mooeypoo

You seem to contradict yourself, dr.syntax. On one hand you expect your question to return to mainstream science, on the other you seem to be surprised we're asking for evidence that it deserves to go back to mainstream science. Pseudoscience and Speculation forum isn't a "punishment", it's the rightful place for speculations that are outside the realm of mainstream science. You still hold the responsibility to produce evidence and substantiate your claim. ~moo

Sure, but that chance exists for 2012 just like it exists for right... this.... second..... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

Of course it would. If it has enough evidence to explain the phenomena, it "transforms" to a theory, great, but a hypothesis cannot just come out of thin air and be counted as scientific, Cap'n. "I hypothesize that purple unicorns eat green goo." Would you really define this as a scientific hypothesis? That said, no one said Edmond's hypothesis isn't a hypothesis, but people DO ANALYZE *AND* CRITICIZE it. And if we get slap and anger when we do, then it's not only a nonscientific endeavor, it's also a not very social one. Hypotheses are not immune from questioning. The first step is to examine the hypothesis and see if it's even worthy of your effort to run an experiment. When you write a grant proposal, you need to explain why you think your hypothesis is valid BEFORE it's proven; the entire point is that you're asking for money to conduct the experiment that might bring up the evidence. HOWEVER - you need to explain how and why this hypothesis is worthy of research. If you submit a hypothesis that is self-contradictory, or that is based on a false premise, or that has already been shown to be completely false, then your hypothesis won't get the time of day, and justly so. Since we're in a science forum we're not just filing off hypotheses and waiting for someone to see how to do them - we're debating the validity of these hypotheses. If you notice, we're not just talking about how stupid this is (I never said it was) we're discussing the problems that make the hypothesis fail even BEFORE an experiment was done. If an experiment is performed on this hypothesis, with such a huge possibility for confirmation bias and selective data, then it will not be scientific or valid results. Period. Selective data and confirmation bias are NOT scientific. We offered ways to try and improve the hypothesis and method of explanation but Edmond seems to take them as attacks instead of attempts to debate the issue. As a result, he is being ucooperative. Too bad, really, the idea is interesting, even though I'm skeptical, it sounds like it can be a very interesting experiment. But it won't be worth anything if it's not done right. And if his initial premise was already shown to NOT EXIST, and his method of categorizing his groups is too broad and allows for selective subjective data mining, then this is not science. It's not immunte from criticism, though. Our problem here isn't that Edmond shouldn't share his hypothesis -- he should -- our problem is that he gets angry when people debate it with him. That's not doing science, no matter which way you flip it. Sure, he has a hypothesis, but it has MANY problems both with its logic and its methodology, and we can't be expected to just clap, cheer and accept this hypothesis without deliberating about the serious ISSUES it has. *Especially* when the issues the hypothesis is facing have to do with the methodology and, if not dealt with, will render the results of any experiment that follows this method ABSOLUTELY MOOT. His definition of types are subjective, and he doesn't quite know how to differ all of them himself, and yet his hypothesis RELIES on those differences. That's subjective and uses selective data and confirmation bias. Okay, seriously now, this is getting tiresome. No one argues against the idea of postulating or posing a hypothesis. But no one should be expected to keep criticism to him/herself when the issues the hypothesis faces mean the hypothesis is no longer following the scientific method. Cap'n, it's not like people here told Edmond he can't post a hypothesis, what we did was analyze and criticize it. We even offered methods of improving it. What he did was get frustrated and angry and move the goal post around whenever someone disagreed. That's not science, it's not following the scientific method and, quite frankly, it's against common courtesy and forum rules. I give up, though. Seriously. It's quite obvious Edmond doesn't want to debate his hypothesis with any sort of negative criticism raised; this isn't doing science, it's wasting time. I would love ot see experimental results, but if the experiment will follow the logic and lack of consistency of the hypothesis it's based upon, it will mean absolutely NOTHING scientifically. There will be no way of seeing what is the actual phenomenon vs what is Edmond's subjective belief about this phenomenon. ~moo

No, no space disaster in 2012: http://www.universetoday.com/2009/02/15/another-voice-against-2012-mania/ No comet: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/12/21/2012-no-comet/ No geomagnetic reversal: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/10/03/2012-no-geomagnetic-reversal/ no doomsday http://www.universetoday.com/2008/05/19/no-doomsday-in-2012/ There are many more. The conclusion is very clear: The movie sounds like it's going to be an absolutely hightech effects amazing hollywood style movie that's based on absolute horse crap and has absolutely no scientific backing whatsoever. Should be an awesome movie, though.

yeah, no, you still need to give the source of your citation.

And you completely ignored my post about hypothesis. We're not a philosophy forum, we're a science forum. You seem to be perfectly content when people AGREE with your hypothesis scientifically, or suggest possible mechanism that might agree with your hypothesis scientifically, but when someone poses a problem you run back to "it's hypothetical" defense. That's a bad defense. A hypothesis -- as I, and others, tried to explain multiple times -- need to be supported on its own. It cannot be circular logic. It cannot be based on flawed premise. It will not be a valid hypothesis if it is, Edmond. No matter how many times you flip it, it NEEDS to be supported. Every time we raise a problem you retract to "it's hypothetical" or "it's philosophical", but when people suggest possible scientific mechanisms, suddenly you're content to share your ideas for a practical experiment. It doesn't work like that. I suggested you read the Speculation forum "stickies" because they have an explanation of what a scientific hypothesis and a scientific speculation are. This isn't your personal blog, it isn't a soundstage where you bask in the positive opinions of your audience. You came to a science forum, and we do science here. Your statement in post #94: Shows the problem here. You removed your confirmation to find others' confirmations. The people in this thread are raising issues that are vital to your hypothesis. You choose to acknowledge only those who support it or suggest to improve it. That's not science. You are not doing science, and you are in a scientific forum. Stop going in circles and stop moving the goal post. Your hypothesis has some major problems you refuse to acknowledge. Read the thread, Edmond. I'm not the only person here raising problems; I'm just one of the only persistent ones, who wouldn't leave when you move the goalpost. ~moo

Seriously? I posted a long post with explanation of the reason for my skepticism and you take a single aspect (ignoring the bulk) and throw it off hand as my fault? Read a bit of other people's responses - some seem to agree with my analysis. Some stopped posting when you showed your lack of respect to any actual PROBLEM showed to you. I'm not the only one that criticizes this idea, Edmond, and your tendency to get defensive and cynical really doesn't help your cause. You seem to think that if you just ignore the problems or just state the problems are nonproblems ("it isn't so!") they would magically go away, and wouldn't matter. Good luck with that. ~moo

Edmond, I would appreciate if you stop treating me as if I'm trying to put you down every time I disagree with you. For the tenth time, this isn't personal, and I don't mean to sound personal, nor do I think I did. I disagree with the logic of your hypothesis. Not only am I "allowed" to do that, I'm supposed to tell you why. This is the first time you actually explained properly why my reason to disagree with you might be wrong. While I appreciate it, I really would rather you did that without the last 4 words in that paragraph. Seriously, I'm not going to stop criticizing you just because you don't like it. If I say I didn't understand your explanation, it means I really didn't. Judging from other posts in the thread, I'm not the only one. So please, please - avoid personal cynicism and "pokes". It's not getting the discussion further at all. As for your statement - I see what you're saying, and it mitigates some of my skepticism. I see how phrenology could be "one aspect" while your theory is another, but how is your theory different than Physiognomy? Doesn't physiognomy claim that a person's facial features attest to his/her character traits? Isn't that what you're claiming? I can't take your word for it, but I totally understand why you don't want to share them. That's why I said I'd love to see the final results and methodology when you're done. Hopefully, you'll get to do that soon. When I said it's interesting, I wasn't being cynical. This *is* interesting. I am just skeptical of your hypothsis. If you prove my skepticism wrong, all the better. You can't blame me, though, for being skeptical for the reasons I shared. I don't care much about modern psychology specifically not in this debate; I am not looking at it in the psychological aspect (yes, I know it's the 'leading' aspect, still) I'm more interested in the physiological aspect. The hypothesis stays the same, just the emphasis each of us puts on this is different, I suppose. In any case, my point is that the fact your categorization is subjective is already a problem. A huge problem for the sake of your research. Your claim isn't solely psychological - it contains elements of physiology. For you to prove it, you need to show physiological evidence, don't you agree? And part of a real scientific endeavor is for it to (a) mean something for some application (in empirical science we call it predictability) and (b) be possible to be repeated. How can you achieve either of the above if your categorization is subjective? So my *practical* suggestion to you is to go over your categorization method and try to come up with a way to make it clear, for the sake of the experiment. For that matter, all you need to do is deal with the extremes and ignore, for now, the "middle grounds". Deal with whatever is "middle" after you see if there indeed are clear-cut differences between your extremes. If you don't do that, you'll have a lot of trouble convincing anyone that the phenomenon exists, and it won't be because your hypothesis is necessarily wrong, it would be because your categorization is so broad, it leaves a HUGE opening for selective data and confirmation bias. That's what I meant when I said the design of the experiment isn't that simple. You want to make a point, and that's great, good luck with that (seriously), but for you to make that point you need to make sure your experiment is clear enough that the results reflect the phenomenon and not some other possible influences that can taint the data. That's all I'm trying to say. I have a few reservations about that, both about the "accepted" and about the "fact" - for that matter, if you manage to demonstrate a phenomenon it is validated and it doesn't matter if it's accepted or not. And 'facts' are a whole different issue within science.. wholly different argument right there. But the above is totally besides the point. I understand what you're saying and I accept. I don't mean it like that at all, though. I don't think you need to totally prove your hypothesis for it to be accepted as a hypothesis. You should deal with potential logical and practical problems, though. And you need to consider that your hypothesis has a very big part of it that is physiological, and biology/physiology is more empirical/clear-cut/however-you-put-it than psychology. If there are physiological effects, specifically of the type you're referring to, those will eventually require an empirical biological explanation. That's what I'm saying. ~moo

Can you share the source you're quoting, please? EDIT: It seems you've copied it from here: http://www.firstscience.com/home/articles/big-theories/is-time-travel-possible_1741.html?comment=all Please make sure to supply the citation of a quoted piece of someone else's work. More than it being common courtesy, it's also a good way to avoid plagiarism and is part of the forum rules.

In the risk of reopening this, I must put this in (you still didn't solve the matter, Edmond) -- it's true that the first stage is hypothesizing, but a hypothesis by itself has to be supported, or at the very least based on premises that are supported. Note that "supported" does not equal "proven".. The problem I have here is that your hypothesis is supported on what seems to be a premise that in other circumstances shown to be false (that the physical characteristics of the head/face correlate with behavior) and your sample upon which you drew this hypothesis is far too few, far too subjective and insufficient. Phrenology and Physiognomy both stem from the same basic premise you are suggesting. They have both been researched (quite a lot, actually) and both were shown to NOT be consistent. Again, that doesn't mean your hypothesis is necessarily false, but it does open up a problem with it. A big logical problem with it. A problem you need to deal with when designing the experiment and the rest of your method. Further, this lacks a mechanism. I understand that you insist on sticking to talking about psychology, but your hypothesis isn't strictly about the psychological effects. You're refering to the correlation between psychology and physical (biological) effects on the skull/face. That requires a mechanism. There are a few research papers suggesting that physical appearances of people's faces affect how others perceive them, but that's a different hypothesis than yours (albeit a lot more psychological and less physiological). And as was said here before, there were limited researches suggesting the possibility that hormone build-up can affect people's faces, but those changes are very specific and are mostly attributed to specific hormones usually connected to aggression. So I still don't quite understand how your hypothesis stands to the test if its basic premise seems to have been tested and discarded, and I still don't understand how - in your proposed experiment - you are going to divide the facial attributes *clearly* among people's faces when those are very varied. It's not like you have either deep brow or low brow and a few people in between. Most people have a variety, something in between, something that might look deep to you and shallow to me, depending on our own subjective categorization. To test your hypothesis, you will need to find a way to divide those groups up consistently according to proper definitions, otherwise the experiment will be moot.. you will have no way of knowing if your results represent a valid phenomena or some random chunk of subjectively picked groups. Those two problems are big problems, they're not just minor adjustments. The basic premise was tested (though under different circumstances) and was shown to be false. The categorizations are too broad and undefined; they can include anyone who is not an extreme on either side. The lack of proposed mechanism is a problem but not just yet. If the hypothesis on the EXISTENCE of the phenomenon is shown to be true, then you can move on to hypothesize the mechanism, but it should still be in the back of your mind that this is an extremely important step. ~moo

I much prefer the "Back to the Future" approach where time isn't linear.. I have absolutely no physical reason to think that, but it just seems more reasonable to me that time isn't necessarily linear and fixed. But this is all philosophical... time travel to the past isn't real. yet?

Actually, this should be expanded to say that if we cannot detect it, cannot measure it directly or indirectly by its effects on other phenomena, we cannot test the hypothesis. We can't truly detect all types of planets that orbit distant suns, for instance, and we can't directly measure them, but we CAN see the effects their gravity makes on the star (wobbling, etc) and its light. So, our technology isn't QUITE up to par with detecting the actual planet (yet!) but the fact we see its effects consistently also allows us to indirectly measure it and test the hypothesis. Same goes for dark matter, for example.

That sounds like the "Grandfather" paradox; If you go back in time and kill your own grandfather before he had time to produce your parent, you wouldn't have existed to go back in time and kill him, which means you do exist, which would mean you killed him, which means you don't --- and so on. A paradox. Since time travel isn't really possible, it's impossible to tell what would really happen. The paradox can be easily solved if you imagine time as a "tree" of possibilities. Meaning, when you went back in time and changed your own mind, you created a brand new reality in which you won't go back in time. The "alternate" reality can still exist. That's all philosophical. But it sure as heck makes for good movies...

Okay, so how do you know if a piece doesn't fit because it was measured wrong or if a piece doesn't fit because the "perception of reality" (hence, a theory) is wrong? You must have some way of differentiating between an error in perceiving the "piece" and a bigger error in the whole theory.

More specifically, you need a method to help you be objective so the results of the experiment -- and the theory that follows -- are valid in reflecting objective reality. Well said, tar.

Seriously, I can't win with you I really do mean good luck. And as I said before - and meant it - I'd love to see the results. It sounds like a very interesting experiment to conduct. The fact I'm skeptical about your hypothesis doesn't mean I can't be curious enough to want to see and analyze the results.

The "flavor of text" was an official notice, albeit a tired one done after returning from class. I didn't think it was negative. It will be the third time I am telling you that I didn't mean it to "take down" your hypothesis. Quite frankly, Edmond, I don't care if you believe me. Third time's the charm, you either don't quite have such superpower as to recognize motivation, or you don't recognize an apology, or you hide behind your anger to avoid criticizing your hypothesis. Your statement that you do not care to read our rules didn't help your case, I must say. Whichever it is, please stop. It's no longer relevant. I did not mean anything bad, and I am sorry if it seemed so. Believe it or not, just please move on from this, so we can actually deal with the science. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Good luck.

You really shouldn't take issue with it, Edmond, the purpose isn't to bring you (or your idea) down. The simple fact is that this isn't mainstream science, and whatever isn't mainstream science is debated in the Speculation forum. Since many times (not always, but many) speculations are pseudoscience (or the distinction is barely existing) the forum is mixing the two up. But your hypothesis isn't categorized as pseudoscience, it's just not mainstream science and not yet validated enough to stay in the other subforums that deal with mainstream science. When I said this wasn't personal and wasn't meant as punishment, I wasn't trying to be cynical. I meant it. No no, let's go back a bit. I don't expect you to convince me that this is accurate in this stage. It's a hypothesis, not a full fledged theory that requires evidence. I know that, and I don't expect you to start listing the evidence when you have none yet. However, your hypothesis ran into a slight problem. Either that, or we ran into a problem understanding the specifics of your hypothesis. We need some clarification, mainly on the matter of how close it is to phrenology. We don't expect you to give us evidence to prove your hypothesis, but you should be able to consider - and *explain* properly - what the differences are between your hypothesis and the *failed* hypothesis of phrenology. So far, though, your explanation was consisted of "it's not the same!" which isn't really an explanation, and it wasn't enough to show us why your *basic premise* has any merit. Okay, look, we're not a databank of ideas where you post a thought and it is kept forever in a safe. We are people who are interested in science, are doing science, and are curious and methodological by nature. You raised a hypothesis, we ask questions. If you don't want to deal with questions, don't post on a debate forum. I didn't say it's stupid. I moved the thread ot Speculation, and oyu seemed to have taken it personally. IT really isn't personal. You admit this is a speculation, so there's not much need to explain why it's here. And yet, it seems that every time I ask you the question about phrenology, you get testy. Why? I am asking a valid question here, Edmond. If I got things wrong, stop telling me "it just ain't so" and explain why. I would love to help design an experiment, make sure there are proper controls and - quite frankly - I'd be very interested in the results you'll be getting. This sounds like an interesting psychological experiment. But the hyopthesis has some basic issues that I want answer on. Not everything you will get in the forum is positive criticism. Sometimes people disagree with you. Can you please explain *why* you think this is different than Phrenology? Of course it's science. It's not empirical experimentation just yet, but the mere discussion and flushing out of fallacies and quirks and problems from the hypothesis, and the design of the experiment, is absolutely science. No one is being subjective when they give you the definition of Phrenology and your OWN definition of your own hypothesis and compare them together. That's not subjective, it's a question of purpose. If you can't answer it, the odds this actually transforms into a proper scientific project drop considerably. If we just manage to cooperate on it, of course. Otherwise, it stays in the realm of arguing. Too bad. It's too interesting for that, don't you agree? Alright, so you say that Brow/Nose dept (which are physical construct of the skull) are correlated with various types of behavior/character traits. Is that accurate? Please just answer yes or no, your insistence that I misrepresent you doesn't help if you don't tell me how I'm doing that. We will be able to continue debating from there, after we're both on "the same page". No, we pointed out that it's VERY SIMILAR to phrenology. You claiming that it isn't is moot unless you explain HOW it's different. We showed you EXACTLY where the two are the same - they both originate from the same premise. All you did to refute this was claim "it's not the same!" which is equivalent to answering "because!" which, I hope you agree, is moot. Can you please take a moment and *explain* what the differences are between your basic premise and Phrenology basic premise? Now you're misrepresenting what I said. We didn't say phrenology was your hypothesis, we said your hypothesis is SIMILAR to phrenology, and since phrenology was proven false, we were wondering why your hypothesis is better. What was it based on, then? And even if that's true, why is that so major? The premise is still the same premise, and it was the premise that was proven wrong, not the method of differentiating the subjects from one another. No, no phrenology wasn't created out of thin air at all, my friend, you should read about its history. It was also created out of a hypothesis based on subjective observation. Today, we would call it Racist, but that doesn't negate the fact that it was totally based on noticing similarities between cranial structure of certain races and linking those races (and hence, facial and cranial structures) to character traits. It's not at all "out of thin air"; it sounded COMPLETELY PLAUSIBLE back then, according to the time's beliefs and customs. Today it sounds racist. Today, we know it's proven wrong. That, however, doesn't mean that your hypothesis is wrong, by itself. Absolutely not, but it DOES raise the question about how similar they are. Your observation is very general, dependant on subjective classification, no control groups, small group of subjects and little variety. That's not quite observation; that's guesswork. Sorry to be blunt, but it is. It might be enough to divise a new - BETTER - experiment to gather more data that you can later analyze further, but in itself it's FAR from being actual observation. I'll give you an example: I observe the moon for 5 hours. I formulate the hypothesis that the moon has the shape of a banana with mountains on it. This was based on observation. But it was crappy observation. I didn't have enough information - for that matter, if I'd have observed the moon for a full month instead of just 5 hours, I'd have seen it's NOT shaped like a banana, etc. Hypotheses by themselves need some corroboration -- some BASIS to them to warrant further research. Your idea sounds interesting, but your data is too small. If you want, you should start getting a MUCH larger dataset, with much narrower categories (brow shape, nose depth, etc) with a controls and some way of objectively measuring your results. Then you could attempt to formulate an *ACTUAL* hypothesis based on ACTUAL data, and move even further to thinking what makes this phenomenon happen. I'm not saying your hypothesis is wrong, I'm saying your hypothesis has a few problems that need to be dealt with before the next step of divising an actual experiment. Don't underestimate the complexity of designing experiments, by the way. If you want this to be accepted as scientific, there are quite a lot of aspects you need to think about - from large variability of subjects to statistical errors, to control groups, etc etc. It's not that simple. I didn't say it's implausible just because I didn't like it, I said your hypothesis is problematic *BECAUSE* it seems to be relying on the same premise of phrenology and this premise was shown to be false. Does that mean your hypothesis is necessarily false? NO. You do need to explain this matter, though, before anyone would consider your hypothesis or any sort of scientific merit it may or may not have. ~moo

That's a very interesting aspect, but it's talking about how a person's physical traits affects how *OTHERS* perceive his behavior. It isn't necessarily a testament to what the person's behavior actually is, just what OTHERS think it is on first impression. That's a bit different. Is that what was meant?

Good, then there's no argument about it being in the Speculation forum. We can move on. That's great, but ti's not science. It might be what merits further research on your part, but it's FAR from convincing anyone your hypothesis has any scientific validity. You came to this forum, and the burden of proof is on you. Of course, you don't have to prove anything; but if you can't even get *us* - a small community of amateur and professional scientists - to understand the merit of your hypothesis, you will have quite a bit of difficulty showing the rest of the scientific community about it. I don't quite understand your reluctance to explain yourself. You put up a claim and we criticize it. Tough. That's what we do. Instead of trying to see how our criticism makes your theory better (either by you changing the theory to fit the evidence better or by you explaining the criticism under a new, scientific light) you resort to blaming us for criticizing it at all. Welcome to the lovely world of science, and the process of peer review. That's not a definition of a straw man, Edmond, you're making no sense. If you think my equation is fallacious, explain why. "Straw man" is misrepresenting someone else's words, which I didn't do. If I did, then I requested you CLARIFY what your theory is - which, for some reason, you seem to avoid. So far, you seem to claim there is correlation between the shape of the face to behavioral traits. -- is that your hypothesis? If not, please clarify. If it is your hypothesis, then it's very similar to phernology. You can claim no for eternity, with no avail. Phernology claims the same basic premise, with a slightly different turn. YOu need to show why this BASIC premise - while discarded in phernology - is true in your case. Otherwise the basic claim of your hypothesis was discounted. You're not forced to do anything. You came to our forum, not the other way around. You chose to make a claim. Now you choose to run away when we criticize it. Please clarify your claim, so we can move forward. ~moo Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged When you signed up to this forum you clicked a nice little 'v' button saying you agreed to our rules. We are very patient, and we don't want to "shut up" anyone, but you can't really expect to spend time in this forum while disrespecting the rules. I was very clear with my equation to phernology, Edmond. Instead of getting angry, how about you tell me *WHY* the argument is false? "It's not like phrenology" is equivalent to "It's just not!" which is not an explanation. I will reiterate: You claim the shape of the face is correlated to behavior. Phernology claims the shape of the skull correlates with behavior. Both theories have the same basic premise. If that's a wrong conclusion, please explain why. Getting angry does not make anyone understand you any better. I'd like to see how you classified each of those individuals, though. The problem that I can see is that the classification itself might be subjective; how do you form a control group? how do you decide if a brow is shape type A or shape type B? what happens if the brow is in-between? similar to both? what mechanism stands behind the shape of the brow/nose to behavior? Those need to be explained before you can design an experiment, so you know how to design the experiment in such a way where it will give you actual valid results. ~moo

Edmond, Pseudoscience and Speculation is not a punishment; your thread is talking about a hypothesis you have - by your own admission, a new hypothesis that is in need of an experiment. It's still a speculation; it's not mainstream science. Speculation is the proper forum for it. Now, if we can move on to discuss the science of this instead of bickering about our forum regulations, we might actually be able to understand how this hypothesis has any merit, and perhaps find a way to push it back into mainstream science. I will reiterate my request that you go over our rules and the Speculation forum policy. It's not meant to come as a personal attack on you, Edmond. Speculation forum has a lot of very INTERESTING, valid scientific debate. It's just not mainstream science. Not yet, at least. Are you going to try and put forth some actual evidence, or are we going to go around in circles arguing our own set of rules? ~moo

Oh my. Maybe you should go over this post and the other "Stickie" posts in the Speculation forum. Really, it might help us move on from these martyrdom-claims we all know and are utterly irrelevant to any discussion. Unlike you (so far), Galileo provided actual evidence to his hypothesis. We didn't discard your hypothesis off hand, Edmond, we're saying there's not enough evidence (there's none so far) to support it so far. Playing the "martyr" card won't really give your theory any more credence. Only science will. Also, seriously, drop the attitude. This isn't personal. It's our responsibility to criticize your claims; if your theory passes criticism, it's all that much more substantiated. If it fails criticism, you get to see where it needs strenghtening or change. That's the process here. We're not going to stop asking questions just because you don't like it. This isn't personal; we're not judging a person, we're judging a claim. There's no need to make this personal. Show them. Also, I'm not sure 'straw man' is what you meant here, seeing as merely requesting evidence isn't misrepresenting anything you say. It's simply a request for you to provide evidence. If anything, you might claim it's moving the goal post, but I don't see where that's happening either. Further, so far you gave us anecdotes, not really observations. Observations are objective; they will be the product of the experiment you're planning (and I can't wait to see its results, and no, I'm not saying that cynically, I really do want to see what the results would be like). So far, however, what you have are your personal experiences with different types of people which you give as examples. That's not quite observations, because they're subjective. There's no control group, no measure to test different types of influences, etc. Again, this isn't personal, it's just insufficient. Your theory might be right, but you didn't provide enough evidence to show that. First off, don't put words in my mouth, and don't guess what I intend and don't intend to do. I am a scientist, and I accept evidence, not anecdotal information. If you have evidence, please share it, but you can't possibly expect me - or anyone else for that matter - to just accept your anecdotal analysis without questioning your analysis and/or method of experimentation. That's how science WORKS. It doesn't sound so, though. It is based on the same premise - that the shape of the skull affects behavioral traits. You need to bring evidence for that, and then you need to also formulate a hypothesis on *WHY* that might happen. Does it affect the brain? breathing? does breathing affect the behavior? blood pressure maybe? You need to explain this and demonstrate it. Claiming they're different doesn't MAKE THEM different. Alright, apologies, I saw the claims for race and really didn't understand where they fit in. If it wasn't your claim then we can move on. I'm not going to get into the "Race affect the face" claim (and its OWN need for corroboration, you'd be surprised how much that might not be so, when you ACTUALLY do the science) but it's irrelevant. Let's stick to the actual claims. Seeing as you claim the theory is absolutely different than phrenology, can you reiterate your hypothesis again in 1 sentence? I think we could continue much better from there, knowing exactly where the differences are. It sounds like the two thoughts originate from the same premise (skull shape affects behavior) and if that's not what your hypothesis is about, then please explain it again. If it is, then you need to explain how yours is better and not discarded along with phrenology. ~moo

Not ones that already have evidence on their side, or topics that discuss actual valid science. Those are dealt with in the science subforum. Yours is a hypothesis that you need to substantiate. Maybe you should read the "Speculation" guidelines, it might shed some light on what is missing. Besides, it never hurts to read the rules. Phrenology is the belief that the structure of the skull affects behavior and characteristic traits. You seem to claim that the structure of the skull correlates with character traits.* * Nose and brow and mouth is the front side of the skull. They are still the skull. You can make it look pretty all you want, your theory is not new. It's a new angle, maybe, but it's not new. I'm not saying that by itself this discards it, not at all. Your theory might still be true, however since phrenology is *so close* to your theory, and it was debunked quite conclusively, your theory needs this much more substantiation. Then why put 'race' into this at all? Why not just say thre are differences between people with different types of facial structures? What does race have to do with any of this at all, if you mean to look at this specific difference? It's a complication you don't need. Test to see if a type of brow correlates with a type of character trait; why does it matter what "race" a person is? ~moo