science

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a-man-from-earth, in New studies bolster theory coronavirus emerged from the wild
@a-man-from-earth@kbin.social avatar

Nah. It was pretty conclusively shown by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag that covid came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology: https://public.substack.com/p/first-people-sickened-by-covid-19?r=58hqy

DarkGamer,
@DarkGamer@kbin.social avatar

@a Did you read the article? The evidence cited there seems more compelling to me than the suspicious-but-circumstantial evidence that supports a lab leak; cases statistically clustered around the part of the wet market that sold the suspect animals, and genetic similarity to a bat strain of covid.

Still, it's possible, I just no longer believe it's probable. This quote from the article sums it up:

“Have we disproven the lab leak theory? No, we have not,” Andersen said. “But I think what’s really important here is there are possible scenarios and there are plausible scenarios and it’s really important to understand that possible does not mean equally likely.” ...

“Both of these two studies really provide compelling evidence for the natural origin hypothesis,” said Aliota, who wasn’t involved in either study. Since sampling an animal that was at the market is impossible, “this is maybe as close to a smoking gun as you could get.”

Affidavit, in Here's What NASA Pays to Be Locked in a Mars Simulator for a Year

I suppose it's not too bad. People typically use their wage as they get it, paying for rent/food/utilities. Many of these costs would be covered by the programme, which means they can potentially come out of it a year later with the full 60k.

zalack, in World's 1st 'tooth regrowth' medicine moves toward clinical trials in Japan - The Mainichi
@zalack@kbin.social avatar

Unless I'm misreading the article, right now this seems to just be regrowth for a very specific medical condition where teeth didn't come in in the first place?

The article mentions the possibility of stimulating growth in a latent third set of buds all adults have. But that doesn't seem to be what this specific breakthrough is.

Madison_rogue, in Bicycle
@Madison_rogue@kbin.social avatar

This has been very helpful reminding me that I need to get my bicycle fixed. It's been almost a year since I wrecked it and broke my arm.

shroomaroomboom,

I wrecked my bike almost a decade ago. Not the first time, but the most violent wreck I've ever experienced.

Got thrown into traffic, broke some ribs, messed up my shoulder, and cracked my helmet almost in two.

After healing tried riding my bike again. Absolutely did not expect PTSD, but could not otherwise explain how wholly unconfident I felt while trying to ride a bike, even til this day.

AlwaysNowNeverNotMe, in The revolt against reality: Harassment of scientists is escalating
@AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social avatar

They give conspiracy theorists a bad name.

Saganastic,

Did conspiracy theorists ever have a good name?

AlwaysNowNeverNotMe,
@AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social avatar

Sure back when it was the British and American aristocracies coming up with shadowy organizations that must have perpetrated the French revolution.

Doesn't seem to be tarnished when Smedly Butler unveiled the business plot, nor when the Pentagon papers leaked or evidence of MKULTRA was discovered. Then all the sudden right around the time they stopped teaching humanities at public schools all these groups appeared with very specific very laughable conspiracies they were blindly dedicated to.

And now it's just shorthand for pedophile racist.

some_guy, in A three-eyed organism roamed the seas half a billion years ago
@some_guy@kbin.social avatar

Simpsons did it first

osarusan, in Anyone want to mod m/science to get rid of the spam?

Remember, too, that it is super easy to block an individual user on your own end.

It's not the best solution to get rid of spam, but it works wonders all the same.

DougHolland,

Report a spammer once, for the good of the community, and then block the 'user'. Problem solved. :)

@osarusan

@ernest @Pons_Aelius

Gordon_Freeman, in Is there anyone moderating this community?
@Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social avatar
Mane25,

Blaming spambots is one thing, but whoever set up this community should lock it if they’re not going to mod it because there are loads of spam messages here that haven’t been dealt with in days. It’s a pretty bad look. I’m unsubscribing but I also want to add shame on whoever set this up and abandoned it because it reflects poorly on the fediverse.

Gordon_Freeman,
@Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social avatar

Is not really abandoned, the owner of this community is also the creator of Kbin. He is still working on developing kbin so there's not enough time for moderation

Mane25,

OK, then he should lock it, it’s spamming my feed, maybe I should move to something defederated with Kbin. No moderation is dangerous.

Ubermeisters, in Is there anyone moderating this community?

I don’t think this Lemmy thing is gonna make it tbh. Too many small communities all hoping to be the main hub for types of content, not enough moderation for the amount of fucking around that can happen, not to mention the constant armies of poorly informed morons trying to misinformation the general public.

Dead internet theory was right.

sunbeam60,

It can happen. With the protocol as it is, I agree Lemmy is going to remain too fragmented and might wither.

If we changed the protocol so multiple communities could become siblings (post to one, post to all), it might improve.

glittalogik,

It's still early days, I don't think we're quite doomed just yet. Right now we're witnessing the Fediverse's initial wild west Cambrian explosion sort of era. I reckon eventually the landscape will settle as people flock to where there are already other people, and tools develop and mature to navigate and manage servers/communities.

Obviously we need human mods to weed out morons and maintain quality, but automoderation and other mod tools for spam/astroturfing/etc. will also make a huge difference. A quick google turned up this Lemmy automod which appears to be in active development, and I'm sure there are plenty of others in the works.

a-man-from-earth, in Is there anyone moderating this community?
@a-man-from-earth@kbin.social avatar

No. Tho I volunteered. It's now up to @ernest.

a-man-from-earth,
@a-man-from-earth@kbin.social avatar

I followed up with a bug report.

sonori, in Scientist shocks peers by 'tailoring' climate study
@sonori@beehaw.org avatar

I think the best part is how the journal told him he was focusing too much on climate change over other factors in peer review, he spends most of it trying to defend only accounting for climate change, then after publication comes out and goes on a media tour about how he was forced, forced i say to only include climate change by the journal, seemingly forgetting that the journals peer review comments are published alongside the paper.

Itty53,
@Itty53@kbin.social avatar

This has big "I voted the general election in three states and then complained about voting security on Fox News" energy.

elouboub, in Scientist shocks peers by 'tailoring' climate study
@elouboub@kbin.social avatar

This is in the same vein as that idiot that started the anti-vaxxer movement by writing a bogus study about vaccines causing autism. Tbf, his bullshit should've been uncovered while reviewing the study...

Itty53,
@Itty53@kbin.social avatar

I think this is worse, arguably. Don't get me wrong, Wakefield wasn't good. But this is actually worse.

Wakefield wanted to call into question a thing which, at the time, was a relatively small thing: the MMR vaccine. There was no political platform of vaccines back then, it was the fallout from his con years after that created that platform. He wanted to do that so he could sell his own snake oil cure-all for autism. He frankly didn't care about vaccines, he simply knew people were hesitant about shots and overly concerned about normalcy.

So Wakefield really was just a greedy sonuvabitch ready to capitalize on the tremendous effort parents of autistic children are ready to commit for their kids. Bad, but just selfish greed. Not trying to accelerate an already existential crisis for political maga points.

This though, climate change, is already the political platform. This is very clearly an attack on the very institutions of academia themselves. This is trying to discredit the act of collecting data and replicating experiments as real science. And there's frankly a lot to say about that topic today (p<0.05 apocalypse) but this isn't saying any of that. It's simply saying "here's a reason not to trust climate science at all". That's the argument. That's way more dangerous than anti-vax arguments. Thank God this instance was as ineffective as it was.

Silver lining, it took almost ten years for Wakefield to get caught and detracted. This didn't take long to catch at all because the guy who did it was smug about his shitty goal, in typical right winger fashion: he went and published an opinion piece on his own paper, to the surprise of even his co-author.

Che_Donkey, in BBC: Tantalising sign of possible life found on faraway world
@Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml avatar

Telescope cant see aliens, telescope can see molecules lol…

HeartyBeast,

An explanation of how this works from the article:

JWST is able to analyse the light that passes through the faraway planet's atmosphere. That light contains the chemical signature of molecules in its atmosphere. The details can be deciphered by splitting the light into its constituent frequencies - rather like a prism creating a rainbow spectrum. If parts of the resulting spectrum are missing, it has been absorbed by chemicals in the planet's atmosphere, enabling researchers to discover its composition.

Note that they say the identification is ‘tentative’ and not robust yet.

Che_Donkey,
@Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml avatar

My comments was really made in jest…love the follow-up from everyone though! I also lov ehow science will always defer to “possible” instead of “definitively” no matter how much evidence there may be.

ShaunaTheDead,
@ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social avatar

That's because that's how science works. Discoveries are not considered to be statistically significant until they reach what's called 5 sigma certainty which is approximately equivalent to saying that the chance that the discovery is wrong is 1 in 3.5 million.

A lot of scientists would consider it unethical to claim a discover until you had provided enough data to reach 5 sigma certainty. When papers are published, it takes a lot of peer review before the hypothesis of that paper event approaches 5 sigma certainty, but that doesn't mean that reporters aren't happy to pick up the story.

It's just bad and/or unethical science journalism that are picking up on unproven papers because of the sensational title.

Che_Donkey,
@Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml avatar

Technically correct, the best kind of correct.

Lmaydev,

Literally yes.

Saturdaycat, in 265-million-year-old fossil reveals oldest, largest predator in South America, long before the rise of dinosaurs
@Saturdaycat@kbin.social avatar

This has me down the rabbit hole of the permian period

TigrisMorte, in CIA bribed its own COVID-19 origin team to reject lab-leak theory, anonymous whistleblower claims

left off the last bit that should have been on the headline, "without evidence"

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