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Journal Tau Zero's Journal: Slashdot editors: science-illiterate or just stupid? 5

Journal by Tau Zero

Whenever I see something like this, I always have to shake my head and wonder where people went to school.

Conservation of energy is a foundation concept in most of science. You literally cannot understand anything significant in physics or chemistry without taking it into account throughout. Yet there goes CowboyNeal, blithely posting an article which implicitly claims that a lossy microwave generator can create energy from nothing.

Science-illiterate I can believe, but Slashdot shouldn't be giving science editor duties to anyone like that. Stupid or credulous, I am a little less ready to believe... though I am willing to be convinced.

The thing that worries me most, though, is that someone's paying editors under the table to get publicity for their hokey products. If that's where Slashdot is going, it either needs to fire the editors or die.

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Slashdot editors: science-illiterate or just stupid? More

Slashdot editors: science-illiterate or just stupid?

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  • You say "science-illiterate or stupid" as if those two things were mutually exclusive.

    How optimistic of you (-:

    Pix
    • While the latter strongly implies the former, the reverse is not nearly as reliable.
    • The thing that gets me, though, is that smart people can mis-apply the "common sense" idea that things can be made better to get impossible results. This is entirely due to ignorance; their education should have covered these things, and didn't.

      This means that people who could have solved problems had they a decent understanding, instead spin their mental wheels. When I think of all the wasted potential and the amount of misery implied by the problems left to fester, I want to cry.

      And it's all because peo

      • Well, to be honest, I myself don't have the science knowledge to immediately rule out an on-demand heater that uses microwaves for heat exchange. I could vaguely imagine a case where microwaves heat some ceramic bit that then does the on-demand heating. I have no idea whether such an idea would be efficient, though. It isn't part of my everyday knowledge, and I probably wouldn't take the time to test my initial impression of feasibility.

        Doh...

        Pix

        • It's pretty simple, actually. Microwave generators are much less than 100% efficient (otherwise, why would microwave ovens have cooling fans?), while electric resistance heaters have almost no place for losses to go. A claim that a microwave water heater can provide hot water with less power than a resistor should make anyone with even a good high-school science education very suspicious.

          Lots of people might not know that, but they aren't editting science material. Don't you think we ought to expect more o

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