I thought I would write a little something about scientific things that should trip red flags - things that are automatic warnings to a scientist to be extra sceptical. It’s here because of all the pseudo scientific shenanigans that get played by a breathless press that cares more for sensationalist reporting than accuracy, political hacks who wish to abuse science for their own ends, out and out frauds, and of course, the very human tendency to believe whatever we want to believe.

I hope people find it interesting. I hope this helps people to be able to better tell nonsense from fact; science from sham. In the end, it is about releasing ourselves from a certain psychology that makes us credulous when we should not be and incredulous when we should take the news seriously.

Please beware of the following:

1. Dr. Jones has discovered a new Vorlon epsilon hyper spatial correction in a Heisenberg chamber that overturns Einstein or Newton!

How does this translate?

Technical words, words, words, Einstein was wrong! See! Technical words of authority means Einstein was wrong! This is usually followed by some panting and drooling in the mainstream press.

The psychology here that piques our interest has two modes. If you don’t think certain people you might want to defend after getting duped fall into the first mode, then please wait for the second.

There is a perverse human desire to take great men down a peg and to believe that those smart folks aren’t so bright. I get that, but science, despite the way it is portrayed in the media, is not a popularity contest. Everything has to come down to the data, the math and the measurements. The authority is always in the math and the measurement. Guys like Einstien got that reputation for being not just right, but astonishingly right in all sorts of new ways that were verified over and over again. The odds of something overturning their very well established works are exceedingly small.

Which leads me to the second mode of this psychology:

Science is always changing isn’t it?

No, not really at all in the context here. Not at all the way many were taught it does in school.

There comes a point where something has been verified so many different ways, from so very many different lines of pursuit, that for it to not be true, essentially everything else must be false as well. Relativity is one of those things. Relativity has been verified in almost every particle experiment ever done either implicitly or explicitly. It is the reason that electric and magnetic fields are related in the way they are, and you personally, whether you know it or not, verify it every time you get power from a generator.

It is almost impossible that anything will ever overturn relativity. Strong words? No.

A new wrinkle might be found in a place or circumstance where relativity never looked, and in a way that violates nothing that has been observed before hand as in all those times where relativity worked. There are always ways to imagine new wrinkles. There are few ways to consistently tear down the whole tapestry.

As an example of this, Newton is still taught in schools and is still the basis of all modern physics. Relativity did not - most emphatically not - disprove Newton. It looked some place (relativistic speeds) where Newton’s laws didn’t and in a way that did not contradict Newton where Newton is valid (as in at non relativistic speeds).

So in this case, something like “Dr. Jones has discovered a new Vorlon epsilon correction in a Heisenberg chamber that overturns Einstein or Newton!” Be very wary.

To really do that, this new thing not only has to replace Einstein or Newton, but also explain all the millions of things that Einstein and Newton predicted and that were observed already. That is a really hard bill to fill. The consensus is based on accumulated data and analysis. It is not so easy to overturn.

2. Dr Jones’s amazing discovery is being suppressed by the evil scientific establishment for nefarious reasons! The establishment is like the Church! It’s a mean religion suppressing brave Dr. Jones!

This is usually followed by much righteous rage for the little David against the mean lab coated Goliath. If you see this, you can be almost certain that Dr. Jones and his supporters are cranks. The only conspiracy in kosher science is the authority of the data and the math. If a scientist has the chops and most importantly, the data to back something up, it will out and it will win the day and usually much sooner rather than later. If Jones had such great data or such elegant calculations on something so big, he would have a Nobel prize, tenure or at least, a parking spot at the university.

As an example, when the quantum hypothesis was first put forward, none other than Einstein tried everything in his power to disprove it. He kept failing to do so. No matter how he tried he could not debunk it. Einstein was wrong, and the physics community very quickly engaged in exploring the new science of quantum mechanics. Bohr beat Einstein. The physics was just there.

As another example, Feynman’s path integral formalism for QED was at first violently rejected by Bohr and Dirac amongst others of the physics royalty of the day (late forties). They were wrong. Feynman had the physics correct and won the day.

The difference between a crazy idea and an idea that it is so crazy it might be true is usually apparent. However much the “establishment” might not like the idea that is so crazy it might be true, that idea just won’t go away - and try as they might to kill it, it only gains strength and refinement from their objections.

The ideas that are just crazy are easily debunked in multiple different ways by appealing to the authority of the data and the math. The average person can’t evaluate this, but when the community is annoyed enough that they write multiple debunkings of Dr. Jones on basic physical grounds, you can be pretty sure that Dr. Jones is not correct and not ever going to be correct.

Cold fusion is a fantastic example. Had Fleischmann and Pons actually initiated fusion, there would have been a massive neutron release in their lab. This would have killed them. To have them alive, well and claiming that they did this, without heavy radiation protection was strong proof that their claims were suspect.

Another example are AGW or evolution deniers. They are the only arbiters of truth in their minds. They argue on despite the mountains of evidence against them. Then they claim conspiracies and religions are persecuting them. How pitiably they whine! How they ignore all evidence contrary to their narrative! Yes, they are persecuted by scientists - for being clods and sometimes frauds who ignore the data and withdraw themselves from the legitimate scientific process.

3. Dr. Jones’s data is just above the noise.

Major warning sign! If the statistics don’t give you a clear signal to noise ratio, then you have just as much chance of looking at a statistical fluctuation as meaningful data. If you get a tantalizing signal just above the noise and think it is worth it, you build a better rig and go for a better signal and less noise. You don’t publish it as a discovery. The odds of getting egg on your face are too high.

The psychology here can be crippling if the result is something that someone wants to believe for whatever reason.

4. Dr. Jones’s research has not yet been submitted for peer review.

Unless the scientific community can check the results, do the math, go over anything that an honest person might have missed, and if it gets that far, verify the results with other experiments, it is all just Jones’s story. In general, the community are the only ones qualified to do so (unless Jones is claiming something really stupid that would be obvious even to an amateur). Data is guilty until proven innocent. Jones may not be a bad scientist. Jones may even be right, but until the results are scrutinized, doubt rests with his findings.

5. Dr. Jones did not publish for peer review and has no data to present.

I can not stress this one enough. Look at AGW deniers. The vast majority of them have published nothing to support their claims. In science, if you have no data, or no calculations, you have nothing. Nothing at all! If you pull this stunt as a researcher, you become a cautionary tale in the community because you didn’t seem to care about that rule.

6. The stronger the claim, the more evidence it needs.

This should be common sense. Relativity was a strong claim. It is nearly impossible to list all the ways it was backed up. So was QM and QED and field theories. Mountains of evidence exist. Evolution was a strong claim. Mountains of evidence exist. AGW has mountains of evidence behind it.

7. Dr. Jones showed that the philosopher stone he has invented is the key to eternal youth according to the stayyoungforever.com corporate website.

Notice conflicts of interest. Tobacco employed medical doctors are not honest researchers or honest doctors. Heartland and Cato and fossil fuel funded “climate scientists” are anything but. Nature is above money and human politics. The second you see human politics and money get involved, is the second you know science left the building.

8. Mr. Jones, investigative reporter, back woods genius, T.V. weatherman - an average folksy guy, makes amazing discovery in garage.

It is possible that someone finds something of scientific value through their own amateur researches without any formal training or sophisticated equipment. It is possible, just very, very unlikely. Some fields are more likely for it to be possible than others. We can easily believe that someone might capture a specimen of a hitherto unknown species of insect, or that an amateur astronomer might just be looking in the right place at the right time to see something amazing. New mathematical insight can come from anywhere (assuming the person involved took the time to learn some math!).

However, in physics and engineering, since the close of the 19th century, most of the easy stuff has been taken. New particle physics will not be discovered in a garage with a lab supplier of Home Depot. There is just no way that someone with no mathematical ability or basic understanding of science is going to make that huge physics or engineering discovery. As an example, the patent office was once littered with impossible perpetual motion machine ideas from such folks. As a solution, they made it a policy that they will just not look at perpetual motion machines.

Another example is that investigative reporter who can personally barely do trigonometry. He is on the upper end of the reporter mathematical ability spectrum. Is this person really trustworthy to talk about the effects of electromagnetic radiation when he himself could not work Maxwell’s equations, calculate power or do elementary statistics? Of course not! His claims that device x will kill you based on his “research” are almost always bogus from the start and more geared to making copy than making science.

As a final example, the guy who is so sure that climate science isn’t real, based solely on his own ego, bluster and half remembered high school physics. The guy can’t do algebra to save his life, yet he feels competent to argue about how to model the evolving solutions of time dependant, non-linear, partial differential equations. He doesn’t know what those words even mean, but that does not stop him. The same applies to evolution deniers who couldn’t tell you what RNA does in a eukaryotic cell.

Such people should be dismissed out of hand.

Anyway, I hope this helps. I thank you for reading it.