a rational person, with very few negative emotions. But when something strikes me as just plain wrong, I hate it with a never ending white-hot furious passion... and frankly that amuses the hell out of my friends.

Near the top of Bex's hate list is, of course, String Theory.

I hate string theory sooooooo much. It sucks. Its crap. I simply can't believe any educated scientist buys into it. I hate it even more than social anthropologists and their incessant attempts to steal common-sense ideas and cram them into esoteric behavior models... I hate it even more than Alexander Hamilton and his sneaky Federalists... except Madison. Jamie's cool... but I digress.

Well, there's a new book out that hopefully vindicates my hatred: Not Even Wrong -- The Failure of String Theory & the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics.