my husbands cousin lives in a small rural area in illinois and over the weekend crop circles appeared in their soybean crop .
i just talked to his cousin , and she is beside herself from all the publicity .
she said the phone started ringing at 6am this morning .
Big Dog, are you proposing that we throw away the scientific method? If so, what would you replace it with? How do you suggest we evaluate claims made by others?
| One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have. - Albert Einstein |
my husbands cousin lives in a small rural area in illinois and over the weekend crop circles appeared in their soybean crop .
i just talked to his cousin , and she is beside herself from all the publicity .
she said the phone started ringing at 6am this morning .
Joanne Scarpellini is described as a fieldworker of BLT Research, Inc.
The following papers have been published by this group (led by W.C. Levengood):
Dispersion of energies in worldwide crop formations in Physiologia Plantarum (1999)
Semi-Molten Meteoric Iron Associated with a Crop Formation in Journal of Scientific Exploration (1995)
Anatomical anomalies in crop formation plants in Physiologia Plantarum (1994)
This research has been examined by CSICOP (the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) in 1996 and found wanting:
my husbands cousin lives in a small rural area in illinois and over the weekend crop circles appeared in their soybean crop .
i just talked to his cousin , and she is beside herself from all the publicity .
she said the phone started ringing at 6am this morning .
I admit that qualification of a claimant is a crude way of making an instant assessment of the validity of a claim. I wouldnt ignore a claim if a claimant wasn't qualified in that field, but if they are qualified that is a useful piece of information.
So let's ignore that, and concentrate on the two more important factors: peer review and replication.
There are many ways in which a single piece of research, or single finding, or group of findings from the same researcher, can be very flawed.
Thats why the scientific process demands not only peer review, but replication of the experiment by other scientists, to see if the same results are found. You can't make much of any experimental results until these two things have happened.
So the question is, has Joanne Scarpellini published her findings in a peer-reviewed journal, and what is the opinion of the community of scientists who work in this field?
my husbands cousin lives in a small rural area in illinois and over the weekend crop circles appeared in their soybean crop .
i just talked to his cousin , and she is beside herself from all the publicity .
she said the phone started ringing at 6am this morning .
| I saw a program here in the States a few months ago about crop circles that pointed to the above. Scientists here could not prove or disprove some of the circles as being man-made, but they couldn't really offer a scientific explanation either. Some were clearly hoaxes, but others were not..... |
I soooooo bet they weren't scientists, pseudo-scientists at best. These shows almost never feature the skeptics (who usually are scientists, i.e. people who practice science) who could easily destroy the fantasies involved.
Remember how the Watchtower can always find a seemingly impressively qualified and well regarded crank to back up any of their nonsense.
my husbands cousin lives in a small rural area in illinois and over the weekend crop circles appeared in their soybean crop .
i just talked to his cousin , and she is beside herself from all the publicity .
she said the phone started ringing at 6am this morning .
Big Dog - 'totally yammering' - have I touched a nerve?
my husbands cousin lives in a small rural area in illinois and over the weekend crop circles appeared in their soybean crop .
i just talked to his cousin , and she is beside herself from all the publicity .
she said the phone started ringing at 6am this morning .
What does a patent clerk in Switzerland know about the physics of light? |
For each Einstein there are a million cranks. Your opinion is, because one in a million does know what he's on about, we have to believe everyone?
Einstein followed the scientific process - he presented his ideas for peer-review. They were not just accepted at face value without further evaluation. We do not now have the Theory of Relativity because Einstein said it, but because the hypothesis was tested and verified.
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i know that all religions have their flaws, so do you agree that witnesses should call themselves christians or are they 'too un-christian'?.
the baptism, i think proves its different, they are baptized into an organization, that forms part of the questions...agreeing that the society is god's earthly representation.. personally i feel they are not christians.
[misread post]
my husbands cousin lives in a small rural area in illinois and over the weekend crop circles appeared in their soybean crop .
i just talked to his cousin , and she is beside herself from all the publicity .
she said the phone started ringing at 6am this morning .
| You can actually bring people out to a field, make a complicated crop circle right in front of them and they'll still say somrthing like: "Sure, that one was a hoax, but some of them just can't be explained." What they forget is that until they were shown that one, they thought none of them could be explained. |
It's the usual reverse argument.
It is not necessary to prove that all crop circles are man-made, as this is the likeliest scenario.
It is necessary to prove that some aren't, this more extraordinary claim has a higher burden of proof.
It is backwards to accept the more extraordinary claim, while demanding greater evidence for the least extraordinary.
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i know that all religions have their flaws, so do you agree that witnesses should call themselves christians or are they 'too un-christian'?.
the baptism, i think proves its different, they are baptized into an organization, that forms part of the questions...agreeing that the society is god's earthly representation.. personally i feel they are not christians.
I always think of them as a cult hiding behind the Bible.
my husbands cousin lives in a small rural area in illinois and over the weekend crop circles appeared in their soybean crop .
i just talked to his cousin , and she is beside herself from all the publicity .
she said the phone started ringing at 6am this morning .
Don't believe everything you see on Discovery Channel, or any other entertainment medium. Real scientists only wish channels like these would stick to the facts.
Both DCI [makes of Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel] and A&E carry quality programming on their flagship channels. But they also carry shows which utterly undermine the credibility of their scientific and historic programming. Source |
