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Long live Pastafarianism and the Flying Spaghetti Monster! 
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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I've noticed the same with climate change. It galls me when someone says they don't "believe" in it. It's not a religion. The data either supports it or it doesn't. And, the data certainly supports it and our contribution to it. Somewhere around 2,000 scientific papers supporting this and around 3 that don't. Sounds pretty conclusive to me...
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danataylor wrote: It galls me when someone says they don't "believe" in it. It's not a religion. The data either supports it or it doesn't.
Nonsense. That completely ignores the definition of "belief". Far worse to claim that there is plenty of scientific proof that disproves it.
And that statement also implicitly ignores the very foundation of science itself. Science is not an absolute. It does not speak to the absolute nature of everything because it also is a belief system. If one accepts the assumptions of that belief system then one is of course at liberty to immerse oneself in the doctrine of the system. Which is how other belief systems work.
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You do understand that the mere presence of comments does not make it compulsory to read them nor essential to reply to them? 
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Mike Hankey wrote: because of the 5%
You really think the percentage is that low?
Well... maybe that's true for readers of Popular Science. Hmmm, is that title an oxymoron?
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I tend to agree; just go to the comments section of any contentious, or sometimes not, "news" article on the UK news sites and see some of the moronic drivel that gets posted. Norman Tebbit often comments about this on DT when people make vile personal attacks on him, in response to some article he has written, while ignoring the content of the article.
Veni, vidi, abiit domum
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I tend towards thinking that when it comes to the internet it is best to allow comments.
My perception is that comments tend to be self policing in that really ridiculous comments tend to get the ridicule they deserve.
There again when it comes to science the vast majority of people do not fully understand what the scientific method is and may confuse comments with peer review.
That said I would rather see the controversy through comments than have to read peer review articles as I am lazy...
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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GuyThiebaut wrote: ...see the controversy through comments than have to read peer review articles as I am lazy
I've never read a peer review article. Both reading and writing peer review comments can be taxing, but reading is usually easier because they have to point out the reason for making the comment. While writing usually involves reading the code and figuring out an unusual but valid data combination that will produce an error.
Figuring out there is a reason and how to clearly state it, is usually a pain. Sometimes, making a point feels like you are reasoning with a brick.
I asked someone to stop putting duplicate data in a fact table in a data warehouse DB. "It isn't a duplicate, the primary keys are different." (An identity field) He even accused me of being inexperienced in DB design.
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Thought:
"Nature" way above informative, not necessarily on-line and commentable.
"Popular Science", as lamentable a rag as "Scientific American".
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RedDk wrote:
"Popular Science", as lamentable a rag as "Scientific American".
That hasn't been my experience. Nor have I ever seen the latter denigrated either.
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Half of a thought anyway. Good for you little buddy. Good for you ...
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The idiots have won.
Peter Wasser
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
Frank Zappa
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If I read an article that's been composed by someone who knows what they're talking about, and has done research to arrive at their findings, why do I need to follow that up by reading comments from people who don't know what they're talking about, and whose research study only goes so far as Wikipedia (at best)?
As for moderation: it's not a forum, it's a magazine, and the point of a magazine is to report news and issues that are important within the scope of the magazine, not to run a playpen.
If I believe that the findings of an article are in error, or that some detail has been missed or could also be researched, or even just to congratulate the composer on a job well done, I can write the composer. Why would I want to inform the magazine?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: If I read an article that's been composed by someone who knows what they're talking about, and has done research to arrive at their findings, why do I need to follow that up
Not sure why you would need to read comments but the scientific process is one that is supposed to allow criticism.
Certainly one shouldn't assume that an article with "research" is in fact an absolute just because it exists.
Mark_Wallace wrote: As for moderation: it's not a forum, it's a magazine, and the point of a magazine is to report news and issues that are important within the scope of the magazine, not to run a playpen.
Except of course the sole point of that magazine is to bring science to the popular attention. Rather misses the point when it dismisses that very audience.
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It is a dilemma as you indicate, but I agree with you that their decision is (most likely) the right one.
"Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." Frank Zappa 1980
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Boy oh Boy, Glad to know that Talib is alive and well and now running Popular Science
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I think the name of the rag says it all, even though that name is an oxymoron
--- Popular Science ---
Not real science or actual science, just popular science
And they are THE ones to declare what is popular
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It's the layman's way to inform themselves of what science is up to. Considering that many people don't have access to the journals that researchers publish in, it's one way to make science somewhat more accessible to the general public. And it probably is a gateway to youth in school to help define where their interests lie if they have an inclination for science.
And to deride their selection is shortsighted. They are publishing what their market wants to consume, and they have a limited space in which to do it; of course they can't span all of science.
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I believe they are in the right. I work with someone who used to be a newspaper editor. We were talking about an article that someone we both know had posted on-line with some glaring inaccuracies. The ex-editor stated "You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts."
Other comments on this thread have pointed out that there are still feedback channels, but feedback is no longer "packaged" with the story. I think that this is appropriate. If the article is about opinion, then it sounds like comments will be allowed, but when it is reporting a study or an observed fact trolls may undermine the credibility of the story.
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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PhilLenoir wrote: "You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts."
I absolutely LOVE that. Perfectly sums up a lot of posts I've seen in a lot of threads.
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That sounds real good but is a bit hypocritical.
It is easy to believe that they present the "facts" when they present some thing that we don ' t know much about.
But in the few cases when I have known a lot about the subject they presented, the facts were "their own".
I'm not saying that they always present "their own facts" but I know some cases where they did.
So saying You can chose your own opinion but not your own facts is ....
OK, now I understand, it is not hypocritical -
What they are saying is that while you can not chose your facts, they can.
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PhilLenoir wrote: Other comments on this thread have pointed out that there are still feedback channels, but feedback is no longer "packaged" with the story. I think that this is appropriate. If the article is about opinion, then it sounds like comments will be allowed, but when it is reporting a study or an observed fact trolls may undermine the credibility of the story.
Sorry but no.
First in point of fact there are a number of real science journals which almost never run refutation articles. Even when a previously posted article was flat out wrong. So a scientist might be proven right with more articles but finding out that one was wrong is often a matter of carefully sifting though a large variety of material to figure it out.
Second it is often the case that articles published in a journal is controversial because it is seldom the case that journals are willing to print the 2000th time the same experiment was run, nor are scientists willing to attempt to publish something like that. Thus they do in fact publish something 'new' which, in some cases, is just wrong. How wrong it is depends on many factors of which critical commentary might or might not reveal. And it is that commentary which likely reveals whether it is a fact or not or subjective or not.
And none of that is surprising given that scientists and editors are human.
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It seems to me that what you mean by "comment" you take for what is, in common journal/scientific community parlance, known as "peer review". Short of botching up a meaning taking peer for pier and regurgitating Joyce somehow, I doubt that the same level of intelligence is at work.
And this sifting operation. Try replacing that reading with actual experimentation.
Have you ever attempted to read an "abstract"?
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RedDk wrote: It seems to me that what you mean by "comment" you take for what is, in common
journal/scientific community parlance, known as "peer review".
Not as far as I know in terms of journals. Peer review in journals is generally a process where articles are reviewed before publication as a first pass to verify the veracity of what the article states. It isn't of course a guaranteed process.
Once articles are published then it is often possible to post "letters to the editors" (in what ever form that might take) where someone takes exception to some part of the content of the article. Whether these actually get seen publicly depends on the publication and editors.
RedDk wrote: And this sifting operation. Try replacing that reading with actual
experimentation.
Not sure what you mean. The normal scientific journal process can be broken into several categories.
1. "That is astounding". Then others will try to repeat the experiment.
2. "The experiment is flawed". Then others do not try to repeat it because it is already known to be flawed.
3. "I don't care". No one does anything because the results are "expected" or at least uninteresting to most of the audience. These might be replicated some years, but not to many, afterwards by various students but only to a limited extent.
What most definitely doesn't happen is that every reported experiment is repeated multiple times. At best a flaw might be discovered in an original study because someone first accepts the first experiment as a given, tries to create a follow on experiment based on the first which fails, and ultimately discovers while looking at the failure that the original experiment cannot be replicated.
RedDk wrote: Have you ever attempted to read an "abstract"?
Not exactly sure what you mean by "attempted" but I have read many abstracts.
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