Genuine Scientific Mystery - The Pioneer Anomaly and Dark Matter / Energy

[tongodeon]

I've occasionally heard scientists criticized for not appreciating mystery. "Scientists want to take apart something that seems unusual or counterintuitive. They want to explain and measure and figure it out. They don't appreciate mystery in the world. They can't accept things they can't explain or don't know

Comments

[chemicalpilate]

I realize there is a lot to comment on here, but I just want to point out one particular thing you say:

Eventually the explanation that requires the least adjustment to the physical laws of the universe [...]

This is a very important point in the development of cannonized knowledge. In every scientific discipline, the reality of our understanding, at least so far as we scientists present it as "fact", is really a collection of theories that have become too costly to change. I found this observation of what laboratories secrete as reality to be very keen and I applaud your arrival at it independent of reading Bruno Latour's seminar work, Laboratory Life.

[tongodeon]

In every scientific discipline, the reality of our understanding, at least so far as we scientists present it as "fact", is really a collection of theories that have become too costly to change.

That brings me to a point that I didn't mention in the main article.

One of the most troubling things about the Pioneer Anomaly is one detail that I just added to my post in an edit; the anomaly isn't uniform. The magnitude of the anomaly depends on the angle that the spacecraft's incoming and outgoing trajectories make with respect to Earth's equator. In other words it's not just calling for a rewrite of gravity, it's overturning Lorentz invariance which is supposedly a basic property of spacetime and the foundation of special and general relativity.

If this anomaly actually is what it looks like, this is going to be a very costly change.

[k0re]

just as important as avoiding falling into the trap of proving pseudo-science is the over conservatism, politics, and academic peer pressure one finds in many labs due to theories being too costly to change.

the scientists i find most interesting are the sort of whacky ones acting independently because their ideas are too bizarre for vcs, govt, or academia to fund. like luca turin and his whole smell is a molecular frequency vs the widely held smell being based on molecular shape. whole industries would be affected so its safer to go with the current shape status quo. i havent kept up to date with it and maybe his theory has since been debunked but the book emperor of scent details the politics in scientific research that was pretty eye opening. probably pretty similar situation of traditional industrial farms vs companies like monsanto vs individual farmers.

[tongodeon]

just as important as avoiding falling into the trap of proving pseudo-science is the over conservatism, politics, and academic peer pressure one finds in many labs due to theories being too costly to change.To be clear, I don't think he means literal cost. "We can't afford to rewrite the laws of physics because we don't have it in the budget". You need to be cautious about really big and "expensive" changes the same way you'd be really cautious about bulldozing your house and building a totally new house. You'd spend years reviewing the plans and running the numbers to make sure it really makes sense before you commit to it. You'd have a whole bunch of really smart people look it over to make sure that you're not making any mistakes. You do this because your existing house sits on decades or centuries of work that lots of other really smart people have looked at

[palecur]

"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
-Ned Flanders

[scothen_krau]

Well said. It's unfortunate that it has been so difficult to get this message across to the general public. Part of it is poor education, of course, but I suspect that a significant part of it is also willful ignorance; i.e., people want straightforward answers, not "we have to collect a lot of data over a long period of time, and we can't guarantee anything." Meanwhile, there are plenty of snake oil salesmen saying, "Oh, I can tell you why everything happens right now, and I guarantee it's true." Sadly, for many people lies are more comforting than uncertainty.

[tongodeon]

If I can go off the deep end a little bit, I think that part of it is an actual conspiracy. There's been a concerted, deliberate effort by various religious and spiritual organizations to not just cripple science education among children in this country but to discredit its worth and distort its goals and methods in the eyes of adults. The ignorance it breeds directly benefits these organizations' prostelyzation/recruiting efforts. People are more willing to join and start donating to an organization that believes the earth is 6000 years old if they don't know how to tell that it isn't. Everyone from scientologists to homeopaths benefit from scientific illiteracy and confusion.

Correlation is not causation, but I'm wondering if the decline of math and science education after the space race has anything to do with the resurgence of southern baptists and the religious right.

[mister_borogove]

Everyone from scientologists to homeopaths benefit from scientific illiteracy and confusion.

No, they think they benefit from scientific illiteracy. Too bad we can't prohibit the dispensation of pharmaceuticals to the people who try to retard scientific progress.

[tongodeon]

I guess I should have said that they benefit differentially. That's the way they gain a relative advantage. They do this in a way that cripples everyone's chances to benefit from science, including their own, but they don't care if both horses end up limping long as theirs wins the race.

Too bad we can't prohibit the dispensation of pharmaceuticals to the people who try to retard scientific progress.

This happens sometimes, and it's terrible when it does. This is another reason why I've been trying to do some science outreach - it really does work better when everyone's on board.

I have an especially hard time with People who got arts educations in the late 80s and 90s who tend to believe in radical cultural relativism, i.e. that science is "just a story" among other stories. A bunch of superstitious, barely-literate Nigerians can be expected to be suspicious about foreign-looking alien invaders with weird needles. People who have directly experienced the benefits of science, especially worldly people who have visited third-

[mister_borogove]

[Scientists] start by assuming that what they're seeing can be explained by something simple, natural, and obvious. No one jumps to crazy conclusions until the simple stuff is ruled out multiple times.

cf "Think horses, not zebras" and Occam's Razor.

[mmcirvin]

Scientists love mysteries, but they love them in the same way you might love starting out on a difficult puzzle. If there's no puzzle, there's no fun, but if you don't try to solve it there's no fun either. When people say they appreciate unsolved mysteries, it's more like just hanging the unsolved puzzle on the wall.

[tongodeon]

I was thinking that these people are trying to say that scientists love solving mysteries but they don't spend a lot of time going "whoah" and marveling about the existence of the mystery in the first place.

And I think that's incorrect. Scientists *do* spend quite a lot of time marveling about all this stuff. That's what drew most of them to science in the first place. It's just that they sit around thinking about what they're doing and getting their minds blown while they're falling asleep or driving or getting their hair cut. They do that and they also get shit done, find stuff out, and deliver the goods

[eejitalmuppet]

Yep.

At a simplistic level, away from my job, I'd like to cite the example of watching wildlife in its natural habitat. There's something inherently enjoyable for me in watching a wild creature do its thing. That said, my enjoyment is significantly enhanced if

• I can identify the critter(s) in question.
  
• I can work out why they are doing whatever it is that they are doing.

I get a similar buzz from solving chemistry problems at work, but I think the wildlife example may be easier for people to relate to . . . As a corollary, I've found that one of the hardest things to do in science is to "walk away" from a problem to which you don't have an answer (or you only have a partial answer), when you've already put in a significant amount of time trying to solve it.