Nick -
There seem to me to be some good parts, and some not so good parts, to the
article.
Back when I used to teach "Science, Technology, and Human Values" I had my
students read this article from Science (about salt and diet, and science, and
public policy):
http://www.junkscience.com/news3/taubes.html
(If you have Science access, the article with pictures is here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/281/5379/898.short )
There is more to the story, but there are some good points in there . . .
About neutron coupling ratios . . . here's something to contemplate:
http://pdg.lbl.gov/2010/reviews/rpp2010-rev-history-plots.pdf
Clearly the saddest part is the declining life expectancy of the neutron
(down to 886 seconds, from over 1000 in 1960). Maybe someone should do a
correlation study with global warning . . . it would be a shame to see neutrons
go extinct :-(
WRT Paul Brodeur -- obviously his biggest mistake was not having Julia
Roberts (or Cher?) play him in a biopic :-)
tom
On Dec 11, 2010, at 11:46 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> All—
>
> Have others seen the article in the New Yorker on the “decline effect”, the
> alleged tendency for the effect sizes of well documented phenomena to decline
> with successive years of replication. I kept turning back to the front of
> the article to reassure myself that it was not one of the “Shouts and
> Murmurs” series. It is not. The passage that particularly caught my eye:
>
> Many scientific theories continue to be considered true even after failing
> numerous experimental tests. … [This] holds for any number of phenomena,
> from the disappearing benefits of second-generation antipsychotics to the
> weak coupling ration exhibited by decaying neutrons, which appears to have
> fallen by more than ten standard deviations between 1969 and 2001. [NY mag,
> 15 december 2010, p57]
>
>
> At least until recently, when the NY-er writes about science, they try very
> hard not to write anything stupid.
>
> What gives?
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> http://www.cusf.org
>
>
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