Official "Science News" Thread

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Batalov

Yes, and they haven't yet retracted the laughable article.
That kind of behaviour is pretty low in my book.

May we have your explanation of exactly which article is the one you deemed laughable?

May we have your explanation of just what kind of behavior you had in mind when you deemed it "pretty low" in your book?

[Batalov]

Obviously, Wolfe-Simon F et al, "A bacterium that can grow by using arsenic instead of phosphorus", Science. 2011 Jun 3;332(6034):1163-6. Epub 2010 Dec 2.

Both parts: "can grow by using arsenic" and "instead of phosphorus" have been refuted. We are not talking about some cosmetic blemishes or a opportunistic forward-looking statement in the discussion section, we are talking about main points of the article.

Abstract with refuted facts also now also looks quite depressing:

Life is mostly composed of the elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and phosphorus. Although these six elements make up nucleic acids, proteins, and lipids and thus the bulk of living matter, it is theoretically possible that some other elements in the periodic table could serve the same functions. Here, we describe a bacterium, strain GFAJ-1 of the Halomonadaceae, isolated from Mono Lake, California, that is able to substitute arsenic for phosphorus to sustain its growth.

Refuted.

Our data show evidence for arsenate in macromolecules that normally contain phosphate, most notably nucleic acids and proteins.

Refuted.

Exchange of one of the major bio-elements may have profound evolutionary and geochemical importance.

May have. (Let's have press-conferences and just in time for new grants! Deja vu? 2012, exactly the same scenario?) Didn't. Would you please refund the taxpayers their money? And LaurV, sure, if they will produce an arsenic-for-breakfast eating bacteria next year, then next year they will publish. Not in 2010.

[only_human]

Originally Posted by Batalov

(Let's have press-conferences and just in time for new grants! Deja vu? 2012, exactly the same scenario?) Didn't. Would you please refund the taxpayers their money? And LaurV, sure, if they will produce an arsenic-for-breakfast eating bacteria next year, then next year they will publish. Not in 2010.

I kind of like it. It lets people see how science actually works. Some research is self-serving and also jumped on by political and government interests. Some things are misguided and wasteful. But most of the excesses end up being corrected. Sure it's sometimes not good procedure but the overall process strives to compensate for human frailties. In a sense, bad research is a stimulus and reminder to stay vigilant and strive for excellence. Within reason, it is money well spent.

[axn]

Originally Posted by only_human

In a sense, bad research is a stimulus and reminder to stay vigilant and strive for excellence. Within reason, it is money well spent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable..._broken_window

[only_human]

Originally Posted by axn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable..._broken_window

Not really the same. I'm not saying that wasteful spending is stimulative in any economic sense in this argument. I'm saying that vigilance in science is difficult and sometimes slips a little. The system is built to compensate for that and the feedback mechanisms are part of the process.

Also I wasn't going for any idea that wasteful spending in science, by itself, is helpful to the progress of scientific knowledge or is even helpful in keeping science funded. I was more going for the idea that the correction of bad results and bad research is a essential part of the process. I wasn't advocating wasteful spending -- I meant that it is worthwhile to me if it occasionally happens. The broken window would be more saying that bad research keeps the feedback loops funded or exercised. But actually all research keeps the feedback loops funded and exercised. All research has a bit of a broken window. Sometimes it is a big botched blunder and we don't want too many of those -- still those are the only fix-it jobs that are really visible to the public. So to me the big window job is more like the show "Cops" on TV. It shows part of the process to the public and at the same time is hopefully a deterrent to some offenders.

The broken window analogy has shopkeepers and burglars -- but scientists are the shopkeepers and also the burglars. They are the sometimes good stewards of learning and progress and also sometimes bad stewards and leaches. That is because they are all human. In theory it would be better without the bad stewards and leaches but if we had that, what he had would be something other than human.

[ewmayer]

Attached PDF has news story (full research article appears in same issue) about a single-molecule motor:

On page 779 of this issue, Lotze et al. (3) now show how the motion of a macroscopic cantilever beam can be excited using the driven motion of only a single molecule. In this case, a single hydrogen molecule is trapped between a copper surface and a scanning tunneling microscopy tip mounted on a flexible springlike cantilever. The authors find that when a particular bias voltage between the tip and copper is applied, the electric current causes the hydrogen to switch stochastically between two different positional states and the cantilever begins to oscillate spontaneously.

I had to use both the "reduce size" compression option in Mac Preview and save as b&w to get the size of this below the 244kB upload limit:

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Batalov

Obviously, Wolfe-Simon F et al, "A bacterium that can grow by using arsenic instead of phosphorus", Science. 2011 Jun 3;332(6034):1163-6. Epub 2010 Dec 2.

Both parts: "can grow by using arsenic" and "instead of phosphorus" have been refuted.

So, those researchers made an honest mistake.

We are not talking about some cosmetic blemishes or a opportunistic forward-looking statement in the discussion section, we are talking about main points of the article.

But there was no misconduct that justifies retraction of the article.

Abstract with refuted facts also now also looks quite depressing:
Refuted.

Refuted.

Do you want every article and abstract with a later-shown-to-be-mistaken assertion to be retracted? ... or where do you draw the line?

- - -

And I'm still really curious about what motivated you to cite the Journal of Irreproducible Results as a proper repository for "Irreproducible articles". (What is an Irreproducible article, anyway?)

[Dubslow]

Elon Musk's getting ambitious (again)

It seems to me though that if anybody can do it, he certainly can.

[Batalov]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

I never said only fraudulent ones. I never ruled out that there were other reasons.

Originally Posted by cheesehead

So, those researchers made an honest mistake.

But there was no misconduct that justifies retraction of the article.

So, by which statement do you stand now?

I've answered two sets of your questions. Now answer my questions:
- how well do you know the scientific publishing (and retraction) standards?
- how many articles have you published in Science? how well do you know specifically Science's publication policies?
- how many articles have you cited and based your research on the fact that these articles describe factual and reproducible truths (and not the falsities) - or did you start you research process for water, minerals, fire and built everything from scratch?
- how many articles have you written outside of your area of expertise and at the same time deliberately avoiding any contact with the experts (probably for the reason that they would steal your results at the first possibility)?
- who says that in addition to demonstrating the falsity the other researches also have a burden of proving misconduct?

[only_human]

In mainstream media science [sic] news, even with a several caveats in the article, take a gander at this new low bar of reporting:
Meet your Uncle Bigfoot: DNA report claims beast part human

Genetic testing confirms the legendary Bigfoot is a human relative that arose some 15,000 years ago — at least according to a press release issued by a company called DNA Diagnostics detailing supposed work by a Texas veterinarian.
The report from Melba S. Ketchum also suggests such cryptids had sex with modern human females that resulted in hairy hominin hybrids, but the scientific community is dubious about her claim.

The article has several caveats but, still, O-M-G.
By the way the word "cryptids" should have included some type of definition too, Here is Wikipedia's definition:

Cryptid (from the Greek "κρύπτω" (krypto) meaning "hide") is a term which is used in cryptozoology to refer to a creature whose existence has been suggested but that is unrecognized by a scientific consensus, and whose existence is moreover often regarded as highly unlikely

This paragraph from the article looks scripted from any crank scorecard:

So where's the evidence? Well, there is none. Not yet, anyway: Ketchum's research has not appeared in any peer-reviewed scientific journal, and there's no indication when that might happen. If the data are good and the science is sound, any reputable science journal would jump at the chance to be the first to publish this groundbreaking information. Until then, Ketchum has refused to let anyone else see her evidence.

[xilman]

The Sabre engine design, a hybrid jet/rocket engine for the Skylon space plane has passed a technical review demo.

The head honcho of Reaction Engines Ltd, Alan Bond, gave a talk in Cambridge last Friday evening. There's some interesting technical challenges in that engine, not least on how to build a cooler which can take in air at 1200C and reduce its temperature to -200C in less than 10 milliseconds. The solution involves 50-odd kilometres of piping with a diameter of a millimetre and a wall thickness of 20 microns or so, carrying high velocity helium gas cooled by passing through liquid hydrogen.

All this is required so that a relatively conventional jet engine can reach Mach 5; regular designs peak at Mach 2.8 or so.


Incidentally, and of relevance to another thread, Bond was one of the leading lights in the Daedalus project to design an interstellar probe back in the 1970's. I've a copy of the original Daedalus report, now signed by Alan Bond. He tells me that it will be republished soon, in hardback this time. The follow-up to Daedalus, fittingly named Icarus, is now under way.


Paul