Personal Science Week - 240704 Professionals
Is professional science running out of useful ideas?
Personal scientists do experiments all the time, not for work, but because we think the principles of science can enrich everyday life. Sadly, professional scientists aren’t always the best role models.
Professional scientists don’t do experiments anymore
Alexey Guzey, studying physics at MIT, concludes that “The current generation of theoretical physicists never made a real physical discovery and neither did their mentors.”
Physics faculty at Institute for Advanced Study have literally no idea what “physics” is. They’re mathematicians.
Big-shot Harvard faculty have no inborn intuition for what physics is and will gravitate towards meaningless research, unless something special happens
In the old days, physicists were among the most experimentally-obsessed researchers anywhere, but now they mostly tap on their computers, he notes.
Incidentally, Noam Chomsky, widely respected as the greatest linguist of all time—and a formidable scientist—has never done an actual experiment ever, notes MIT linguist Edward Gibson.
The Scientific Method
Maybe that doesn’t matter? After all, the scientific method isn’t generating as many great discoveries as you might think: see the new report Redefining the scientific method: as the use of sophisticated scientific methods that extend our mind
This study reveals that 25% of all discoveries since 1900 did not apply the common scientific method (all three features)—with 6% of discoveries using no observation, 23% using no experimentation, and 17% not testing a hypothesis.
How can that be? Maybe we need some lessons from people who study the scientific method. Seeds of Science writer Dan Williams is one of them, and he insists that Hawking was wrong: Philosophy is not dead, and it has kept up with modern science. Referring to Hawking’s claim that “philosophy is dead” because they’re not keeping up with scientists, Williams replies with many examples of how philosophers add to different kinds of knowledge, often just as important.
They complain that “the philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds”, as Richard Feynman put it. But that’s like dismissing theoretical physics on the basis that it doesn’t help you cook a lasagna.
Dan’s post includes several recommended books about philosophy of science, including Michael Strevens The Knowledge Machine, which we reviewed in PS Week 221229.
But personal scientists are chugging along
Seeds of Science publishes many interesting pieces, including about how Long COVID and other chronic disease sufferers are doing the science ourselves, including
The result is The Nicotine Test. The Nicotine Test is a largely crowd-sourced resource and science project following up on Dr. Leitzke’s original paper: there’s a detailed FAQ that covers everything from basic questions like “why would you do this” to fairly detailed discussions about how nicotine might interact with other commonly-used supplements. There’s also a set of safety guidelines and protocols for patients to follow, as well as a slickly-produced visual guide for those not interested in (or perhaps too brain-fogged) to wade through pages of size-12 font.
and
There is also The Acid Test, where volunteers with ME/CFS track their own blood levels of lactic acid, based on the hypothesis the extreme fatigue and exercise intolerance are associated with an inability to engage in normal aerobic metabolism, and a group self-experimenting with red-light therapy.
Remission Biome Project project, as it is both the most ambitious and also the most radically outside-the-norm for business-as-usual biomedicine. The story here is a bit complex and detailed in a fascinating Guardian article, as well as in a piece on Phoenix Rising.
Join these studies and see for yourself!
Smart Rings
Another experimenter, at the wearable site Lord of the Smart Rings did a Smart Ring Comparison with rings from Oura, Ultrahuman, RingConn, Circular, and several others including cheap knockoffs. He wore all of them over a 7-day period and compared results while cycling, sleeping, and other activities.
Conclusion: Oura is best.
Here are the results for average heart rate for each ring. The ones at the bottom mostly agree with each other—a pretty good sign for their accuracy. The one in red is a chest strap, which is basically the gold standard, but note how similar it is to the Oura/RingConn/Circular.
(H/T Gary Wolf at QS Forum)
We wrote about other wearable comparison tests back in PS Week 220616 and how to use a smart ring to detect illness in PS Week 220707.
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Hi: Thanks for this. I always enjoy hearing about people who experiment. Last year somehow the the finish on the linoleum floor in my 100 year old cottage turned brown and removing it made matters worse. It took a year of experiments to figure out how to fix it. There was no information on this anywhere. I'll spare you the details.
One of these days I am going to figure out why afghan blankets (they have lots of holes) warm you faster than any passive process I have ever found. Try it one cold night. I have heard many theories over the years. My own is that it is diffractive reflection of the body's IR radiation from the loose fibers.