this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025

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Science Memes

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131

Well whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by Squorlple@lemmy.world to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Don't look into why we use the Latin word for ghost to describe light then

[–] BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works 9 points 8 hours ago

I get where this meme is coming from, but I think it's a bad idea to remove a person's credibility if they believe in a thing that I consider supernatural/bullshit/pseudoscience/charlatanesque.

Firstly: a supernatural phenomenon today could be a scientific field tomorrow. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Secondly: They could simply be ill-informed about the state of knowledge about that subject, or they had a very bizarre experience that they don't know how to explain otherwise, or they never thought too much about it.

They do lose credibility to me when I present facts and arguments as to why I believe it to be false, and they fail to show they can have a rational debate to explain why they think I should change my mind or understand that they could be in the wrong and acknowledge it.

[–] Prontomomo@lemmy.world 6 points 9 hours ago

I don’t believe in things that are considered “supernatural”. However, I don’t think that someone believing in something supernatural disqualifies them from doing good science, the same as someone who has a purely materialist belief system isn’t necessarily qualified to do good science. The clincher for me is that they can do their best to operate science without biasing it.

For example, It’s perfectly possible for someone who believes in string theory to study it as long as they are using the true scientific method, the same as it’s possible for someone who does not believe in string theory to study it with proper scientific method. If you project that same example towards something more controversial, like telepathy, it’s still a valid understanding of how scientific study should work.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 54 points 1 day ago (3 children)

You could jump to conclusions, or you could ask whether or not there is evidence that scientists' work in their own field is affected by irrelevant unscientific beliefs that they hold. In my experience, people are very good at compartmentalizing their beliefs.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

How about this?

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 47 minutes ago

Psi research is a fascinating field, responsible for lots of improvements in study design, metastudy statistics and criteria, whatnot.

Like, it is hard to control your experiment so that you don't accidentally measure side channels as telepathy or whatnot. Or subjects having hit rates because they have the same cognitive bias as experimenters selecting cards "at random". The list is endless.

Sceptic: "Your study has these and these flaws". Psi researcher: "We're using state of the art experimental design, accepted in every other field, and are open to suggestions". Sceptic "...damnit". I guess at least half of Psi researchers are consciously trolling for the heck of it, the bulk of the rest is dabblers, full-on crackpots are actually a rarity. Crackpots don't tend to have the wherewithal to get their stuff into a form that's even remotely publishable.

[–] Squorlple@lemmy.world 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That’s why it’s important to have peer review and replicable results

[–] exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Science is a process for learning knowledge, not a set of known facts (or theories/conjectures/hypotheses/etc.).

Phlogiston theory was science. But ultimately it fell apart when the observations made it untenable.

A belief in luminiferous aether was also science. It was disproved over time, and it took decades from the Michelson-Morley experiment to design robust enough studies and experiments to prove that the speed of light was the same regardless of Earth's relative velocity.

Plate tectonics wasn't widely accepted until we had the tools to measure continental drift.

So merely believing in something not provable doesn't make something not science. No, science has a bunch of unknowns at any given time, and testing different ideas can be difficult to actually do.

Hell, there are a lot of mathematical conjectures that are believed to be true but not proven. Might never be proven, either. But mathematics is still a rational, scientific discipline.

[–] HazyHerbivore@lemm.ee 1 points 49 minutes ago

Weird you'd call ideas that long predate rationalism and the scientific method science

[–] PatrickYaa@feddit.org 16 points 1 day ago

And sometimes they're not. Apothecaries believing in homeopathy e.g.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

50 people so far that should be banned from this sub

[–] Squorlple@lemmy.world 9 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I really did not expect it to be so controversial

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 8 points 21 hours ago

20% of the US population believe in ghosts, and another 25% think they're a possibility.

These aren't even bad numbers globally.

🤷‍♂️

[–] Balthazar@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Because Einstein's science had absolutely no basis in fact.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

What?

[+] Squorlple@lemmy.world -10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Did Sigmund Freud’s science? Or Philip Zimbardo’s? Or Santiago Genovés‘s? Or did they contaminate their works with their preconceived notions to get false results that they already believed in? I’ll tell you the same line that I have been saying: verify with peer review and replicable results.

[–] Balthazar@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Absolutely, but that's not what your meme says. Peer review in this case says the manuscript should be significantly revised before publishing.

[+] Squorlple@lemmy.world -10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There are times in which a scientist may speak on matters without peer review, such as interviews, their own blogs or other personal web channels, or even a TED Talk. The meme is about those circumstances.

[–] Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

An individual doesn’t truly understand and apply the scientific approach and method if they baselessly believe that certain phenomenon are caused by supernatural forces/entities. Ergo, the individual’s credibility in their established field is called into question since they may have applied similar illogic and pretenses to their work and understanding there.

That's not what you said in another comment under your meme.

[–] Squorlple@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

Those two are not mutually exclusive nor contradictory. “Credibility” is a key word, in specific reference to information obtained from an individual through any medium. It’s possible to brand oneself as a scientist in a field and become a talking head without passing proper peer review and replicable results.

[–] teletext@reddthat.com 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

[+] Squorlple@lemmy.world -26 points 1 day ago (3 children)

An individual doesn’t truly understand and apply the scientific approach and method if they baselessly believe that certain phenomenon are caused by supernatural forces/entities. Ergo, the individual’s credibility in their established field is called into question since they may have applied similar illogic and pretenses to their work and understanding there.

[–] Sidhean@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

google ~~"en passant~~ methodological naturalism"

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Oh yes. You absolutely don't have to believe that the earth is billions of years old to understand geology. You just have to assume that it looks like it is, while doing geology. That's completely compatible with believing that it really is just 8,000 years old.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 35 minutes ago (1 children)

If that's a steelman then it's definitely at forging temperature (which jet fuel btw can achieve easily), collapsing under its own weight.

Try this: Is it consistent to believe that evolution is the means by which God created, and continues to create, creatures? Does "well evolution just happens" have more, less, or equally much of an argument for itself? Note: Blindly assuming naturalism instead of God's will doesn't count because neither of those are falsifiable.

Thing is: There's more than one way to connect the data points into an overall theory. Those theories try to explain the data points by starting from made-up axioms, and naturalism is just as much made-up as the Spaghetti monster. Unless you want to posit some kind of Platonism?

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 20 minutes ago

If that’s a steelman then it’s definitely at forging temperature (which jet fuel btw can achieve easily), collapsing under its own weight.

I don't understand. I simply agreed with the previous poster. Do you disagree with anything I wrote?

[–] InquisitiveApathy@lemm.ee 35 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The world isn't black and white. You give all atheists a bad name.

[+] Squorlple@lemmy.world -17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don’t understand where you’re coming from. Could you explain further? What are the categories of black and white that you think I’m working in?

[–] banana_lama@lemm.ee 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I assume he meant that just because someone believes in something separate from their scientific work doesn't affect their credibility.

An easy thought experiment is if an astronomer believes that when an ostrich is scared it buries its head in the ground. Does this affect their work?

If a surgeon believes in destiny doesn't mean that their work is subpar or that they sabotage their work because it might be someone's destiny to die.

[+] Squorlple@lemmy.world -12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I agree with that much. A person can be smart in one field and ignorant in another field. My concern is with the contamination of one’s own supernatural thinking (either individual notions or the approach itself) into their scientific work and publications. That’s why I said “they may have applied similar illogic and pretenses”, not that they certainly did. That’s the importance of having methodology being scrutinized by unbiased peer review to produce replicable results.

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

If you have experienced something that can't be currently explained by science, it doesn't necessarily mean you don't believe there isn't a scientific explanation for it we just haven't found yet.

For example, if in an imaginary scenario you and 5 other credible people you trust and know experience, idk, an apparition that looked human appearing in full detail appear out of nowhere, say "I am real", and then vanish, would you suddenly lose all your reason and no longer trust any science at all? If so, you are not scientifically minded at all, and would contribute no significant progress to science with such rigidity.

Someone who practices science, and seeks to advance our knowledge into that which is unknown, would instead first try to rule out possible known causes, such as by confirming with others if they saw that too and to immediately make sure no one says anything, then instruct them to all write down what they experienced. After confirming indeed that everyone had the same experience (and this ruling out multiple known causes), you'd probably inspect the environment for any possible other explanation.

Finding none, would that mean your work and understandings of science would no longer be credible? If so, then you never understood the point of science and research. Your work would be tainted not by having experienced something many consider paranormal/supernatural, but by your inability to understand that it's simply yet another unknown phenomenon that perhaps can be explained in the future with further research and advancements in technology (after all, we already struggle figuring out testing intelligence in things that are known such as animals - in something we can't even easily observe, it's currently not possible). Unwillingness to entertain a widely reported phenomenon makes you no different than early scientists who refused to consider that reports of what we now know are pandas and gorillas to perhaps be something. It is actually that thinking which holds back humanity, rather than advances it.

[–] Gustephan@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago

Christian scientists on their way to tell you about how their evidence free belief in magic shouldn't affect how you view their ability to derive truth from evidence

[–] Zenith@lemm.ee -1 points 1 day ago

I don’t tell people I’m an atheist, I am, instead I tell them “I don’t believe in magical thinking” that way religion is covered and all this other stupid bullshit along with it