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Comment by pyinstallwoes | Hacker News Reader

Excuse me? Take a scientific report with measurements with a grain of salt? Why must an opinion cloud a scientific observation of collected measurements? Put the salt away.

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Science is always taken with salt!

More seriously - science produces contingent knowledge. Even the results of the LHC are to be taken with some salt because although the greatest and most honest minds of our generation work on them they likely won't ever be independently replicated.

All scientific knowledge has some doubt attached to it - after all, it's not maths!

Like this scientific report?

Retraction Note: A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-023-04...

It also had "collected measurements". There are tonnes of nonsense scientific articles published (not saying this one is, but of this author that has made dubious and sensational claims). And unless there is scientific consensus, his wider claims should be treated with scepticism.

I would hope all science is always taken with a grain of salt, that’s the hallmark of science.

Specifically, I think, we can take the sentence "Another possibility is that this unfamiliar abundance pattern may reflect an extraterrestrial technological origin" with a good serving of salt, even if the methodology is otherwise sound.

I mean the measurements themselves may be fine, but the conclusions will require scrutiny.

Yep. Imho this doesn't pass Occam's razor.

Finding: "Objects with chemical composition that's unknown on Earth".

Conclusion: "Likely originated from outside our solar system".

Simpler explanations:

"Formed on Earth through previously unknown process".

"Formed elsewhere inside our solar system".

How many extraterrestrial (but inside solar system) substances do we really know? How much extraterrestrial substances have been sampled, from how many locations on how many objects, exactly? And even on Earth, do we know all processes through which materials are formed?

Yes, extrasolar origin is one possibility. The most likely one? Hmm..

The extrasolar origin hypothesis is based on the reentry velocity, which is known and would have completely vaporized any other known type of meteor. That's what made this one special, the fact that an object with such velocity could survive reentry and impact the surface, and that's why the expedition to find remains (the spherules) was launched.

The guy believes he has been spoken to by aliens in his dreams. Unfortunately this means pretty much anything he authors can be safely disregarded as the ramblings of someone in need of psychiatric care.

These nodules are the result of terrestrial geology.

>The guy believes he has been spoken to by aliens in his dreams.

Source?

> The guy believes he has been spoken to by aliens in his dreams.

What defines a good scientist is an open-minded attitude and going beyond the accepted status-quo. Who knows, maybe some aliens really contacted him in his dreams? But a scientific study has its rules anyway, and if methodology is correct, the author can believe in a spaghetti monster.

And a little common sense to understand that long distance telepathy is not an accepted scientific fact, neither explains why his brain was not fried by a source of energy powerful enough to make a long interplanetary distance call.

So if he really was spoken in his dreams, a real scientist should bet for the two non-crazy hypothesis available. 1) Just dreaming with aliens does not mean that aliens exist, 2) and being tricked by a colleague hiding in their room while he was sleeping. Because we, apes, never miss the opportunity to have a good laugh.

> Let us keep our minds open by all means, as long as that means keeping our sense of perspective and seeking an understanding of the forces which mould the world. But don’t keep your minds so open that your brains fall out! There are still things in this world which are true and things which are false; acts which are right and acts which are wrong, even if there are statesmen who hide their designs under the cloak of high-sounding phrases.

-- Prof. Walter Kotschnig, 1940

Anyone can lie, and someone who believes extraordinary things may well be more likely to do so, even to themselves. So, based on the author's reputation, it could well make sense to apply more or less scrutiny to a paper.

Because scientific publications regularily get falsified. And have proofably been used to manipulate public perception of events.

So if Michael Yeadon were to push out a paper filled with observations on the correlation between vaccines and autism, you wouldn't instantly disregard it? Some people don't deserve the time of day.

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