[HN Gopher] The humiliating truth behind Harvard astronomer's al...
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       The humiliating truth behind Harvard astronomer's alien spherules
        
       Author : PaulHoule
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2024-03-19 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bigthink.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bigthink.com)
        
       | nick238 wrote:
       | I liked the time when Avi yelled at the director of SETI, Jill
       | Tarter (inspiration for the fictional Ellie Arroway from the
       | movie Contact), whose life's work has been searching for ETs for
       | not searching for ETs in the right way.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI&t=1879s
        
         | DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
         | Highly recommended to watch the entire video and also check out
         | the other stuff by Angela Collier (formerly acollierastro).
         | 
         | Also funny that Avi takes string theory as an example of
         | mainstream science. Some scientists are not sure it's science
         | at all because it was never based on anything but assumptions.
        
           | reaperman wrote:
           | Has string theory ever led to important testable predictions?
           | I'm very out of the loop on theoretical physics.
        
             | nick238 wrote:
             | Collier has a video on the history of string theory as a
             | narrative and how it kinda tainted the public perception of
             | high energy/particle physics: "String theory lied to us and
             | now science communication is hard"
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kya_LXa_y1E
        
             | DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
             | Microsoft Copilot seems to agree with me that the answer is
             | No, it has not
        
       | GenerocUsername wrote:
       | I for one think it is important to make sure that young
       | scientists not learn to dream too big.
        
         | jrussino wrote:
         | I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not.
         | 
         | Surely we should encourage young scientists to "dream big", as
         | long as we also teach them to actually "do science" effectively
         | right?
         | 
         | Maybe it's the vagueness of what "dream" means here.
         | Imagination, creativity, and the like can be valuable insofar
         | as they steer us to look in new useful directions and ask new
         | useful questions. As long as the "looking" and "asking" are
         | done with an honest aim toward finding the truth and an
         | understanding of the tools scientists have developed to do that
         | effectively I don't see the problem.
         | 
         | I don't see the takeaway message from this article being "this
         | scientist's dreams were too lofty", but something more like
         | "this scientist ignored good scientific practice in pursuit of
         | his lofty dreams".
        
       | wdh505 wrote:
       | Well, if publish or perish is hard in your own discipline, why
       | not branch out and publish nonsense for fun and profit /s
        
       | anfractuosity wrote:
       | Tangentially related, on the topic of micrometeorites found this
       | rather cool "Cosmic cleaners: the scientists scouring English
       | cathedral roofs for space dust":
       | 
       | https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/17/cosmic-cathe...
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-19 23:01 UTC)