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Topic: "Scientists Say" blather (Read 112137 times)
"Scientists Say" blather
Are you, too, bothered by internet news reports that "scientists say" this or that. I find it utterly annoying. Who are these scientists? Are cosmologists qualified to say anything meaningful about high energy physics, biologists about the orbit of Enceladus?

What think you?

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #300 –
Scientists say this is a photo of a black hole.



Quote from: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1907/
The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87 [1], a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun [2].

Holes

Reply #301 –
Strictly speaking, by definition, no hole can be photographed; just the stuff around it can. :sherlock:

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #302 –
But — strictly speaking — a black hole is more of a dark star than a hole, isn't it? ;)

No holes

Reply #303 –
Yes. Strictly speaking, a black hole is black but is not a hole.  :rolleyes:

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #305 –
Maybe space fanatics and would be explorer will fall into the hole and sense be the routine.
"Quit you like men:be strong"

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #306 –
Scientists are struggling with MS Excel. Can you tell who is winning?

Quote from: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/313567-scientists-rename-genes-so-excel-wont-reformat-them-as-dates
If you enter “SEPT1” in Excel, it will immediately change the cell to read “1-Sept” because it thinks you’re trying to enter a date. To make matters worse, there is no way to disable this automatic reformatting. You have to change the cell formatting in each spreadsheet manually. Failing to do so can lead to corrupted data and wasted time. Not everyone is an expert in Excel, so mistakes were common. (Note: Hitting ‘ in front of a data field in Excel will tell the cell to format as text, but there is no way to set this as default).

The scientific body that controls gene naming has now stepped in to set things right. The HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) has thus far renamed 27 genes to ensure Excel doesn’t butcher their names. For example, the gene MARCH1 codes for a protein called Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1. HGNC has renamed that gene to MARCHF1 to avoid confusion. SEPT1 is now SEPTIN1. The HGNC will keep a record of the changes so there’s no confusion in the future when researchers read materials with the old names.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #307 –
The scientists. Fewer sources of error.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #308 –
My favorite new feature in Office 2000, XP or '03 or thereabout was that you could immediately disable an autocorrect when it happened. The disadvantage is that you still need to notice it happening first. I've never understood the point of that stuff; it's one of the reasons I prefer plain text editors.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #309 –
Quote from: ersi – on
Probably because scientists have found no better way to get into the news lately.
It must be. The justification given by the "citizen scientist"(??) for naming the snail that way it's an anecdote.
It seems they did it before with another snail and actor Di Caprio's name.
Poor snails.
A matter of attitude.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #310 –
Back in the days of 1997 I disabled each and every auto-anything setting right after installing that kind of software. It's annoying when I tell the software to do one thing and it does another.
 

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #312 –
Scientists can't stop finding aliens. This time it's a chemical.
Quote from: https://thedebrief.org/james-webb-space-telescope-spots-the-first-potential-signs-of-life-outside-our-solar-system/
According to a press release announcing the potentially history-making detection, the JWST spotted the telltale chemical ‘fingerprints’ of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), in the exoplanet’s atmosphere, a detection that may be “the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.”

“Given everything we know about this planet, a Hycean world (a habitable ocean-covered world underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere) with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have,” said project leader and the lead author of the study outlining the discovery, Professor Nikku Madhusudhan from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy.