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New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest

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Re: New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest

#81

Post by bryceacc »

ajkjk wrote: post #33
mmaunder wrote: post #28

Interesting that they started with data. Some of the most interesting discoveries I've made have started with me saying "that's weird" while looking at data. From the article: "Graham's team was doing an unrelated project on plant genetics and noticed that the western false asphodel had a genetic deletion that's sometimes seen in carnivorous plants. The researchers started to think about the fact that this flower gre…

I've long felt that the American school system's version of the scientific method (formulate hypothesis, run experiment, collect data, draw conclusions) is totally wrong and turns people off of science. The real procedure that we should teach kids is: collect data, ask questions about it, hypothesize some answers, and only then do a experiment to test your theory. The question formulation, based on observational evid…

people don't make a hypothesis in a vacuum though, they should always coming from a starting point of observations. I think the real problem is motivation to critically think about a hypothesis and follow through with investigating it. People are too lazy to find out random truths

Re: New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest

#82

Post by newsyyswen »

mindcrime wrote: post #59
dshpala wrote: post #5

Now we just need to bio-engineer them to grow larger stems, so that they could catch larger flies. And voila - natural (and pretty) fly paper!

"I suspect that there might be more carnivorous plants out there than we think." Now we just need to bio-engineer them to ... Somehow I'm sensing the onset of something that might have once been the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster.... or an episode of Doctor Who.

We might be seeing less of that subgenre these days because the general public is starting to realize that genetic engineering is sort of like AI/ML.

It takes a lot of effort and expense to achieve mildly promising results, and any given project is much more likely to break out in tumors or be outcompeted by existing strains than it is to evolve into something unexpectedly fit. Yes, poorly-engineered plants can grow tumors...or at least odd growths that sap their energy and nutrients.

Re: New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest

#83

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

maxerickson wrote: post #57
tantalor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like an incomplete test. What was the control? Did they try sticking fruit flies to the stems of known non-carnivore plant?

What's the test for a "known non-carnivore plant"? If it absorbs half it's nitrogen from insects that get stuck to the stem…

Then it could be a (weird) symbiote, or pick stuff up on contact

Re: New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest

#84

Post by Ericson2314 »

ajkjk wrote: post #33
mmaunder wrote: post #28

Interesting that they started with data. Some of the most interesting discoveries I've made have started with me saying "that's weird" while looking at data. From the article: "Graham's team was doing an unrelated project on plant genetics and noticed that the western false asphodel had a genetic deletion that's sometimes seen in carnivorous plants. The researchers started to think about the fact that this flower gre…

I've long felt that the American school system's version of the scientific method (formulate hypothesis, run experiment, collect data, draw conclusions) is totally wrong and turns people off of science. The real procedure that we should teach kids is: collect data, ask questions about it, hypothesize some answers, and only then do a experiment to test your theory. The question formulation, based on observational evid…

I'm reminded of https://blog.khinsen.net/posts/2020/12/10/the-structure-and-... the opening paragraph is worth quoting in (almost) full:

> It is often said that science rests on two pillars, experiment and theory. Which has lead some to propose one or two additional pillars for the computing age: simulation and data analysis. However, the real two pillars of science are observations and models. Observations are the input to science, in the form of numerous but incomplete and imperfect views on reality. Models are the inner state of science. They represent our current understanding of reality, which is necessarily incomplete and imperfect, but understandable and applicable. Simulation and data analysis are tools for interfacing and thus comparing observations and models. They don’t add new pillars, but transforms both of them.

Re: New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest

#85

Post by neurostimulant »

tantalor wrote: post #38
Quikinterp wrote: post #22

I like the technique of testing if it was carnivorous. For the lazy people, they put a nitrogen isotope inside fruitflies and then tested the plant later to see if it was absorbing the nitrogen, and it was.

This sounds like an incomplete test. What was the control? Did they try sticking fruit flies to the stems of known non-carnivore plant?

Well, terrestrial plants don't normally absorb nutrients from flower stalks, right?

Re: New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest

#86

Post by phito »

pharrington wrote: post #7

"Nobody would be looking at a flower stalk as the primary mode of carnivory" This is probably exactly what the plant is betting on. It's a nice perceptive check on our own individual intelligence as humans.

Yeahhh that quote is BS. We already have the genus Stylidium which is suspected to have a carnivorous flower stalk for years if not decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylidium

Re: New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest

#87

Post by tasogare »

ajkjk wrote: post #33
mmaunder wrote: post #28

Interesting that they started with data. Some of the most interesting discoveries I've made have started with me saying "that's weird" while looking at data. From the article: "Graham's team was doing an unrelated project on plant genetics and noticed that the western false asphodel had a genetic deletion that's sometimes seen in carnivorous plants. The researchers started to think about the fact that this flower gre…

I've long felt that the American school system's version of the scientific method (formulate hypothesis, run experiment, collect data, draw conclusions) is totally wrong and turns people off of science. The real procedure that we should teach kids is: collect data, ask questions about it, hypothesize some answers, and only then do a experiment to test your theory. The question formulation, based on observational evid…

This is where Western and Japanese linguistics show their biggest difference. The former has a tendency to try making heavy generalizations (finding the universal properties of language/s) and prove it by crafting a few examples fitted for the task (peak armchair linguistics). In the latter, a huge amount of data is collected. I've seen at library a book with hundred maps, relatively precise, about the fine variation in Japanese dialect. It's however sometimes lacking explanation. So both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses and I think that more ground breaking word can be done if relying on works from the two traditions.

Re: New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest

#88

Post by phito »

neurostimulant wrote: post #85
tantalor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like an incomplete test. What was the control? Did they try sticking fruit flies to the stems of known non-carnivore plant?

Well, terrestrial plants don't normally absorb nutrients from flower stalks, right?

They definitely do absorb nutrients from leaves (check out foliar feeding), so it's not far stretched to imagine that they also could do the same from flower stalks

Re: New carnivorous plant discovered in Pacific Northwest

#89

Post by XorNot »

version_five wrote: post #67
ajkjk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long felt that the American school system's version of the scientific method (formulate hypothesis, run experiment, collect data, draw conclusions) is totally wrong and turns people off of science. The real procedure that we should teach kids is: collect data, ask questions about it, hypothesize some answers, and only then do a experiment to test your theory. The question formulation, based on observational evid…

I think this depends on the field. In physics and engineering, there is a body of underlying theory from which one can derive a hypothesis, based on some causal mechanism, before seeing any data. You can then go out and collect some data to confirm - in many cases this is basically just a sanity check, occasionally the data is in conflict with the underlying theory and you learn something big. Outside of the hard sci…

Physics and engineering though are absolutely full of interesting effects we observed first though, then hypothesized as to why. University level physics labs are almost wall to wall "observe the original effect that was weird" as a result.
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