Science Forums Comparison

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

True' date=' but I can really see the conversation going:

 

<question>

<"wait for ______">

<"yeah, he'll know">

<"just wait for him">

<"he knows all this stuff">

<lengthy response from professor>

end of thread[/quote']

Then someone will say, "No, that isn't true! Because _____" and we'll all have fun picking him apart.

[Dave]

Hopefully it'll be someone like ExtraSense

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

That's what I was thinking.

 

Meanwhile, the professor will be thinking, "What a bunch of crackpots..."

[Dave]

Well I think we're all safely assured that ExtraSense is a crackpot tbh, but yes, someone of great intellect probably would be thinking that.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Hopefully they'll get the idea that we aren't all like him...

[Dave]

As I've said before, the quality of posting on here is second to none. I doubt they'd assume that we were all like him and accept that there's always going to be a few muppets hanging around.

[Martin]

you want to boost the number of academics participating in SFN

 

then debate an issue that bears on research funding

 

Peter Woit of the math department at Columbia

(see his blog and homepage)

maintains that string theory is bogus science and

should be cut back in the research budget

until (if ever) there are some

testable results

 

Rudy Vaas a prominent German science-journalist has

published some popularizations of the discontent with string theory

 

on the other hand any criticism of string research is a hot button

issue with string-academics and they can get vituperative and

highly defensive

 

so it is potentially a fun debate and, since it ultimately involves

public image and funding, is apt to bring in some academics

 

----------------

 

another potentially lively discussion concerns the various ("background independent") approaches to making a quantum theory of general relativity, since these have seen growing research activity recently and string-loyalists tend to want to badmouth them, perhaps perceiving them as rivals.

 

Lubos Motl (harvard) has been attacking John Baez (UC riverside) on SPR (sci.physics.research) recently apparently because Baez "this weeks finds in mathematical physics #206 has some good words about one of these alternative quantum gravity approaches----a recent paper by Jan Ambjorn and Renate Loll which seems to some people to presage a breakthrough

"Emergence of a 4D world from causal quantum gravity" online at arxiv

 

-----------

 

in larger scheme these things may not matter a great deal (or they could, its hard to tell) but they are hot controversial issues for academics because they influence the allocation of research grants, fulltime positions, access to NAS/NRC advisory committees, and also plain old status and sense of importance

---------

 

I will get a link to Peter Woit's homepage and blog, and to a Rudy Vaas article from something in Germany analogous to Scientific American

so you can sample how this discussion is going at present (it may already be completely familiar to anyone reading this post! so there may be no need for the links, but just in case)

 

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/'>http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/blog/

 

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/

(has links to an article published in American Scientist in 2002,

and an earlier article "String Theory--an Evaluation")

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0102051

also some interesting reactions from readers of Woit's articles

http://www.math.columbia.edu/%7Ewoit/reaction.html

 

the blog has a lot of reactions from readers too, so if you look at

the entries that have to do with string theory you get some idea of the

controversy

 

then there is some pretty vitreolic stuff from Lubos Motl on SPR

and the new SPS (sci.physics.strings) which he co-moderates

 

I will get the Rudy Vaas link---an example of popular as opposed to technical writing, but nevertheless with bearing on the controversy

 

"The Duel: Strings versus loops"

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0403112

 

A translation of Rudy Vaas' article in the German

science magazine "Bild der Wissenschaft"

[Dave]

Trouble is, usenet and mailing lists are pretty much the only form of communication amongst the scientific community; getting them onto IRC/forums is a bit of rarity for most

[Martin]

Trouble is, usenet and mailing lists are pretty much the only form of communication amongst the scientific community; getting them onto IRC/forums is a bit of rarity for most

 

you said it! rarity is right! why should an academic even bother with SPR much less SFN

but they have stray impulses to browse around, teach random people, explain things, watch streetfights, whatever just like normal folks

 

so Ive seen academics come in and post at a rather similar venue to this one and in fact I believe it was the quantum gravity/string theory controversy that brought them in, for whatever reason.

 

I forget who brought up the issue in this thread of attracting more qualified people-----I sense some ambiguity, should one even bother? who needs them?-----I can sympathize with that viewpoint too.

[Dave]

Generally I think it is a good idea; however I think we need to get the name of SFN more widely known before we start inviting professors for discussion on subjects.

[J'Dona]

Hmmm, what forms of advertising? Obviously a magazine ad would be too expensive, but what about notes on the bulletin boards of college halls, posting on other forums, or even word of mouth? Unless you were to ask only professors and such, advertising would generally draw in quite a few undesirable people with little or no understanding of science (posting an ad on a certain other gaming forum, the first that comes to my mind, would possibly double the members and half the intelligence of SFN). But if we specifically asked professors, there would be even less going on here, as most "debates" would end in minutes. Some of the more, ahem, interesting posts would be smacked down so hard that it might even scare some people off, and there would be less debating, although people would get more hard information out of it.

 

I could put up notes for some professors or students at my college, and they could certainly contribute if they were interested, but is that what we want?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I suppose so, because college kids are getting an education, so they should have intelligence.

[Martin]

you said it! rarity is right! why should an academic even bother with SPR much less SFN

but they have stray impulses to browse around' date=' teach random people, explain things, watch streetfights, whatever just like normal folks

...

 

I forget who brought up the issue in this thread of attracting more qualified people-----I sense some ambiguity, should one even bother? who needs them?-----I can sympathize with that viewpoint too.[/quote']

 

continuing the discussion of getting more (and more qualified) people.

 

I'm discouraged

Someone named jana came in---well-versed and maybe a junior at toronto (or going to take a course for seniors in the fall). Sounds perfect for this site, if I have it right what he or she is background-wise.

 

but that was about all. I noticed that at one point on the 17th June there were 63 users, but now it is around 15-20 last time i looked

 

I think this is basically a very good board

 

boards like this tend to get waterlogged with silly people (who are attracted by what they perceive as prestige topics of discussion and by other silly people)

 

it is a natural aging process which boards undergo

like the Kon-Tiki balsawood raft if you know that book

it eventually became sluggish and low in the water

 

this SFN board is still dry and buoyant compared with some other more soggy ones.

 

I would like to have an accurate measure of usership which would

show an up-tick in activity if one occurrs

 

One should start threads which have titles which google picks up

and then google will send people who have asked about that topic

 

and one should have some controversial positions which slightly threaten

people's unexamined assumptions and preconceptions, so they are provoked to come back and defend their prejudices (also it doesnt matter who wins, if one is simply trying to cultivate some action)

of course I wholeheartedly believe in any position I personally adopt but in a more

general way it doesnt matter as long as there is a lively discussion

 

One thing that is bad about this board is that not enough people respect the categories.

there is a menu and people start threads where they dont belong

 

this makes interesting discussions harder to find

 

moderators should move new misplaced threads and get them to be more sorted out , however this is work and I do not like to suggest work to anybody.

 

old misplaced threads are all right because one has gotten used to where they are, but people making new threads should learn where things go

[Sayonara]

but that was about all. I noticed that at one point on the 17th June there were 63 users, but now it is around 15-20 last time i looked

Around 60 of those will have been search bots. They visit regularly - if they're from a big name like google, they arrive in packs.

 

 

One should start threads which have titles which google picks up

and then google will send people who have asked about that topic

This has come up before. People tend to forget these things though unfortunately, and expecting new members to read every guide or policy when they sign up is quite silly because as we all know it never happens.

 

 

One thing that is bad about this board is that not enough people respect the categories. there is a menu and people start threads where they dont belong this makes interesting discussions harder to find.

moderators should move new misplaced threads and get them to be more sorted out , however this is work and I do not like to suggest work to anybody.

The moderators usually deal with mis-placed threads quite quickly, so I'm not sure this is a big problem. Usually if people aren't sure they will post in "General Science", and if there's an obvious category for that thread it will be moved quite quickly.

[Martin]

Around 60 of those will have been search bots. They visit regularly - if they're from a big name like google' date=' they arrive in packs.

...

The moderators usually deal with mis-placed threads quite quickly, so I'm not sure this is a big problem. Usually if people aren't sure they will post in "General Science", and if there's an obvious category for that thread it will be moved quite quickly.[/quote']

 

good news then, the number of members was in the double digits---11 or 12---when I saw 63 on the board

 

this morning I saw 58 with the split being 12 members + 46 guests

 

when I check "who's online" to see what the guests read there are often a few reading interesting things so if they are cyborgs at least some of them have good taste

 

-----------

I understand the view that misplaced threads are not a big problem

 

I just looked at cosmology and on the first page saw only 3 obvious ones:

 

question about the slingshot effect (used in navigating probes in solar system)

 

question about composition of the planet Mercury

 

thread about colonizing Mars

[Martin]

a new misplaced thread in cosmology today

about the composition of comets

 

traffic has been picking up, or so it seems to me (with not

very much experience of this board as yet)

 

I wonder how many of the "guests" are actually humans and

might join if they like what they are reading, and how many

are bots sent by the Great Powers to study us

 

[edit: I recently looked at "who's online" and saw that one of

the guests was reading who's online, and I can't picture a cyborg

doing that, so I reckoned that guest was probably an actual person]

[JaKiri]

a new misplaced thread in cosmology today

about the composition of comets

 

A new misplaced post in this thread today.

 

Re: Martin's comments, in summation: more discussion (especially from more 'professional' scientists) results from discussion ABOUT science, not OF science.

[Martin]

...

 

Re: Martin's comments' date=' in summation: more discussion (especially from more 'professional' scientists) results from discussion ABOUT science, not OF science.[/quote']

 

Hi JaKiri,

 

I'm not sure I understand your distinction between discussing ABOUT and OF

 

what i like best on boards is when other people find a new article in the preprint arxiv that has something new and surprising as a result

and they post the link to the article and tell a bit about it

and then people discuss and ask questions etc.

 

or, alternatively, when someone has a real question about something they want explained and someone else volunteers to explain

 

so I like it when the discussion is OF new research results or new astronomical observations

and also when it is ABOUT those things

there is a difference in nuance here, you think?

 

maybe someone should post some links of online science news sources like the BBC science website and Nature online whatever's free, and arxiv of course, and the Hubble ST site

 

then people could get news items and start discussion, if they wanted, around those news items

 

I mean in the ordinary fora not the special News forum which is heavily moderated and somewhat slow to respond

[JaKiri]

I'm not sure I understand your distinction between discussing ABOUT and OF

 

Discussion of science, at least at a point when you can't just say 'This is the currently accepted model' (and that is the end of that) is something which is hard to engender without having sufficient people with the ability to discuss high level science, which is a rather circular problem when you consider that the entire issue is acquiring people with the ability to discuss high level science.

 

Discussion about science, on the other hand, doesn't have to discard the layman; there is no advanced mathematics, which is generally the problem area, given that any qualitative results will be formed from the mathematics and so aren't really available for discussion without rather more explanation of the possiblities that is really healthy; instead, there is basic reading, comprehension, and the like. Examples of talking 'about' science would be discussing the scientific method, your funding example, and the like. It's intellectual, and very accessable to the interested layman.

 

[edit]

 

To an extent I did use rather wishywashy language; discussion 'of science' as compared to discussion about 'science', if you catch my drift and I'm sure that you do.

[Martin]

 

Discussion about science' date=' on the other hand, doesn't have to discard the layman; there is[b'] no advanced mathematics, which is generally the problem area,[/b] given that any qualitative results will be formed from the mathematics and so aren't really available for discussion without rather more explanation of the possiblities that is really healthy; instead, there is basic reading, comprehension, and the like. Examples of talking 'about' science would be discussing the scientific method, your funding example, and the like. It's intellectual, and very accessable to the interested layman.

 

.

 

gotcha!

 

I like this distinction----using analogies and metaphors to shortcut the math---emphasizing accessible issues. that is talking about

 

glad you clarified

wasnt wishwash, I simply didnt get the distinction at first

[Martin]

JaKiri, why can they not fix the

"most users ever"

gizmo?

 

I think people like to have an activity gauge and see it rise (I certainly do)

and also everytime I come to the main page

and see that broken gizmo, it has a bad impression because

it actually gives wrong information.

 

it says, like the most users ever was 44, about 3 minutes ago, but that is

wrong, it is more like 75 about 10 days ago

 

so the first thing i see when I get here is some (admittedly trivial)

misinformation

 

is there a technical reason that somehow makes it hard to fix?