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Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

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Re: Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

#21

Post by mjburgess »

somenameforme wrote: post #18
ggm wrote: post #8

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…

Einstein's discovery of relativity is something everybody takes for granted now, but think about how exceptionally ridiculous the notion that light travels at the same rate of speed from all perspectives is; or how the universe will bend over backwards, including having people 'advance through time' at different rates of speed or literally physically change the distance between things, in order to maintain this perce…

Einstein did not discover that the speed of light was fixed. This was a consequence of Maxwell's research on electromagnetism in the late 19th C.

It is entirely reasonable for any physicist (indeed, Maxwell himself could've done it with enough time), to work through the consequences of a non-relativistic equation for the speed of light.

This approach is routine in physics, and there's nothing in it that would appear crazy or unusual. Physicsts do not simply just pluck crazy ideas from their imagination and, from-nothing, deduce possible consequences. This is a myth, and insofar as people do that, they're cranks.

The imagination of a phyiscist is heavily guided by the totality of physics that has been developed. Einstein did not simply say, "what if the speed of light was fixed?"

He said, 'given we have good reasons to suppose it is, what are the concequences on relativity ?'

Re: Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

#22

Post by mianos »

Aeolun wrote: post #13

How do you accidentally have 3 images that are exactly the same?

Only half joking, but have you ever had the issue on a Mac where you copy something and it randomly fails to copy, so when you paste, it pastes the previous copy?

Easy to imagine, slack that it did not get seen.

(I think the bug is at least 15 years old).

Re: Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

#23

Post by cm2187 »

mianos wrote: post #22
Aeolun wrote: post #13

How do you accidentally have 3 images that are exactly the same?

Only half joking, but have you ever had the issue on a Mac where you copy something and it randomly fails to copy, so when you paste, it pastes the previous copy? Easy to imagine, slack that it did not get seen. (I think the bug is at least 15 years old).

Or if you have 20 files in a folder called IMG0887.jpg, IMG0897.jpg, etc, and you need to open them one after the other with an open file dialog, easy to pick the wrong one. A scientist isn't necessarily IT smart, particularly in medicine. Not saying it's what happened though.

Re: Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

#24

Post by bsdpufferfish »

tomlockwood wrote: post #3

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.

Publish or perish is primarily about peer competition and promotion, not pressure from admins.

Teaching is the money maker.

Re: Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

#25

Post by emblaegh »

mjburgess wrote: post #21
somenameforme wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Einstein's discovery of relativity is something everybody takes for granted now, but think about how exceptionally ridiculous the notion that light travels at the same rate of speed from all perspectives is; or how the universe will bend over backwards, including having people 'advance through time' at different rates of speed or literally physically change the distance between things, in order to maintain this perce…

Einstein did not discover that the speed of light was fixed. This was a consequence of Maxwell's research on electromagnetism in the late 19th C. It is entirely reasonable for any physicist (indeed, Maxwell himself could've done it with enough time), to work through the consequences of a non-relativistic equation for the speed of light. This approach is routine in physics, and there's nothing in it that would appear…

> Einstein did not discover that the speed of light was fixed. This was a consequence of Maxwell's research on electromagnetism in the late 19th C.

The principle of relativity, which what OP was talking about, cannot be derived from Maxwell's equations alone.

Re: Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

#26

Post by ralfd »

alberto_ol wrote: post #16
CalChris wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Clauser has gone off the deep end with his climate denialism.

And William Shockley with eugenics

Eugenics are "merely" deeply political incorrect/blasphemic/unethical, but not a wrong crackpot theory per se. Obviously what works for plants and animals would work for humans too.

Re: Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

#27

Post by mjburgess »

emblaegh wrote: post #25
mjburgess wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Einstein did not discover that the speed of light was fixed. This was a consequence of Maxwell's research on electromagnetism in the late 19th C. It is entirely reasonable for any physicist (indeed, Maxwell himself could've done it with enough time), to work through the consequences of a non-relativistic equation for the speed of light. This approach is routine in physics, and there's nothing in it that would appear…

> Einstein did not discover that the speed of light was fixed. This was a consequence of Maxwell's research on electromagnetism in the late 19th C. The principle of relativity, which what OP was talking about, cannot be derived from Maxwell's equations alone.

The speed of light in maxwell's eqns is non-relativistic. That is itself basically just the insight and founding principle of special relativity. The rest is just to work out how to revise relativity to account for non-relativistic velocities -- and this is fairly trivial at the special relativity level.

More novel, from einstein, was GR but many insights here can be found "in the air" amongst professional physicists, in particular you could see GR as following from a formal elaboration of Mach's principle

(itself, in many ways, just a reply to a thought experiment Netwon had made centuries earlier)

The point is that "non-crank" physics doesnt have the crank-like "moments of genuis" that people assume. It isnt just plucking ideas from the air. Those ideas are heavily embeded in thousands of years of reflection

Re: Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

#28

Post by tretert »

mjburgess wrote: post #21
somenameforme wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Einstein's discovery of relativity is something everybody takes for granted now, but think about how exceptionally ridiculous the notion that light travels at the same rate of speed from all perspectives is; or how the universe will bend over backwards, including having people 'advance through time' at different rates of speed or literally physically change the distance between things, in order to maintain this perce…

Einstein did not discover that the speed of light was fixed. This was a consequence of Maxwell's research on electromagnetism in the late 19th C. It is entirely reasonable for any physicist (indeed, Maxwell himself could've done it with enough time), to work through the consequences of a non-relativistic equation for the speed of light. This approach is routine in physics, and there's nothing in it that would appear…

> Physicsts do not simply just pluck crazy ideas from their imagination and, from-nothing, deduce possible consequences.

I have bad news for you.

Re: Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

#29

Post by tomlockwood »

bsdpufferfish wrote: post #24
tomlockwood wrote: post #3

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.

Publish or perish is primarily about peer competition and promotion, not pressure from admins. Teaching is the money maker.

In order to get tenure people need to have published.

Re: Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza tallies tenth retraction (2023)

#30

Post by armchairdweller »

ggm wrote: post #8

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…

I went deep down the Pauling Vitamin C rabbit hole once and got to point out that many studies not seeing effects are not actually giving people gram-megadoses, but mg-homeopathic ones. This story might not be as closed as some podcasters and other influencers pretend. Maybe it’s not double nobel laureate Pauling who was so wrong that he has pretty much become a quack in popular knowledge, but the fields of nutrition and perhaps medical science that are shoddy.

In fact nutrition and medical science are quite well known to be some of the worst offenders when it comes to bad methods and scientific misconduct, particularly in the past few decades (as also shown by OPs link).

Also - like apparently many of those perpetuating the story - I got my initial opinion about the Vitamin C topic being quackery from Wikipedia, but know better now not to generally trust it for medical topics since it’s quite well known that marketing departments of the pharmaceutical industry have a lot of time on their hands to write articles that benefit them. I personally burned myself with a safe&effective&local medical product promoted there with scientifically sounding terms with all criticism erased or “debunked” around 2014 and have permanent eye damage now (there has been a class action lawsuit few years later).

But to add to the nobel-laureate-turned-venturous trope, here is a recent example from physics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Josephson

I would say these people generally like to follow wherever curiosity leads them, without giving much thought about peer opinion, which is why they are the ones winning prizes for revolutionizing discoveries. They are freer to do so once the price is in and this may lead them any direction.

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