Sermons From Science -- March 2013 科学布道 -- 2013 年 3 月

Sermons From Science -- March 2013科学布道-- 2013年3月 Sermons from Science is now published in both YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in PowerPoint slides in the website http://ChristCenterGospel.org. The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all the glory. Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from cancer surgery. Pastor Chui http://ChristCenterGospel.org ckchui1@yahoo.com 10/12/2014 1

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances 罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • Why are we seeing young phenomena in the planets if they are billions of years old? Some scientists are abandoning uniformitarian assumptions and admitting we are lucky to be witnessing them in “rare moments of glory.” • In Nature this week, Maggie McKee interviewed scientists who are struggling with short-lived phenomena in the solar system. The subtitle of her article, “Caught in the Act,” states, “We may be seeing some of the Solar System’s most striking objects during rare moments of glory.” Her first two paragraphs elaborate why this is unsettling for some: 10/12/2014 2

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances 罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • “Ever since Copernicus evicted Earth from its privileged spot at the centre of the Solar System, researchers have embraced the idea that there is nothing special about our time and place in the Universe. What observers see now, they presume, has been going on for billions of years — and will continue for eons to come. 10/12/2014 3

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances 罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • “But observations of the distant reaches of the Solar System made in the past few years are challenging that concept. The most active bodies out there — Jupiter’s moon Io and Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan — may be putting on limited-run shows that humans are lucky to witness. Saturn’s brilliant rings, too, might have appeared relatively recently, and could grow dingy over time. Some such proposals make planetary researchers uncomfortable, because it is statistically unlikely that humans would catch any one object engaged in unusual activity — let alone several.” 10/12/2014 4

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances 罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • It seems a bitter pill for some planetary scientists to “go against the grain of one of geology’s founding principles: uniformitarianism, which states that planets are shaped by gradual, ongoing processes,” she wrote. Then she quoted Jeff More (NASA-Ames) who explained that “Geologists like things to be the same as they ever were” because it’s “philosophically comforting because you don’t have to assume you’re living in special times.” Why that should be “comforting” was not explained. • McKee zoomed into each of these phenomena for more detail about what makes them look young: 10/12/2014 5

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • Saturn’s rings: The rings are 90% water ice but should be dirtier if they were old; “some planetary scientists say that the rings’ resplendence is hard to reconcile with a lifetime lasting billions of years.” That’s why hypotheses of a recent encounter with an icy interloper that broke apart and became the rings within the last few million years (just 10% of Saturn’s assumed age) have been put forth. An ad hoc solution like that, though raises other problems: all such candidate objects should have vanished 700 million years after the birth of the solar system, according to current theory. Close flybys by Cassini in years to come may confirm whether billions of years of dirt is hiding in the B ring, McKee said, but one responded, “if the Cassini results point to a low mass for the rings, it will be a real mystery.” This explanation, however, fails to explain why the thinner D, C, A, F, G, and E rings are so bright. 10/12/2014 6

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • Enceladus: The geysers of Enceladus are another thing that can’t be old; “researchers have struggled to explain how it can sustain such activity” on the order of 16 gigawatts – 10 times the amount they can account for by internal radioactive heating. “Several explanations have been put forward to account for this furious release of heat, but all rely on arguments that researchers are viewing the moon at a special time,” McKee said. It’s difficult to keep the geysers going for 10 million years (1/450th the assumed age of the moon), let alone 4.5 billion. One researcher who proposed a recent cracking from growing stresses in the crust has apparently been getting hard questions: “‘It seems like special pleading — we just happened to catch it in the act,’ says [Craig] O’Neill [Macquarie University, Sydney], echoing criticisms that he has heard when presenting the model at conferences.” Nearby Mimas “should be producing more heat than Enceladus and it doesn’t, and we don’t really understand why,” O’Neill said. 10/12/2014 7

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances 罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • Io: If Enceladus is a firefly, Io is a furnace, McKee wrote. It gives off 90,000 gigawatts through its incessant volcanoes, “several times more than would be expected from the simplest models of tidal interactions between the moon and Jupiter.” Again, it’s not that planetary scientists are unable to imagine scenarios in which we might be seeing Io at a special time; perhaps the moon’s orbital dance with the other moons makes it undergo periodic exaggerations of its eccentricity. Even though this “would satisfy the data,” one planetologist said, when thinking about the peculiarities of Io and Enceladus, “it’s possible we simply don’t understand them.” 10/12/2014 8

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances 罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • Titan: The largest moon of Saturn presents problems with both its atmosphere and surface. Atmospheric theories are up in the air, because “the atmospheric methane — and its effects on the landscape — ought to be short-lived” in the range of a few tens of millions of years. If sources of replenishment cannot be found (there are some disputed candidates thought to be ice volcanoes), it should have been long gone. Jeff Moore “thinks that researchers are seeing Titan at a unique and geologically fleeting time.” The question then becomes, why now, and what happened? 10/12/2014 9

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances 罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • In Moore’s hypothesis, the sun warmed up to a tipping point a few tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, levitating the frozen nitrogen and methane into an atmosphere that “rained like hell” onto the surface, creating the erosional features seen today. Ralph Lorenz [Johns Hopkins U] criticizes Moore’s view as “too simplistic” and pointed to “some evidence” (not mentioned in the article) that it would have taken billions of years to form Titan’s hydrocarbon-rich sand dunes. • McKee ended with a quote from Lorenz: “I think we have to have a much more nuanced view of Titan through time. Titan is bloody complicated.” 10/12/2014 10

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • It’s not complicated at all, if you subtract out the needless billions of years. This article is important, in that in the 8 years of the ongoing Cassini mission to Cassini, and the 9 years since the end of the Galileo mission to Jupiter, scientists still have no answers to these age conundrums. Their uniformitarian philosophy makes them uncomfortable with the facts their own eyes are beholding. We should not be living in special times, but we appear to. (Understand that the Copernican principle does not mean that we are not special; see The Privileged Planet for corrective information.) 10/12/2014 11

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • Here’s a classic case of ad hoc explanation to force observations into a web of belief. (This is called ‘special pleading’ in logic.) If science were about honestly following the evidence where it leads, these scientists would have to conclude that the solar system is much younger than thought. But they won’t do it, because they know Charlie D. (their idol) needs billions of years for life to evolve on Earth. Failing to provide those annual sacrifices to the idol would get them excommunicated from the Church of Darwin. 10/12/2014 12

Rare Moments of Glory: Planetary Scientists Admit Seeing “Lucky” Circumstances罕见的荣耀时刻：行星科学家承认看到“幸运”的情况 • If Saturn’s rings, Enceladus, Io and Titan were the only problem worlds, they might have hope to rescue their beliefs someday. Unfortunately, the problems mount for uniformitarianism when one considers Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and its moons, Uranus and its moons and rings, Neptune and its moons and rings, Pluto and the trans-Neptunian objects, comets, asteroids, dust – the whole system. There is hardly any planet or moon that met their uniformitarian expectations. We call on them: please, dump the assumption of billions of years, and all these things will start making sense. We do this out of sympathy for their discomfort, wishing them to sleep well for once. 10/12/2014 13

Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 10/12/2014 14

Desert Varnish Growth Can Be Rapid 沙漠上光油的增长可以快速 • New research shows that the black coating on sandstone known as rock varnish or desert varnish can form much more rapidly than previously thought. • The abstract of a paper in Geology1 states: • Rock varnish is a thin dark coating best known from deserts, and is believed to grow extremely slowly. Varnish samples from near Socorro, New Mexico (United States), contain as much as 3.7% PbO, derived from nearby smelters operating from A.D. 1870 to 1931. Additional varnish, measuring as much as 4 μm beyond the Pb-rich layer, indicates continued growth from 1931 to 2003. Comparison with other varnish confirms that the Pb is not an artifact. Based on Pb layer thickness, and the period of smelter operation, these very young rock varnishes yield growth rates of 28–639 μm/k.y., substantially higher than previously documented fastest rates of 40 μm/k.y. 10/12/2014 16

Desert Varnish Growth Can Be Rapid 沙漠上光油的增长可以快速 • These rates imply that the average 1–2 μm/k.y. rate for older varnish is not the active growth rate. Rather, it is a long-term value including periods of nondeposition, erosion, and active growth. Therefore, models of rock varnish formation should be reevaluated with consideration of much faster maximum growth rates. • The new maximum growth rate is nearly 16 times the old estimate. • 1. Spilde, Melim, Northup and Boston, “Anthropogenic lead as a tracer of rock varnish growth: Implications for rates of formation,” Geology, published online January 4, 2013, doi: 10.1130/G33514.1 v. 41 no. 2 p. 263–266. 10/12/2014 17

Desert Varnish Growth Can Be Rapid 沙漠上光油的增长可以快速 • Interpretive signs about desert varnish appear in national parks throughout desert parks in the United States and probably elsewhere. How many of them are going to be updated as a result of this revelation? Probably few. They will continue to tell unwary visitors that it’s a slow, slow, slow process. As this paper shows, not necessarily. Significant buildup could occur in just a few thousand years. Even so, does any scientist possess the wherewithal and know-how to understand all the variables? That this paper shows up in 2013 after decades of research on desert varnish should cause perceptive readers to see, once again, that human “scientific knowledge” is limited and subject to change without warning. 10/12/2014 18

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • Finding an article on a secular science site that criticizes the left and defends the right is so rare, it’s news. • On New Scientist today, Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell blasted political leftists for their “war on reason” with “lefty nonsense” that pretends to be scientifically-based but is not. The caption reads, “Conservatives rightly get a bad rap for anti-science policies. But progressives can be just as bad, say Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell.” • As an example, the two describe a Congressional “green” initiative to keep plastic and styrofoam utensils out of the Capitol and replace them with biodegradable ones. It sounded good; it felt good; but it ended up more wasteful and harmful to the environment than before. This led to their key paragraph: 10/12/2014 21

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • “Conservatives’ sins against science — objections to stem cell research, denial of climate science, opposition to evolution and the rest — are widely reported and well known. But conservatives don’t have a monopoly on unscientific policies. Progressives are just as bad, if not worse. Their ideology is riddled with anti-scientific feel-good fallacies designed to win hearts, not minds. Just like biodegradeable spoons, their policies often crumble in the face of reality and leave behind a big mess. Worse, anyone who questions them is condemned as anti-science.” 10/12/2014 22

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • This paragraph makes it clear that they are not embracing or defending conservatism – just calling out anti-science (as they conceive it) on both sides. “We have all heard about the Republican war on science; we want to draw attention to the progressive war on reason.” This statement, though, begs the question whether science and reason are separable. 10/12/2014 23

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • Berezow, editor of RealClearScience.com, is clearly anti-creationist but also anti-nonsense from any political stripe. Campbell is his co-author of a book whose title is self-explanatory: Science Left Behind: Feel-good fallacies and the rise of the anti-scientific left. While not letting conservatives off the hook for their “sins against science” (as perceived by Berezow and Campbell), they feel the charges need to be fairly distributed on both sides of the political spectrum. While claiming only a “lunatic fringe” among progressives is guilty, the guilt is pressing: 10/12/2014 24

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • “We contend that there is a disturbing and largely unreported trend among influential progressive activists who misinterpret, misrepresent and abuse science to advance their ideological and political agendas. • Of all of today’s political philosophies, progressivism stands as the most pressing problem for science. Progressives, not conservatives, are the ones most likely to replace scientific research with unscientific ideology.” 10/12/2014 25

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • Strong words coming from a news site that typically takes the progressive position as a given. “Conservatives who endorse unscientific ideas are blasted by the scientific community, yet progressives who do the same get a free pass,” they ended. “It is important the problem be recognised, and that free pass revoked.” • Update 2/05/13: New Scientist admitted to a leftist bias. Commenting on Berezow and Campbell’s rebuke, they agreed it is right to “Challenge unscientific thinking, whatever its source.” They considered whether the left gets a free pass by scientists and reporters. Their conclusion was a call to freedom: 10/12/2014 26

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • “Is there any substance to that suspicion? We should go to every possible length to ensure there isn’t.Unreason of any hue is dangerous; any suggestion of bias only makes it harder to overcome. Science and liberalism are natural allies, but only in the literal sense of liberalism as the pursuit of freedom. That means freedom of thought, freedom of speech and, above all, freedom from ideology— wherever on the political spectrum it comes from.” • Trying to explain the bias, they said, “The suspicion must be that this is because scientists themselves lean towards the left, as does the media that covers them.” Then in parentheses, they added, “(Both friends and critics of New Scientist tell us we lean in that direction.)” 10/12/2014 27

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • Freedom from ideology? Good luck. Everyone has a world view, whether carefully thought out or not. We’d like the editors of New Scientist to explain “unreason” in Darwinian terms. 10/12/2014 28

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • Refreshing as the main article is, it doesn’t even come close to levelling the playing field. First of all, Berezow and Campbell adopt, without question, the leftist talking points that anti-evolutionism is unscientific, that global warming theory is scientific, and that no one has a scientific right to question “stem cell science” (presumably the destruction of human embryos, an ethical question, not an issue of science). They already condemned conservatives before examining irrational ideas from progressives. They essentially tarred and feathered all conservatives before pointing out that just a few leftists on the “lunatic fringe” are just as bad or worse. Is this the best New Scientist can say? It’s too little too late. (Understand that it’s not because Republicans or conservatives actually are anti-science that gives them the bad rap; the leftists who control the media, education, labor and scientific societies hate conservatives for everything they stand for, scientific or not.) 10/12/2014 29

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • Berezow and Campbell did well to distinguish liberalism from progressivism: • Liberalism, as defined by John Locke, means the pursuit of liberty. By that definition progressives are not liberal. Though they claim common cause with liberals (and most of them are Democrats because very few progressives are Republican), today’s progressive movement is actually socially authoritarian. • Unlike conservative authoritarians, however, they are not concerned with banning “immoral” things like sex, drugs and rock and roll. They instead seek dominion over issues such as food, the environment and education. And they claim that their policies are based on science, even when they are not. 10/12/2014 30

Rare Anti-Leftist Editorial Posted on Science Site罕见科学网站发布反左派编辑 • This distinction is correct and rarely recognized. If Berezow and Campbell wish to promote liberalism of the Locke version, though, then let them promote academic freedom and freedom of inquiry – including freedom to criticize evolution, global warming and stem cell research, without pre-judging it as anti-science in a socially authoritarian way. • Nevertheless, thanks to New Scientist and these men for the partial recognition of a huge problem. We wish them well on their journey toward a non–self-refuting rational foundation. 10/12/2014 31

Science Supports Proverb of Jesus科学支持耶稣的谚语 • It is more blessed to give than to receive, said Jesus and a team of psychologists. • The psychologists in New York were not setting out to confirm Jesus’ words, but the headline on Medical Xpress stated, almost with surprise, “Study finds it actually is better (and healthier) to give than to receive.” Two decades of prior research had not found that recipients of help got the same benefits as the givers. Now, a five-year study involving 846 individuals linked decreased mortality with the stress-releasing pleasure of giving. 10/12/2014 34

Science Supports Proverb of Jesus 科学支持耶稣的谚语 • “These findings go beyond past analyses to indicate that the health benefits of helping behavior derive specifically from stress-buffering processes,” Poulin says, “and provide important guidance for understanding why helping behavior specifically may promote health and, potentially, for how social processes in general may influence health.” 10/12/2014 35

Science Supports Proverb of Jesus 科学支持耶稣的谚语 • The words of Jesus, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” do not appear in the four gospels of the New Testament, but instead were quoted by Paul to the Ephesian elders in the book of Acts of the Apostles, chapter 20, verse 35. This indicates that many of Jesus’ teachings were remembered decades later by other eyewitnesses besides Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This should not be surprising, because many thousands heard Jesus teach. As John ended his gospel (21:25), “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” 10/12/2014 36

Science Supports Proverb of Jesus 科学支持耶稣的谚语 • It’s nice when science finally catches up to the Master Planner’s truths two millennia later, but once again, the thinking of scientists (if that’s what you can call psychologists) is orthogonal to the intent of Jesus’ words. Jesus was not saying, “Behave this way for your own health and happiness.” He was encouraging the disciples to forget themselves and focus on others. Not every selfless deed results in personal reward; look at soldiers who fell on grenades to protect their comrades. When health and happiness do accrue from acts of helping others, fine; but anyone who engages in helping others for his own health misses the point. Psychology can only look at the “what,” not the “why,” the “is” not the “ought.” 10/12/2014 37

Science Supports Proverb of Jesus 科学支持耶稣的谚语 • Wouldn’t it be something if the Creator built our brains so that righteous behavior would usually result in health and happiness as a by-product? That would be like intelligent design. (It doesn’t work with impure motives, though—that’s part of the design, too.) 10/12/2014 38

Simulations Can Misrepresent Reality 模拟可以误传现实 • A new paper warns that commonly-used simulation methods in science can misrepresent the real world. • In the European Physical Journal Plus, Daan Frinkel warned about the “dark side” of simulations – those applied out of context or extrapolated beyond their capabilities (by “dark” Frenkel means under-exposed, not evil). Simulations are very common in science; for instance, Monte Carlo simulations are frequently used to study everything from thermodynamic processes to population behavior. • The paper was summarized on Science Daily as “Simulations’ Achille’s [sic] Heel,” and on PhysOrg with the headline, “What can go wrong when computer simulations applied outside their original context.” The summary says, 10/12/2014 41

Simulations Can Misrepresent Reality 模拟可以误传现实 • “Frenkel also focuses on methods that, at first blush, appear reasonable, but are flawed and are akin to attempting to compare apples and oranges. For example, computing a mechanical property of a system—say the potential energy—using a Monte Carlo simulation, which can be based on thermal averages, does not allow us to compute the thermal properties of such a system—such as entropy—in terms of thermal averages. Finally, the article also takes great care to debunk common myths and misconceptions pertaining to simulations, for instance, newer simulation methods are not necessarily better than older ones.” 10/12/2014 42

Simulations Can Misrepresent Reality 模拟可以误传现实 • Looking inside the paper, Frenkel explained that Monte Carlo and Molecular Dynamics methods, though simple, are not risk-free. They require great care, and sometimes are unreasonable even if they seem appropriate. When used carelessly, they can pretend to provide answers – sometimes when the original question has been forgotten. 10/12/2014 43

Simulations Can Misrepresent Reality 模拟可以误传现实 • In Kuhn’s view of science, “guilds” of scientists amuse themselves with busy work on paradigms that may or may not reflect reality. Guild members can seem mutually self-satisfied that progress is being made on the paradigm, when in fact, the work may not correspond to reality. Hopefully many scientists really do care about correspondence with reality, but even though they produce papers with whiz-bang simulations that seem to work, their readers should keep a healthy caution in mind that internal self-consistency does not presuppose getting “the world” right. This is especially true of evolutionary scenarios (see 5/08/2008 commentary, “How Not To Work a Puzzle”). We reproduce that commentary here for convenience. 10/12/2014 44

Simulations Can Misrepresent Reality 模拟可以误传现实 • HOW NOT TO WORK A PUZZLE • Visualize your favorite picture. • Invite your friends. Check their credentials. If anyone from a “different picture club” tries to sneak in, expel them. • Make everyone feel good about the picture. Reinforcement can be achieved with a few choice sermonettes from respected individuals. • Draw a big outline of the picture on the floor. A gymnasium is good for this step. • Open the box and spill out the pieces. • Throw away the box top and the instructions. After all, this is science. We do it our way. 10/12/2014 45

Simulations Can Misrepresent Reality 模拟可以误传现实 • Form teams and pass out the puzzle pieces. These can be distributed by color, shape, or any other useful scheme. • Allow each team to work on their part of the picture. Rearrangement of small parts is permitted, but not changes to the outline. • The rules allow for complaints about how hard the work is. If anyone complains about the big picture, though, they must be expelled. • Every two years, throw a party with booze and croissants and let each team share their experiences. Throw in a few more choice sermonettes to keep spirits high. • Report to the media on the progress being made. • Draw up a curriculum and teach the next generation how to work the puzzle. 10/12/2014 46

Simulations Can Misrepresent Reality 模拟可以误传现实 • INTERPRETATIONNote: Mature, well-trained, experienced readers can skip this section. • Philosophy of discovery: Theories do not emerge from raw data. More often, scientists begin with a picture in mind. Even deciding what to call “the data” requires a human choice, because not all inputs are relevant to the picture. Like Benner said, “science is often what we choose to believe.” • Sociology of science: Scientists tend to hang out with people they know and like. • Sociology, cont.: Science is a human activity, not something that could be done by robots. It is not purely rational but involves emotions, rhetoric, herd mentality and other non-rational considerations. 10/12/2014 47

Simulations Can Misrepresent Reality 模拟可以误传现实 • Kuhnian normal science: The paradigm determines the research project. The participants were not assembling to question the picture. They were assembling to affirm it. • Underdetermination of theories by data: There are inevitably many possible explanations for one set of data. The same puzzle pieces could be fit to a different picture. • Naturalism: Modern science has chosen to restrict itself to “natural causes” (whatever that means; see 05/11/2006). Today’s scientists have been trained to deplore revelation (natural and/or special), no matter how well validated by empirical evidence, reason or history. • Pragmatism: Nature does not determine the choice of classification scheme; people do. • Limits of science: No one person can master the whole picture, especially one as broad as evolution. 10/12/2014 48

Simulations Can Misrepresent Reality 模拟可以误传现实 • Sociology/psychology of science: Each researcher works under the assumption that his or her little piece will reinforce the paradigm. Cooperation is ensured by the fear of being expelled as a maverick, or worse, a pseudoscientist. Since no philosopher of science has successfully defended demarcation criteria for science vs pseudoscience, and since no universal scientific method has been defined, emotional and sociological judgments again come into play to determine who is “in” and who is “out.” • Sociology, cont.: Social activities, though they have nothing to do with the validity of the proposition under study, serve to reinforce the paradigm and draw in more party members. 10/12/2014 49

Simulations Can Misrepresent Reality 模拟可以误传现实 • Positivism: The party celebration attracts reporters and gives them some fun work to do at a nice hotel. The atmosphere promotes a spirit of progress. All this activity, all these smart people, and all the erudite PowerPoint slides must mean that productive science was being done, right? It must be the case since the government is funding the work.The system feeds on itself. Reporters get a share of the booze and croissants, paid for by their bosses, who get better advertising ratings for maintaining a lively science page. The reporters make friends with some of the scientists and learn from the herd who is hot and who is not. It is unlikely any reporter will go back to the office and write up a scathing rebuke of the entire philosophical premise underlying the event. Party organizers will be sure to send the cheerful press releases to Senator Earmark. 10/12/2014 50

Sermons From Science -- March 2013 科学布道 -- 2013 年 3 月