/r/badscience

Photograph via snooOG

A forum for the discussion of poorly presented science.

RULES

  1. When submitting items, you should post a comment or text post explaining/debunking any bad scientific claims. If a submission is about bad science and so this rule doesn't apply, say so.

  2. No subjects are taboo here as long as submitted and discussed in good faith. If the subject is controversial, you can show your good faith by making a good rule 1 explanation.

  3. Abusive posts or comments of any type might result in a ban. This includes racist or sexist comments, or just rude and unhelpful ones. We are all here to learn and to help out with discussion.

  4. If you link to reddit, please use the No Participation (np) style. Just replace the 'www' in the URL with 'np'. Like so: http://np.reddit.com/r/badscience. No brigading of other subs or of this one.

  5. This is not the place to submit your own scientific ideas. 'Bad Science' to the regular users here doesn't mean science is bad. It refers to articles or other materials which attempt to use or explain some science, but get it wrong.


The sub is for everything concerning the bad presentation of science.

We often see poor science written-up uncritically by news organisations. Cancer has been cured for the umpteenth time, another mechanic has invented free energy, genetically modified foods are deadly poisonous, daddy longlegs are the most poisonous spider, this one weird trick will fix your health problems, and the universe is a hologram. If it's making ridiculous claims about the world and claiming the authority of science, post it here! We especially encourage posting examples of bad science journalism or other forms of poor communication about science.


If you report a post or comment, please message the mods saying why. This one really matters. We don't actively police the reports queue, but we answer all modmail. Our reason is that if a comment is bad enough to need a report, it's bad enough to write a quick message about it. Unfortunately many or most reports are not justified.


Association of Badcademics

/r/anachronism

/r/bad_religion

/r/badanthropology

/r/badatheism

/r/BadcomputerScience

/r/badeconomics

/r/BadEverything

/r/badfallacy

/r/badhistory

/r/badlegaladvice

/r/badlinguistics

/r/badliterarystudies

/r/badneuroscience

/r/badpsychology

/r/badsubhub

/r/badwomensanatomy

/r/godwinslaw

/r/PanicHistory

/r/Redoric

Relevant subreddits:

/r/skeptic

/r/woowoo

/r/HeKnowsQuantumPhysics

/r/askscience

/r/sciencemadesimple

/r/DebunkThis


Relevant sites:

Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog

Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog

/r/badscience

31,369 Subscribers

8

Questionable claims? university of miama 'windfall' technology to power cargo ships

(I wasn't sure about posting a link to U miama's website. Google that to find article.)

The claims seem to me questionable. But I'm not even remotely an expert on the physics of this.

My summary of the claims based on researcher's simulations:

  • up to 50% reduction in large cargo ship's energy usage. 90% for small. [Presumably only when strong wind. The wind can be blowing in any direction.]
  • Technology:
    • Tall cylinders anchored to deck (think "smoke stack" size)
    • No moving parts (technically, no LARGE moving parts): this implies the cylinders do NOT contain "vertical turbines".
    • Wind blows air in, cylinder is sealed, an impellor pumps to higher pressure, then openings in the aft direction allow pressured air to exit, "generating both thrust and lift".

Researcher is seeking funding to build a prototype.

Here's what makes me skeptical:

  1. Provide thrust of at least half the ship's current power usage: Doesn't this imply most of the energy source is from the impellor pressurizing the air, not from wind?
  2. If there aren't moving parts, then the impellor must be powered by fuel, not wind. If so, this doesn't appear to be primarily a "wind technology". It is "using fuel [plus some wind] to compress air", then using the compressed air.
  3. If most of the thrust comes from a fuel-powered impellor, then even without knowing the details of the science, it seems dubious that pressurizing air and then releasing it is twice as efficient as current means of propulsion.
  4. "lift"? A nice concept, but if a significant amount of the energy of the expelled air is being used to lift a 100K+ ton ship, to noticeably reduce drag of ship's hull underwater, then there is that much less available for forward thrust.

A science question about (2.): If there is a strong wind, what pressure can wind alone get the cylinder up to?

3 Comments
2024/07/31
23:09 UTC

10

Bad Transphobia

From here

A feature of Julia Serano’s writing is shifting justifications and definitions. At no point does Serano stick to one definition of female, as opposed to repeating, in different contexts, that all transwomen should be considered female. Serano claims or implies transwomen are female in the following ways:

because being female is a collection of mutable traits that transwomen can alter themselves to suit, to an extent

because “the gender/sex distinction is rooted in mind/body dualism”

because “our understanding of sex is socially constructed “

because ‘most people use the terms “sex” and “gender” synonymously’

because men “simply see [me as] a woman/female […], and [treat] me accordingly”

because of “trans people’s gender identities and lived experiences”

But these can’t all be true. If transwomen are female because they’ve changed their bodies, this contradicts a claim transwomen are female because of a “sexed mind” or “gender identity”. That in turn don’t get along with the claim that sex is a constructed idea peculiar to human society rather than being a biologically innate fact. All of these are at odds with the idea that life experience is what makes Julia Serano female, and how are we to reconcile that with the idea it has something to do with male perceptions? For someone who accuses others of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at an argument to make a case, Serano sure looks guilty of this.

Serano’s essay is an exercise in making the simple complicated, and the clear obscure.

Chuds like him can't identify a "real woman" based on what he considered women:

An organism’s biological sex is its reproductive class. An organism in the class capable of producing small gametes/sperm is the male, large gametes/eggs the female. Not all females at all stages of life are capable of producing eggs, but only those capable of producing eggs are females. Therefore, there are two and only two sex categories.

Again we don't identify women socially like that.

This also ignores alloparenting.

Not complicated, is it? What we have are two very, very well separated populations. Even when you zoom in on a scale where any disorders are visible, only a few tens out of a million, are truly sexually ambiguous. This tells you sex is well described as a binary characteristic. Effective descriptions should include what’s important, and not what isn’t. To ignore that principle is to miss the forest for the trees. Describing sex as non-binary is inappropriate outside of specifically discussing rare disorders that affect millionths of the population. The use of “sex is non-binary” rhetoric by trans activists like Julia Serano is politically, not scientifically, motivated.

This is what the distribution of sex characteristics looks like in 1 million non-trans people, zoomed in to the bottom 0.2%

When Julia Serano and other trans activists says that sex is neither simple nor straightforward, they are lying. Sex is as simple and straightforward as any other kind of bodily property, like the fact people have ten fingers.

I feel like this is fallicious.

Intersex Authorities Reject Transgender Comparisons

Until they don't

How about the brain studies on transwomen that Serano quotes? First, in general, finding that a male had a “feminine-looking brain”, does not prove they could feel like a woman and be aware of it, for the reasons given in the paragraph above: nobody is psychic. Second, this study in particular is flawed; the results do not prove any males have innately “feminine” brains. Anne Lawrence, an expert in transsexual and transgender science, dissected this at length:

Quoting single studies in a complex field risks cherry-picking. A review of the neuroscience last year by Guillamon, cautiously validates a hypothesis on the etiology and typology of transgender articulated most clearly by the psychologist Ray Blanchard. Discussing Blanchard’s typology in depth would take us far astray, but Kay Brown has an accessible introduction. In short: male-to-female transgender persons appear to fall into two subtypes, first, homosexual transsexual, and second, autogynephilic. Both may have perfectly good reasons for seeking to transition, but in neither case, is there any reason to suppose the cause is an innate gender identity mismatch. For the case of female-to-male transgender persons, it is supposed that they may be analogous to the first subtype, but not the second.

Ah yes, uncritcally quote these quacks, while not looking at The evidence.

If Transwomen Are Female, This Robs Humans Of Language To Describe Themselves

More like others to describe people who are not them

Oh bonus

The recent furore over James Damore’s firing from Google sparked a public conversation about mental differences between men and women, with some psychologists saying personality differences are innate, and others disagreeing.

He is wrong fyi: https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boots-on-what-the-evidence-says-about-mr-damores-google-memo-bc93c8b2fdb9

1 Comment
2024/07/13
03:31 UTC

12

Terrance Howard

I keep seeing these video clips being stitched and declaring him a brilliant genius, etc.

There's others of course that call him out or make statements as to the lack of validity to some of his claims, but it seems people want to see every individual point challenged before they'll accept he's batshit insane.

This has me more riled up than FlatEarthers

11 Comments
2024/05/24
19:25 UTC

58

Spent an hour trying to convince a redditor that gravity is capable of causing acceleration

https://preview.redd.it/h9lcg6dt2zoc1.png?width=460&format=png&auto=webp&s=6bac3f2e5069d2cd05e1b8afadc0d4f5422c2e3a

https://preview.redd.it/5hr226dt2zoc1.png?width=444&format=png&auto=webp&s=fb1de45dd3eac4aad9f4ada9c1bdc6722bea235e

This was regarding the video of Starship reentering Earth's atmosphere, he argued that because you could see hot bright plasma building up, the ship should start decelerating, I tried to tell him that because gravity was also accelerating the ship towards its perigee, the little air resistance at that altitude wasn't enough to overcome the acceleration.

Unfortunately he seemed to be unable to process this.

9 Comments
2024/03/17
22:46 UTC

1

alpha male vs beta male

Female-written romance stories revolve around multiple suitors for a woman protagonist to tame. She usually selects the most Alpha among them – usually the one who’s a misunderstood Beast to everyone but her.

Male written romance generally centers on a hapless Beta male (with a heart of gold) who, through extraordinary circumstance, is placed in a position of outperforming all of his rivals. His exceptional performance gets him his dream girl, or the girl he “should really be with” instead of the shallow girl he thought would be so great. Instead of selfishly abusing his newfound Alpha superpowers by kicking sand in the faces of lesser Betas, he fashions himself as the heroic example of how Betas should act if they find themselves in similar empowerment. The stories of Spider-Man, Captain America, and Back to the Future all follow these Beta male-romance scripts to the letter. In every story, the Beta-with-a-chance has to teach the bully a lesson before he can qualify for the girl’s attention and intimacy. This clichéd story arch manifests men's internal acknowledgment of the male Burden of Performance. While I can’t assert this is an intrinsic part of men’s mental firmware, I have to speculate that the fantasy of fulfilling it is part of men’s innate need to perform for women’s intimate approval. Regardless, the objective purpose is still to “get the girl.” Examples of this Alpha bully archetype are part of most men’s formative learning. Not all men learn the lesson of the bully (some play the role with relish), but if we hold to the Pareto Principle 80/20 rule of the Manosphere, we’re statistically looking at around 80% of (Beta) men who do. From grade school, to high school, to college, that guy, the douchebag, the guy who can’t help but actively or passively draw attention to himself, becomes the alpha man of the group who gets all the girls– and damned if he’s not the most obnoxious bastard you know.st obnoxious bastard you know. I’m highlighting that guy because, more often than not, he’s less a natural person and more a manifestation of the anxiety that results from men’s insecurity about measuring up to female approval. It’s easy to poke fun at the guys you see on social media because they’re representations of the bully you hate. They’re the jerks that every woman loves, and every “normal” guy tries to make women understand are the worst possible romantic option for them.

1 Comment
2024/02/26
03:19 UTC

1

No, that isn't what it says

From here:

FACT-O-RAMA! Cultural Marxists know that the first step to normalizing pedophilia is to soften the language. The word "pedophile" has a stigma to it, as it should, so the far left has come up with less odious terms for animals who sexually assault children.

Except he is conflating molestation with pedophilia

The inconvenient truth is that there are more pedophiles in the LGBT crowd than they want to admit, and some of them are the most vocal, Christian-phobic, attention-starved people in the galaxy — drag queens

Liberal, virtue-semaphoring mommies excitedly deliver their kids to drag queen story hours nationwide despite the meteoric rise of men in dresses getting busted for child porn and assault.

He says "metoric" but really it's nothing comparedto the ones who don't wear dress and are usually Christain: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23notadragqueen&f=live

The apparatchiks in the Pravda press are reluctant to cover stories of LBGT pedophiles, even after seven men gang-raped young boys in a shopping mall restroom and videotaped the horror.

Again he thinks molesters are gay when that isn't the case. He is playing around with definitions

Not every member of the gay community is a child predator — far from it, but according to this study, the number of pedophiles in the LGBT crew is greater in proportion to that of straight people:

Using phallometric test sensitivities to calculate the proportion of true pedophiles among various groups of sex offenders against children, and taking into consideration previously reported mean numbers of victims per offender group, the ratio of heterosexual to homosexual pedophiles was calculated to be approximately 11:1. This suggests that the resulting proportion of true pedophiles among persons with a homosexual erotic development is greater than that in persons who develop heterosexually. 

Again, he is playing with what the words in this study mean.

Several other studies also state that pedophilia is far more prominent in the gay community than among straight people.

Those "studies" lie.

0 Comments
2024/02/20
06:01 UTC

1

red pill lessons as to why you should not show your weakness to women

2 Comments
2024/02/20
00:24 UTC

0

Are the principles upon science is based on actually bad science itself?

Forgive me if I'm in the wrong subreddit, I couldn't figure out where this would be an appropriate subreddit to ask.
I've become rather interested lately in scientific principles, because I've noticed that many people sort of make science their "god" in a way, so to speak, in that if scientific research suggests something is probably true, then it is undeniable fact.

Anyways, that led me to this Berkeley document, that seems to be a teacher's aide of some sort: https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/tiffney3b.html#:~:text=Science%20is%20not%20infallible%3B%20it,invoked%20dishonestly%20on%20many%20occasions.

There's a lot of here, but I want to point out 2 things in particular:

" 1. Science is not infallible; it has been invoked dishonestly on many occasions. "

That one is pretty self explanatory, but it will help explain my other issue. They go on a tangent in regards to handling students with differing viewpoints on creation vs. evolution. I want to stress, this is not the debate I'm addressing today, but it is rather a phrase in which they teach the teachers to say to handle the objections of creationists:

" 5. And if you want a nasty suggestion . . . to those who reject evolution, ask if they are honest to the data that they receive. If they answer "yes" then ask them why they go to a doctor when they are ill (a product of science, just like evolution) rather than to a faith healer? "

And my thought on this is, many people choose not to go to doctors. Doctors have also been fallible. There are many instances of doctors prescribing incorrect medications, in some cases leading to death, unintentionally, and in rare cases even intentionally. If you've ever delved into mental health prescriptions, it can sometimes take years for a doctor to prescribe correctly, and by that time, the brain has been so severely altered by the incorrect medicine, that now the patient needs several more medicines they never needed in the first place. And this "fallible-ness" (excuse my wordiness) is not limited to mental health.

I myself have been privy to this within my own family. I myself was prescribed codeine during a surgery. I had an allergic reaction to it mid surgery and almost died, and then after receiving the supposedly "correct" drug, began coughing up blood a week later because indeed, another allergic reaction.

So anyways, are the principles of this Berkeley science document actually bad science itself?

26 Comments
2023/12/05
14:14 UTC

0

Unconscious bias is the most prevalent pseudoscience in academia

6 Comments
2023/11/18
18:50 UTC

3

Stretch mark remover subliminal lo-fi?🧐

I swear this is the most bizarre thing i have ever seen on youtube, i was searching for a way to get rid of stretch marks on my arms, so i was typing "stretch mark removal" and guess what was the first recommend? And comments are even more bizarre and shocking.

1 Comment
2023/11/14
03:10 UTC

163

An example of Jordan Peterson's pseudoscientific nonsense on climate change being dismantled

29 Comments
2023/11/12
12:11 UTC

4

Jordan Peterson's Climate Claims Dismantled

When Jordan Peterson speaks on subjects outside his immediate expertise, he is liable to make serious errors, in this case about elements of environmental and climate science. In this video, some of his many claims are fact checked against available research - notably his assertion that the world is getting greener due to climate change/CO2 emissions and that this is beneficial for agriculture.

Check it out!

https://youtu.be/QQnGipXrwu0

1 Comment
2023/11/12
12:29 UTC

4

Is Ted-Ed a reliable educational channel?

Hello, I've been looking for some reliable educational channel on youtube and I'm wondering if TED-ed videos (not TED talks) are scientifically accurate. Thank you

1 Comment
2023/10/20
13:31 UTC

21

High on semen: Misleading claim of yoga reversing the "flow of semen" all the way to brain thus nourishing it.

5 Comments
2023/09/25
09:40 UTC

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