Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
February 22, 2012
The apparent over-representation of scientists of Indian origin in cases of scientific misconduct ought to be exercising the minds of the Indian scientific community – both in India and abroad. But any efforts to stamp out plagiarism in India – and many are trying – are completely undermined when eminent scientists from the most prestigious Indian institutions start trivialising or making excuses for plagiarism.
S. B. Krupanidhi
The Prime Minister’s Science Advisor Professor CNR Rao has admitted and apologised for his plagiarism but has gotten away without the paper written under his supervision being retracted. The apology should have been accompanied by highly-visible measures to stamp out the increasing incidence of “cut-and-paste” artists posing as scientists. Instead the nonchalant attitude of a co-author, SB Krupanidhi (Professor and Chairman, Materials Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science) gives me little confidence that there is much value being given to the integrity of scientific research. He blames the student he was supposed to be supervising but will take no action as the Indian Institute of Science tries to brush everything under the carpet. “People make mistakes. There will be no action taken against the student, ” he said.
TOI reports:
India’s top scientist and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s adviser CNR Rao had to apologise to a leading scientific journal for reproducing text of other scientists in his research paper.
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Tags:academic misconduct, India, Indian Institute of Science, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Krupanidhi, Plagiarism, Rao, Scientific misconduct
Posted in Academic misconduct, India, Science, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »
February 21, 2012
The key requirement for the method of science is scepticism.
The scientific method is to make falsifiable hypotheses and then to check the hypothesis by gathering the evidence to check the falsifiability.
The IPCC and the Global Warming Orthodoxy have been making alarmist predictions for the last 20 years and their hypothesis comes in three parts:
- That global warming is occurring and will continue for at least the next 100 years
- That human activities are the primary cause of the global warming being observed, and
- That man-made emission of carbon-dioxide is the most significant human activity driving climate change.
In the last 20+ years, comparing actual observations show that each one of these 3 parts of this global warming hypothesis is – at best – oversimplified and – at worst – just plain wrong. “Wrong” in the sense that the causality proposed does not exist and that the mechanisms proposed for the causality are incorrect or non-existent. The IPCC predictions are being proved wrong and it is time to ditch the hypothesis.
IPCC predictions falsify global warming hypothesis
The 27th January article in the Wall Street Journal “No Need to Panic about Global Warming” by a number of scientists displaying true scientific scepticism was immediately criticised by members of the Orthodoxy. The original authors now reply to these criticisms in the WSJ:
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Tags:Alarmism, Falsifiable hyptheses, global warming, IPCC, Scientific misconduct, Wall Street Journal
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Environment, Science | Comments Off on When IPCC model predictions are wrong it is time to ditch the hypothesis
January 5, 2012
(Reuters) – Unreported data from early trials of experimental medicines in humans can result in harm to future patients and needless costs for health systems, according to scientists writing in the British Medical Journal on Wednesday.
The role of statistics in research leads to obvious risks for the drawing of conclusions about causal relationships between parameters without actually increasing the understanding about the underlying mechanisms. In pharmaceutical and health research such conclusions provide enormous financial benefits for the researchers and their sponsors – and not always in the interests of the patients involved.
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Tags:BMJ, British Medical Journal, Clinical trial, Pharmaceutical industry, Research, unreported data
Posted in Medicine, Research, Science | Comments Off on The data, all the data and nothing but the data
November 23, 2011
Breaking!
On Tuesday, 22 November at 20:25 UT, ESA’s tracking station at Perth, Australia, established contact with Russia’s Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. This was the first signal received on Earth since the Mars mission was launched on 8 November. ESA teams are working closely with engineers in Russia to determine how best to maintain communications with the spacecraft.
Tags:European Space Agency, Mars, Phobos-Grunt, Russia
Posted in Russia, Science, Space | 3 Comments »
November 21, 2011
OPERA is one set of experiments at CERN’s Italian partner labs at Gran Sasso and ICARUS is another.
In September Opera reported the FTL neutrinos to widespread scepticism, wonder and some delight. Last Friday the OPERA scientists reported that new experiments supported the September results.
But on Saturday the ICARUS scientists reported – also on the same website- that they had analysed the September results and that they do not stand up!!!
A search for the analogue to Cherenkov radiation by high energy neutrinos at superluminal speeds in ICARUS
Reuters reports:
An international team of scientists in Italy studying the same neutrino particles colleagues say appear to have travelled faster than light rejected the startling finding this weekend, saying their tests had shown it must be wrong.
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Tags:CERN, Faster-than-light, FTL neutrinos, ICARUS experiment, Italy, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Neutrino, OPERA experiment
Posted in Physics, Science, Trivia | 2 Comments »
November 18, 2011
The CERN results in September indicating faster than light neutrinos have stood up to one set of tests to check the result.
Reuters:
The new experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory, using a neutrino beam from CERN in Switzerland, 720 km (450 miles) away, was held to check findings in September by a team of scientists which were greeted with some skepticism. Scientists at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) said in a statement on Friday that their new tests aimed to exclude one potential systematic effect that may have affected the original measurement. ….
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Tags:CERN, Faster-than-light, FTL, FTL neutrinos, Gran Sasso, Neutrino, neutrinos, OPERA, particle physics
Posted in Future Transport, Physics, Science | 1 Comment »
November 12, 2011
Phobos-Grunt is still circling Earth at an altitude between 128 miles and 210 miles after launching Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for Mars buit is dead and silent. The jinx goes on and it is now 21 Russian missions to Mars which have failed their main mission goals:
Information from http://www.russianspaceweb.com 
- Soviet / Russian Mars Missions
Phobos-Grunt
SpaceflightNow: Major General Vladimir Uvarov, a former space expert in the Russian military, told the Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper he has lost optimism in Phobos-Grunt’s chances for recovery.
“In my opinion, the Phobos-Grunt probe has been lost. This probability is very high. At any rate, it is much higher than the chances for reactivating the probe,” Uvarov told the newspaper. ….
With 11 tons of toxic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellant still in its fuel tanks, Phobos-Grunt’s potential re-entry is stirring concerns of space experts after two high-profile returns of large satellites in September and October.
Tags:Mars, Phobos, Phobos-Grunt, Russia, Russian Mars jinx
Posted in Russia, Science, Space | 3 Comments »
November 9, 2011
The jinx on Russia’s probes to Mars continues.
Phobos-Grunt launched successfully last night but failed to enter its departure trajectory when two engine burns failed – presumed due to computer problems. It is now in a “parking” orbit and the problem needs to be fixed within 3 days when its batteries will run out. The fuel tanks are still in place for the craft’s own thrusters and there is still thought to be some hope. If the problem cannot be fixed it will be the fourth successive failure of a Russian Mars mission.
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Tags:Baikonur Cosmodrome, Mars, Phobos, Phobos-Grunt, Ria Novosti, Russia, Vladimir Popovkin
Posted in Russia, Science, Space | Comments Off on Russia’s Mars jinx continues: Phobos-Grunt in big trouble; 3 days in parking orbit to fix computer problem
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