Neil Tyson tells us we weigh the same at the north pole as we do at the equator: Link. For some reason he believes the matter in the equatorial bulge lieing outside a spherical shape doesn't exert gravity on someone at the north pole.

He also mispronounces "geoid".

A few weeks ago a paper released in Nature Geoscience made the extraordinary claim that polymetallic nodules on the abyssal seafloor are capable of abiotically producing oxygen. The paper claimed that this has all sorts of implications for deep-sea ecology, the evolution of life and the origins of an oxygenated Earth. It was widely reported on platforms such as the BBC, CNN and many more. But one platform was conspicuously silent on the subject - Science. Since then, scepticism has been building, and Science have broken their silence with a piece that raises some serious doubts from multiple sources. These include:

1. Kentaro Nakamura, a geochemist at the University of Tokyo, who says there is no sign of elevated oxygen above nodule fields
2. The Metals Company (TMC), who have released a pre-print of their rebuttal of the paper, raise multiple problems with the paper including that it contains uncited but previously published data, and that it carefully omits data that contradicts the main hypothesis. This includes that oxygen levels rose in experiments that did not contain any nodules at all.
3. Adepth Minerals, which released a critique that raises many of the same questions as TMC without the advantage of having access to detailed laboratory notes and metadata.
4. Other scientists have conducted these same experiments in the abyss for decades and have seen no sign of oxygen production.
5. Evidence that the increasing oxygen signal can result from experimental problems "The team injected cold surface seawater into the other two chambers, but the injection failed for the third chamber, leaving it just with its abyssal water. In that third chamber, oxygen levels did not rise, suggesting the surface-water injections were responsible for the oxygen increases in the other two". Similar problems have been known about for many years "Haeckel also notes that nearly 2 decades ago, his team, using the same landers as Sweetman, thought it detected oxygen production on the sea floor—but it turned out to be trapped air bubbles."

There appears to be serious problems with the idea that these nodules can produce oxygen, and the lead author of the paper has made numerous statements walking back on some of his claims as the pressure has mounted. One of the most interesting things about this new piece in Science is the lack of any supporting voices, which is surely a sign that this has raised a lot of eyebrows in the community.

EDIT:

I wanted to touch on something else that I believe isn't truly relevant because the problems with their experiments preclude the possibility that this oxygen production happens. But a recent quote by the primary author really needs to be addressed. Andrew Sweetman says:

He also emphasizes that the electrolysis is probably intermittent: "We say it's possible." source

Is that really true? The paper presents a range of voltage measurements, the highest of which (0.95 V) is quoted twice in the text. There are several problems with this.

1. 0.95 V is the absolute maximum value measured, and is presented in a table of "max" and "min" measurements without any explanation of how transient these minimum or maximum values are. The data plotted in the paper is a separate set of measurements, and again, it is not clear how these values relate to the other table of maximum and minimum measurements.
2. 0.95 V is well below the value needed to split water.
3. The median average of all the voltages measured is only around 0.02 V. There are some problems with arriving at this average due to the lack of detail on how the data (particularly the maximum and minimum values) were obtained, but it is clear that the vast majority of the measurements are incredibly low.
4. The value of 0.95 V is a statistical outlier using a range of different statistical metrics.

So, when Andrew Sweetman says "it is possible", I say, how? There is no data presented in the paper that shows it is possible. What he is really saying is that he thinks it might be possible based on a belief that under certain circumstances the nodules might at some point generate a voltage high enough to split water. This is not science. It is conjecture - a hypothesis that remains to be proven. It is quite bizarre that the data presented in the paper undermine this hypothesis and yet it is still presented in the text as somehow showing that it is possible.

Edit 2:

It's been an explosive week in the saga of this terrible piece of badscience with the publication of two pre-prints of rebuttals from academic sources. One group from the University of Gothenburg, who are some of the leaders in this field, and another rebuttal from Kentaro Nakamura from Tokyo University. Both of these rebuttals are scathing, and they speak for themselves. So I will just quote some of the highlights here.

Anders Tengberg et al., University of Gothenburg:

These earlier deployments were done on sediments without nodules, yet the same patterns of increasing oxygen are presented as nodule incubations, casting serious doubts on the entire experimental approach and on the ethical principles of the authors.

It's a huge step to so plainly question the ethical principles of the scientists involved.

Problems with the experiments are highlighted:

If chambers do not have ambient bottom water background concentrations of oxygen, at the start of incubation, they cannot be well ventilated and the incubations should be discarded since they provide artificial data (Kononets et al. 2021). When re-analyzing the data from these deployments we found that maximum 2 out of 32 incubations from this work might be usable.

Again, this is huge. If only 2 of 32 experiments are valid then there is no way Sweetman et al. can be confident in their findings. They go on to highlight more technical problems with the experiments, and finish with the absolute cracker of a summary:

Conclusion: Given scientific ethics, numerous methodological flaws, misinterpretations, and lack of proper quality control, it is strongly recommended that Nature Geoscience withdraws this paper.

This is one of the leading group of experts in the field calling on Nature Geoscience to retract the paper for ethical and technical problems. It's hard to see how it could get any worse for Sweetman et al.

But it did get worse - and while more reserved than the UoG rebuttal, the rebuttal from Kentaro Nakamura presents a strong case against DOP because Sweetman et al. did not consider how oxygen production in the abyss fits into the wider picture of ocean geochemistry. The rebuttal goes into detail about how improbable it is for this energy source to be missed and how there is no deficit in the global oxygen budget that could be accounted for by DOP.

If DOP of 1.7–18 mmol O₂/m²/day is actually occurring, the energy required for it could reach 8.53 kJ/m²/day. This value is comparable to the crustal heat flux at almost all ocean floors except near the mid-ocean ridges (4.32–8.64 kJ/m²/day). It would have been surprising if such a large energy source had been overlooked in the long history of ocean observations.

To date, no anomalous oxygen generation has been reported in the enormous amount of research conducted over more than half a century, including in and around the ferromanganese nodule field.

The DOP flux reported by Sweetman et al.1 was one to two orders of magnitude higher than that of SCOC, which is almost the only oxygen-consuming process in the deep sea. It is unlikely that such distinct oxygen production has been missed by researchers who have carefully observed oxygen concentrations on the seafloor for over fifty years.

This clearly indicates that the impact of DOP on oceanic oxygen concentration levels is negligible, or that such oxygen generation does not occur in the first place.

The rebuttal ends with a sobering message about how global warming is the real threat to oxygen supply to the deep sea, not removal of nodules. Reading between the lines, this is a clear message to Sweetman et al. that fabricating science as a method of short-sighted activism is not only misguided but dangerous too. With these issues highlighted and corroborated by independent academic groups, I believe there is no longer any question left about whether manganese nodules produce oxygen. They don't, and decades of prior work have shown this. Sweetman et al. themselves admit that their findings are anomalous in the context of all studies that have come before. This alone should have rang alarm bells, and the work by Kentaro Nakamura and the team at UoG confirms it.

(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?

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

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

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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.

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.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cihskOV0mLo

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?