11–20 of 84 posts
Remember the Sokal Hoax and Sokal Squared? Turns out that STEM also has all those problems. For profit universities pushing academics to "publish or perish" are the real enemies here, for all disciplines.
The Sokal Hoax, while famous, is not very notable. They did not even publish in a peer reviewed journal.
Worth remembering that Linus Pauling went off the deep end on Vitamin C. Not that he faked stuff, but that even very smart people get sucked into wierd science sometimes. So leaping from this, to Semanza is emperor's-new-clothes is pushing too far. If he's moved into a space where marginal behaviour around research is normalised thats really bad but it doesn't have to mean his Nobel wasn't warranted, that depends on…
One has to wonder if the Nobel prize was a mistake. Even if it was, no , a Nobel prize can't be revoked as per this[0] [0] https://www.nobelprize.org/frequently-asked-questions/#:~:te... .
Worth remembering that Linus Pauling went off the deep end on Vitamin C. Not that he faked stuff, but that even very smart people get sucked into wierd science sometimes. So leaping from this, to Semanza is emperor's-new-clothes is pushing too far. If he's moved into a space where marginal behaviour around research is normalised thats really bad but it doesn't have to mean his Nobel wasn't warranted, that depends on…
Worth remembering that Linus Pauling went off the deep end on Vitamin C. Not that he faked stuff, but that even very smart people get sucked into wierd science sometimes. So leaping from this, to Semanza is emperor's-new-clothes is pushing too far. If he's moved into a space where marginal behaviour around research is normalised thats really bad but it doesn't have to mean his Nobel wasn't warranted, that depends on…
John Clauser has gone off the deep end with his climate denialism.
One has to wonder if the Nobel prize was a mistake. Even if it was, no , a Nobel prize can't be revoked as per this[0] [0] https://www.nobelprize.org/frequently-asked-questions/#:~:te... .
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1949/moniz/facts/
Worth remembering that Linus Pauling went off the deep end on Vitamin C. Not that he faked stuff, but that even very smart people get sucked into wierd science sometimes. So leaping from this, to Semanza is emperor's-new-clothes is pushing too far. If he's moved into a space where marginal behaviour around research is normalised thats really bad but it doesn't have to mean his Nobel wasn't warranted, that depends on…
But... imagine it wasn't. If you had a 'logical and normal' understanding of the universe, and heard of somebody researching something with these sort of implications, then a normal person would probably think they had simply lost their mind. Calling it just "weird" would be a dramatic understatement.
We always have, and probably always will have, an arrogance of the present. It's explained by a tautology - what we think is right, is what we think is right. Or otherwise, we wouldn't think in such a way. Yet the entirety of human history shows that sooner or later, much if not most of what we think we know to be true, will be proven to be simply wrong. Sometimes it will be in the 'needs refinement' bucket, but much of it will also just end up in the completely and fundamentally wrong bucket. And the scientists willing to indulge 'weird science' are those who will take us there, because you're not just cleanly stepping from one branch to another A->B->C, but just completely scrapping the tree and starting with an entirely new root node.
One has to wonder if the Nobel prize was a mistake. Even if it was, no , a Nobel prize can't be revoked as per this[0] [0] https://www.nobelprize.org/frequently-asked-questions/#:~:te... .
Lucky for this guy https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1949/moniz/facts/
As an interesting factoid, lobotomy was practiced at all levels of society at the time. Even JFK's sister was secretly lobotomized [1]. It was covered up for years as it went about as well as one would expect a lobotomy to go.