Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

The Google policy is about facts, not things. Facts are representations about things. Actual things, for example, cannot be true or false, they just are. Facts which represent properties of those things can be true or false. The Empire State Building is a particular thing. It is not true or false. "The Empire State Building is painted red" is a false fact about that particular thing. So, before anybody said, "H. pylori cause ulcers" it did not exist as a fact, only a thing. Remember, a fact is a representation, not to be confused with the thing it represents. False facts about the cause of ulcers existed. Few knew them to be false, except for the two Australians. The point that the GP was making was that Google doesn't deal in things, it deals in representations (web sites) about representations (other web sites). It doesn't do experiments on people to see if bacteria acutally cause ulcers; it relies on other peoples' representations about that. So when you say, "The concensus changed, not the fact that bacteria caused the ulcers." you are not correct, because there was no previous representation that h. pylori bacteria caused ulcers, until the Australians created it. Because of this mistake, you have missed the point the GP was making: the arbitrar of what is a true and what is false comes down to a human judgement, and Google is likely to base that on some type of concensus, since basing it on anything else would be problematic. In other words, if Google's plan is to say, "Well, everyone thinks that vaccines don't cause autism, but we know they do." and rank pages accordingly, that is a problem. If they go with consensus in every case, then there is a bias against corrective information. The consensus now is that h. pylori causes many ulcers. That is a representation... a fact. Is it a true fact, or a false fact? How do you know? Are we really any different than the folks in the 80s, who "knew" ulcers couldn't be caused by bacteria? Because we don't have any false facts now? That we know of?

I have an adapter like this and it works great on old hard drives I've had hanging around since the 90s. Takes care of old laptop drives and newer SATA drives. Even if it dosesn't happen to solve this particular problem, which it should, it will probably be useful for other tasks.

I was poking a bit of 4th grade humor at the parent, for having misspelled rogue in his post. But now the parent post and mine are separated by a vast gulf of comments.

You could join the IParty.

We all agree that no one wants additional terrorism. That is the easy part. The question seems to be, given that a deadly and deeply unsettling terrorist attack has occured on U.S. soil, what is our response? Do we erode our freedoms to fight terrorism, or do we believe our freedoms are the best defense against terrorism? I believe the answer has always been freedom. Did the government protect the people on 9/11? No. Did the people, despite being disarmed by the government, protect the government on 9/11? Yes. That fourth plane was headed towards the Capitol. If the government does not wake up, it will lose the support of the greater number of people protecting the government. Our remaining freedom makes most of us want to protect the government. The government may have stealth jets, but where were they when it mattered? It was some average people and a snack cart that brought down one of the jets.

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The real power of the western democracies lies not in the governments doing what they want, it is in the people being free to do what they want. Free people made a thriving movie industry, which is something the government could never create. Can you imagine if we had a federal agency that tried to make movies to compete with Hollywood? Free people made the computer and software industries. Free people made the insurance industry. Free people made the auto industry. Free people made public key cryptography. Free people invented airplanes. Free people made the Internet what it is today (maybe it was created as a government project, but it is hardly a government thing right now). Freedom to do what we want without excessive government interference makes us successful and ultimately more powerful.

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The governments need to be strictly limited, or they will destroy our freedom and power. Seriously, does anyone still wonder why the western democracies have become so powerful? It is because they are designed to guarantee the freedom of the people. The people, doing what they want, create very powerful industries, technologies, and social structures. The problem with all this spying is that it threatens our freedoms. With nearly complete information available to the leader, there is too much potential that the leader could abuse the power. First, the leader abuses the power to silence his/her political opposition. Then, the leader abuses the power to silence the backlash from the people supporting the opposition. Then, the leader abuses the power to hide his/her corruption, abuses, mistakes and problems. This is not a question of "if" but "when".

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People sometimes think that, because a problem occured when people were free, maybe the freedom is to blame. I agree with *you*, danheskett. I believe we should always resist the presumption that any agent of the executive should be allowed to act without oversight and accountability to combat terrorism. That is a recipe for disaster in the form of dictatorship. So if anyone out there is struggling to find the answer, here it is: "It's freedom, stupid!" Less freedom will not make us more safe. It will endanger us! In this particular case of government access to encrypted data, it will make our computers more vulnerable not only to the government but to the terrorists! A free and secure populace will protect the government, because it is free and secure. A subjugated and oppressed populace will not protect the government.

The older I get, the more I see the wisdom in the saying, "It is very hard to get someone to understand something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it." The truth is a bit more complicated and nuanced than this. It is not just paycheck, but power, prestige, fame, honor, and overall dominance that make a person's profession breed intellectual dishonesty. So, it is relevant. But you won't convince daveschroeder of this. It may be true that other people's profession affected their objectivity, but not daveschroder's! OMG, logical fallacy!

Thank you Captain Rouge Spook. No, the government can't be trusted. That's why it is given limited powers. Those powers it does have are broken up into three pieces at the federal level, and divided between federal and state entities. We don't want an omnipotent government, Sir Spooks Alot! Not now, not in the future. No amount of terrorism will change my mind on that, nor, I hope, the minds of a lot of other citizens. The government can't be trusted, because governments ALWAYS abuse their powers, and ALWAYS wind up killing their own citizens. Trust? How about the government trust its own citizens, huh? To have private conversations? Yes, we have a serious problem on our hands, and it is people like you and Mike Rogers who have utterly failed to grasp the lessons of history, and failed to understand the benefits of continued democracy. Both of you should get out of the government.

No, you are missing something vital here. The only way to really check whether a particular paper is valid is to a) be an expert in the field, and b) redo the research yourself. Otherwise, you are taking big shortcuts in your evaluation of a particular scientific paper. And these are big shortcuts you MUST take. There are thousands of scientific papers coming out every day, written by teams who have often collaborated for years. Most you can't read, because you can't read everything. Anything you do read, you are probably not going to redo the research yourself. That's kind of the point, isn't it? We all have specialties, and we do different things, so other people don't have to repeat what we have done? So how do you know whether a particular scientific paper is valid? Honestly, unless you can tell it isn't valid, you don't know whether it is valid science. You just have to guess. You guess based on the methods used, and whether the author seems to know his ass from a hole in the ground. And then you judge based on the credibility of the source. Is it from a Princeton professor? Someone from MIT? Or is it a quantum field theory paper written by a dentist? Is the author a whack job? Is the author a paid shill? Is the author a Stanford Astrophysics professor writing a paper about astrophysics, with no material conflicts of interest in the research, the research paper being published in a reputable peer-reviewed astrophysics journal? If you don't evalutate scientific papers this way, you don't properly evaluate scientific papers. Because realistically you can't evalutate them by duplicating the research yourself.

Yes, and I am appauled at all the money tilting the gravity/spontaneous quantum coalescence debate! Why is so much federal funding going to scientists who believe in Einstein's theory of General Relativity, while NONE is going to scientists who support the spontaneous quantum coalescence theory?

Astrophysics is a specialty directly relevant to the radiative transfer of energy between the sun and the earth, and the behavior of the earth-sun system. Aerospace engineering is not as good a match for being an authority in that area. And maybe people might not know the difference without checking, but it is trivial to check. The bigger issue is the honesty of Dr. Soon. He never studied at Harvard or got a paycheck from Harvard. He did not study astrophysics. That he would allow Fox News to call him a "Harvard Astrophysicist" suggests he is dishonest. Failing to disclose his funding is another sign of dishonesty. This is dishonesty related to his authority and profession. It is small wonder he easily becomes hostile over these issues.

Pointing out double standards is not character assasination. It is a legitimate form of debate. Character assassination is like when the FBI tries to show that a civil rights leader is having an extramarital affair. The affair has nothing to do with the civil rights movement. I don't think sumdumass properly understands character assassination either. Pointing out an undisclosed conflict of interest directly relevant to the issues discussed in scientific papers is not character assassination. It is pointing out a relevant conflict of interest. The fact that it was not disclosed according to modern standards makes it relevant misbehavior. Character assassination would be accusing Dr. Soon of misbehavior that had nothing to do with the scientific papers in question.

You are right I was a bit agitated. I am calmer now. I was being sarcastic about the 350-400k. And actually, I was referring to the average overall salary in the US, which is really around 50k, not just salary for professors. My friend doesn't even come close to 120k, and would love to be paid that much. He is promoting a book and looking for a better job. But he would consider working for the fossil fuel industry a sell-out. Your comment just seemed glib and dismissive about 120k, and got my goat. People with a PhD made a median salary of about 81k in the US in 2011 according to labor department statistics. I very much doubt the research Dr. Soon did was expensive, beyond paying his own salary. I might be wrong. I don't think he was launching any probes to measure the sun's thermal output. But even if he spent a lot of time writing grant proposals, there is only so much time in a year, and 120k per annum on top of his part time salary from the Smithsonian is plenty of motivation to agree with a particular view. Plus he gets to go on Fox News and be an Important Person. People have a hard time understanding something when their salary depends on not understanding it. Ask two lawyers if you don't believe me.

Papers directly supported by funding/grants usually don't thank/credit sources (or maybe it's just so small that I never noticed it?).

If I had mod points today, I'd say +5 informative. The rest of us had never read any papers before, or TFA, or any useful information linked in TFA like http://publicationethics.org/, and we were wondering what you thought.

So.....$120k per year? That's not actually very much.

I will repeat what you said to my friend the geology professor who doesn't take grants from the fossil fuel industry. I'm sure he will be persuaded by your considered opinion. I'm guessing the reason he doesn't take money from the fossil fuel industry is because he just can't be bothered with such trifling sums. The average salary in the US is more like $350k or $400k, IIRC. 120k is for total losers.

'Climate change' and 'global warming' have been used interchangeably long before 2004.

You were alive before 2004? What was it like?

There are a bunch of people hearing about Dr. Soon's research on Fox News who have not been told the facts, and probably think he is a straight up scientist. They probably don't know the man Fox News calls a "Harvard Astrophysicist" (yes, I actually RTFA, and this is something in TFA) actually has a doctorate in aerospace engineering, not astrophysics. They probably don't know he gets no money from Harvard, a part time salary from the Smithsonian, and that most of his money comes from the fossil fuel industry. So, "Are we shocked" is not the right question at all. This kind of crap is like that junk science about autism and vaccines. Once that stuff gets out there, it is very difficult to get people to stop repeating it, even after it gets discredited. And this kind of disinformation has real-world consequences when people rely on it, including U.S. Senators making speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate.