MULTIZ321
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ROYAL HOLIDAY CLUB RHC (POINTS)
Why We Can't Rule Out Bigfoot
By Carl Zimmer/ Nautilus/ Explore/ Pocket/ getpocket.com
"How the null hypothesis keeps the hairy hominid alive.
I recently got an email from an anthropologist commenting on a new report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The topic of that report was Bigfoot—or rather, a genetic analysis of hairs that people over the years have claimed belong to a giant, hairy, unidentified primate.
The international collaboration of scientists, led by University of Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, found no evidence that the DNA from the hairs belonged to a mysterious primate. Instead, for the most part, it belonged to decidedly unmysterious mammals such as porcupines, raccoons, and cows.
My correspondent summed up his opinion succinctly: “Well, duh.”
This new paper will not go down in history as one of the great scientific studies of all time. It doesn’t change the way we think about the natural world, or about ourselves. But it does illustrate the counterintuitive way that modern science works.
People often think that the job of scientists is to prove a hypothesis is true—the existence of electrons, for example, or the ability of a drug to cure cancer. But very often, scientists do the reverse: They set out to disprove a hypothesis.
It took many decades for scientists to develop this method, but one afternoon
in the early 1920s looms large in its history. At an agricultural research station in England, three scientists took a break for tea. A statistician named Ronald Fisher poured a cup and offered it to his colleague, Muriel Bristol.
Bristol declined it. She much preferred the taste of a cup into which the milk had been poured first.
“Nonsense,” Fisher reportedly said. “Surely it makes no difference.”
But Bristol was adamant. She maintained that she could tell the difference.
The third scientist in the conversation, William Roach, suggested that they run an experiment. (This may have actually been a moment of scientific flirtation: Roach and Bristol married in 1923.) But how to test Bristol’s claim? The simplest thing that Fisher and Roach could have done was pour a cup of tea out of her sight, hand it to her to sip, and then let her guess how it was prepared.
If Bristol got the answer right, however, that would not necessarily be proof that she had an eerie perception of tea. With a 50 percent chance of being right, she might easily answer correctly by chance alone....."
Richard
By Carl Zimmer/ Nautilus/ Explore/ Pocket/ getpocket.com
"How the null hypothesis keeps the hairy hominid alive.
I recently got an email from an anthropologist commenting on a new report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The topic of that report was Bigfoot—or rather, a genetic analysis of hairs that people over the years have claimed belong to a giant, hairy, unidentified primate.
The international collaboration of scientists, led by University of Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, found no evidence that the DNA from the hairs belonged to a mysterious primate. Instead, for the most part, it belonged to decidedly unmysterious mammals such as porcupines, raccoons, and cows.
My correspondent summed up his opinion succinctly: “Well, duh.”
This new paper will not go down in history as one of the great scientific studies of all time. It doesn’t change the way we think about the natural world, or about ourselves. But it does illustrate the counterintuitive way that modern science works.
People often think that the job of scientists is to prove a hypothesis is true—the existence of electrons, for example, or the ability of a drug to cure cancer. But very often, scientists do the reverse: They set out to disprove a hypothesis.
It took many decades for scientists to develop this method, but one afternoon
in the early 1920s looms large in its history. At an agricultural research station in England, three scientists took a break for tea. A statistician named Ronald Fisher poured a cup and offered it to his colleague, Muriel Bristol.
Bristol declined it. She much preferred the taste of a cup into which the milk had been poured first.
“Nonsense,” Fisher reportedly said. “Surely it makes no difference.”
But Bristol was adamant. She maintained that she could tell the difference.
The third scientist in the conversation, William Roach, suggested that they run an experiment. (This may have actually been a moment of scientific flirtation: Roach and Bristol married in 1923.) But how to test Bristol’s claim? The simplest thing that Fisher and Roach could have done was pour a cup of tea out of her sight, hand it to her to sip, and then let her guess how it was prepared.
If Bristol got the answer right, however, that would not necessarily be proof that she had an eerie perception of tea. With a 50 percent chance of being right, she might easily answer correctly by chance alone....."
Richard
