Bad Science
A study in assumptions leading to bad analysis:
Witness the effect that the need for funding will often have on a hard science. What draws the attention of the layman in an otherwise stodgy and highly mathematical field? Sensationalism. In this case, "we found planets, and we're unique!"
The data upon which this "research" is based is completely and entirely inferential in nature. No one has ever actually laid eyes on an extra-solar planet. Every single scrap of data we have concerning these supposed other star systems is based upon a series of assumptions, inferences, and just down-right guesses that would make a stage magician blush.
So now, having collected and collated this highly specious data, they proceed to build simulators based upon those assumptions and produce data which reflect the bias. That's not science, that's wishful thinking.
Even more telling -- and more than a little disturbing -- is how this sort of "research" reflects pre-Enlightenment thinking: The moon and the sun and the stars and the planets all appear to go in a circle around the Earth, ergo the Earth must be the center of the Universe, and therefore humans the most important creation of The Giant Invisible Man in the Sky. Sounds silly to us, but is it really any sillier than saying that the Solar System is unique, based upon nothing more than a vanishingly tiny handful of inferential guesses, completely absent corroborating data of any kind?
It took people like Kepler and Newton the best years of their lives to debunk the load of horse manure that had underpinned human philosophy for centuries. Now we have so-called astronomers falling into exactly the same sort of lazy, sensationalistic assumptions that marked the likes of Tycho Brahe. Their reasons may (or may not) be slightly different, but the result is the same: bad science.
For shame.
Research conducted by a team of North American scientist shows our solar system is special, contrary to the accepted theory that it is an average planetary system. Using computer simulations to follow the development of planets, it was shown that very specific conditions are needed for a proto-stellar disk to evolve into a solar system-like planetary system. The simulations show that in most cases either no planets are created, or planets are formed and then migrate towards the disk center and acquire highly elliptical orbits.
The research was aimed at finding the connection between the properties of the proto-stellar disk and those of its progeny, the planets. A set of 100 simulations, based on data from over 250 planetary systems...
Witness the effect that the need for funding will often have on a hard science. What draws the attention of the layman in an otherwise stodgy and highly mathematical field? Sensationalism. In this case, "we found planets, and we're unique!"
The data upon which this "research" is based is completely and entirely inferential in nature. No one has ever actually laid eyes on an extra-solar planet. Every single scrap of data we have concerning these supposed other star systems is based upon a series of assumptions, inferences, and just down-right guesses that would make a stage magician blush.
So now, having collected and collated this highly specious data, they proceed to build simulators based upon those assumptions and produce data which reflect the bias. That's not science, that's wishful thinking.
Even more telling -- and more than a little disturbing -- is how this sort of "research" reflects pre-Enlightenment thinking: The moon and the sun and the stars and the planets all appear to go in a circle around the Earth, ergo the Earth must be the center of the Universe, and therefore humans the most important creation of The Giant Invisible Man in the Sky. Sounds silly to us, but is it really any sillier than saying that the Solar System is unique, based upon nothing more than a vanishingly tiny handful of inferential guesses, completely absent corroborating data of any kind?
It took people like Kepler and Newton the best years of their lives to debunk the load of horse manure that had underpinned human philosophy for centuries. Now we have so-called astronomers falling into exactly the same sort of lazy, sensationalistic assumptions that marked the likes of Tycho Brahe. Their reasons may (or may not) be slightly different, but the result is the same: bad science.
For shame.
posted by Jar(egg)head at 10:10
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