So the question remains the same and is still unanswered by this stupid study: Does enough early live exercise prevents people from getting asthma ? ... or is this study only watching a third factor, that influences a degree of child's exercise and asthma induction simultaneously ?

What makes you call this a stupid study? Did you actually read the article?

The 'stupid study' is the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children - http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/. There's nothing stupid about it - this is exactly the kind of study that's /essential/ to help us understand the details of how living affects us. This particular result is a tiny, trivial part of the overall study.

Whine about correlation versus causation all you want - these kinds of studies and the correlations they discover are /vital/ to identifying cause and effect in complex systems like growing kids.

himi

To put it simply, would you say that every scientific study following the Scientific Method will produce true/correct facts? I was saying with sarcasm, NO, even faithful use of Scientific Method will sometimes produce bad science.

How do you judge the success or failure of the scientific method? Given it's an iterative optimisation method, it seems to me that the only valid measure of success or failure is the long term trend - the scientific method is successful if, over time, the trend is towards increasingly successful explanations for observed reality. I don't think it even has to be a monotonic improvement to justify being called a success - the biggest gains often come when particular theories 'fail', suggesting that both the immediate successes /and/ the immediate failures contribute to the success of the scientific method.

That measure of success suggests two things: firstly, that the success of individual theories is /not/ ultimately relevant to the success of the scientific method, and secondly, that 'stopping the clock' is /not/ a valid way to argue about the its success.

The scientific method is /not/ about 'outcomes', it's a process of continual improvement, and one that is astonishingly successful. The closest thing I can think of to a failure of the scientific method is the screwed up biological sciences that pertained in the early USSR, driven by political forces. Even there it did eventually correct itself when given the chance, and that localised failure did not affect the rest of the world. There are probably other examples of localised failure, but as with individual theories, that sort of failure doesn't indicate a failure of the scientific method.

It probably seems like I'm wiggling the goalposts around to make my argument easier, but I'm not really - the issue at hand is the success or failure of the /scientific method/, not 'science', or some particular set of theories or ideas. The state of the process at any instant in time does not reflect on the success of failure of the process - only the long term behaviour does. The process is as close to infallible as I can imagine, given enough time and diversity of practitioners.

himi

Christianity as it is practised in reality is, of course, fallible and flawed. But Christianity is (in a sense) the Christian ideal that Jesus set as a life pattern. The Christian method /works/, despite all the failings of the people claiming to 'practise' it.

In other words, If all or most "Christians" acted like Christ, I think people would enjoy them. He never *forced* his ideas on others and the only ones he upbraided were religious hypocrites. He set up some pretty good principles too. "More Happiness in Giving than Receiving" "Do unto others..." And they work. I don't want to sound preachy, but I'm sure you've heard of this: Why Money Doesnt Buy Happiness and Key to Happiness, Give Away Money.

That line of argument is /not/ analogous to the scientific method, though - christianity doesn't have any particular goal, and thus you can't judge its success or failure.

As a set of ethical guidelines, a selected subset of what christianity preaches may be reasonably workable, but you need to pick the subset based on something outside the bible (be it some kind of in-built ethical preference, outside cultural influences, or whatever). That means that even by /that/ measure, it's hard to make an objective judgement as to christianity's 'success'.

I may not be understanding your argument, of course, but I just don't see how you can draw useful analogies between the success of the scientific method and any rational measure of the success of christianity or any other religion. Nor do I see how that would have any bearing on my initial argument.

himi

See, you're not making the correct distinction. Science as it is practised in reality is, of course, fallible and flawed. But the scientific method is (in a sense) the platonic ideal that the practical reality of science is based on. The scientific method /works/, despite all the failings of the people practising it.

How does that compare with religion?

himi

pwnt.

Thanks for that analysis - for me the kicker is the lifecycle energy comparison, but you've given a much more complete knockdown.

himi

If you mean the *minor* bad theories or hypotheses have been eventually weeded out...All well and good, but then you have to admit that Scientific Method still hasn't succeeded in being infallible, b/c we're still on the road. By that I mean, if we stopped the clock now, there would almost assuredly be some wrong widely held views.

Succinctly, If it hasn't failed yet, then it hasn't succeeded either, yet.

What the fuck are you talking about? The scientific method is a process - it's /never/ finished, unless no one is practising it any more, at which point the failings of any particular theories aren't a reflection on the scientific method, they're a reflection on the theories themselves.

The scientific method has not failed yet at refining our understanding of the universe. You need to introduce completely artificial constraints ("stopping the clock") to postulate its failure.

himi

"That snippet about the hydrogen fuel cell car irritated me quite a bit"

Why - because you bought a Prius?

Don't be stupid. I don't have a Prius, and I don't expect to get one (my next round of small car buying probably won't come until there are more practical plug-in hybrids around, or viable electric cars)., but that doesn't have any bearing on my comment.

"So yeah, a hydrogen fuel cell car is cool and all, but it doesn't resolve the core issues in any way."

Ummm, so WTF charges the batteries in a battery powered car? The "core issue" for ANY electric car is drawing power from fossil fuels wether it be coal, oil or gas. As far as pollution goes, battery powered cars have another "core issue" in that the batteries are make out of some pretty nasty stuff.

Just like the electricity that's used to recharge a battery car the power to make hydrogen from electrolysis is expected to (one day) come from renewables or nukes. You could complain about non-existant hydrogen infrastructure but the same is true of the power grid for battery cars.

That's the problem with hydrogen! The power that's used to produce the hydrogen comes from exactly the same sources as the power that charges the batteries of an electric car. But, and this is a /big/ but, storing it directly in a battery is /much/ more efficient than first producing hydrogen from it (significant energy loss there), then burning it in an IC engine, or even running it through a fuel-cell. On top of that, hydrogen distribution and storage is a serious pain, and current hydrogen powered vehicles have ranges on a single charge that are only a little better than what's achievable with current battery tech, because compressed hydrogen is a fairly low energy density fuel.

So, the original source of the energy is the same for both cases, but one case has more intermediate steps and more energy loss than the other, meaning that more of whatever you're using to produce energy is needed. Which technology should we use, in an energy-constrained world? The one with minimum whole-lifecycle losses. Unless some new low-power hydrogen production process comes along, that minimum loss technology is pure electric.

"there's a fair chunk of energy lost in the process of burning hydrogen"

Give me a break - the 500kg of chemicals in your batteries don't get warm while they are charging for 16hrs to drive for an hour?

Actually, as far as I can tell from a quick Internet search Lithium ion batteries have a high-90s percentage charge efficiency, so no, they won't get very warm. Certainly not as warm as a hydrogen fuel cell.

And what's this charging 16 hours to drive for one hour? A Tesla roadster on a full charge claims to get about 350km - about 3.5 to 4.5 hours driving under normal conditions, from 16 hours of charging. But, a large part of that 16 hours will be used in the topping off phase - you could probably get to ~75% charge in a couple of hours, which would get you maybe 3 hours of driving: pretty close to 1 hour charging for 1 hour of driving.

And finally, my daily round trip to work and back is about 35km - I could charge the thing once a week and never get below about 50% charge! Who /cares/ if it takes 16 hours to charge fully from empty, if that only happens once or twice a year?

You've produced pretty much exactly the line of irritating arguments that Top Gear made about the hydrogen car /and/ about the Tesla, almost none of which stand up to analysis.

himi

That snippet about the hydrogen fuel cell car irritated me quite a bit - they totally ignored the main issue with hydrogen as a fuel, which is the fact that production is either electricity intense, or it uses natural gas. You need to think of hydrogen in a fuel tank as if it's a battery - the energy stored needs to come from somewhere, generally the same places energy comes from now. On top of that, there's a fair chunk of energy lost in the process of burning hydrogen . . .

So yeah, a hydrogen fuel cell car is cool and all, but it doesn't resolve the core issues in any way.

himi

It hasn't failed yet.

himi

Actually, both you and the original poster are mixing orthogonal concepts up in your arguments.

Atheism is about gods - belief or lack of belief in gods. Agnosticism is about /knowledge/ - knowledge or lack of knowledge. You can be a gnostic atheist (someone who doesn't believe in gods, and believes that you can /know/ that), an agnostic atheist (no belief, but believing that you /cannot/ know), and the analogous theistic positions.

Agnosticism is also a spectrum: degrees of certainty. Dawkins is pretty far down the certain end of the spectrum, whereas the original poster sounds like he's closer to the uncertain end.

So, your argument that an atheist believes there is no god is a non sequitur - an atheist doesn't believe in god, but the question of believing there /is/ no god is on the gnostic/agnostic spectrum.

himi

Don't be stupid. Ethics and philosophy exist - there wouldn't be ethicists and philosophers if that wasn't the case.

What you /meant/ to say was that there are no provably universal foundations for ethical debate. And the correct response to that is "So what?" The whole point of ethics is to develop practical foundations for making moral decisions - the foundations you choose may not be absolute, but the key questions of ethics aren't about absolutes, they're about effects, costs and benefits. Like mathematics, ethics (and philosophy in general) is about asking "what if?", and assessing the logical and practical results.

There are many things in the realm of human knowledge that have no absolute existence - they exist only because we've made them up. That makes them fundamentally different from (say) the physical phenomena that evolutionary biologists study, but it doesn't mean they don't exist.

himi

Sorry that doesn't make sense. In another post you say its because of the biggest drought in a hundred years, but now you say that the forest is growing so fast and out of control that it burns and then grows back again quicker than ever. How does native forest grow that fast if it's in the biggest drought ever? I think you have an agenda.

Where did he say that the bush is growing back really quickly? All he said was that there have been extensive fires over the last decade, affecting much of the state - nothing at all about particularly quick regrowth.

himi

Yeah, that stuff's reasonable science. The problem is, so far no-one's proposed an alternative explanation that results in anything more than minor adjustments to the models.

The problem is that most people say something like "but what about the sun?!???!one" and ignore the fact that the actual data we have /disproves/ that proposal - /that/ is denial, and it has nothing to do with the reasonable science that it piggybacks on.

himi

ummmmmm . . . . the graph you linked to (didn't do any analysis of the raw data) shows the 2008 minima as being the second lowest on record, only beaten by 2007. The more accurate data apparently agrees with the gist of what the data in question had to say, disagreeing only in the detail.

Tell me, why do you people always assume that the scientists doing this work are incompetent or evil?

himi

Agreed that that's what TFA says, but how could they possibly KNOW that the problem only started a few weeks ago. They were unaware of the problem until they begain receiving emails from people disputing the numbers for something that was obviously wrong.

I don't know, maybe they could compare the two datasets that they have (the one they were using to maintain historical context, and the more accurate one that only has seven years of history)?

Why do you morons /always/ seem to assume that the people doing this kind of research are idiots?

himi