How gophers brought Mount St. Helens back to life in one day
phys.org
phys.org
And, of course, ground-working animals such as gophers should be valued for their role in helping to maintain the fecudity of the environment, whether they are ultra-polite or not ;-)
Perhaps one day, we will be able to do so.
In more extreme eruptions that involve molten lava or other more violent impacts, you will certainly agree that protection cannot be offered.
If you remove all that you end up with MUCH more energy intensive agriculture and an economic incentive to cheap out.
In this case, I believe theory is an acceptable word to use. The MW dictionary, for the definition of 'theory', says
2a. "a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action"
3a. "a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation"
Seems to me that the usage in the article fits either of these definitions well enough.
"Theory" should refer only to the beatific vision or its analogical precursors in temporal existence achieved through mystical union with the Uncreated Light!
The point above, and I agree, is that the word 'hypothesis' is taught every year in public schools, from elementary school through highschool. Even dropouts should know it, and from what I've seen do know it. At a certain point we've got to stop pandering to morons. Or worse, pandering to what we assume is the level of morons but is actually substantially lower. I don't think the general public is perplexed by that word; anybody who thinks they are is probably underestimating the public. Even if the average Joe on the street isn't disciplined about using the word hypothesis vs theory, they still understand what the word means when they read it.
If you're trying to communicate to the general public something like "Gophers are actually good sometimes", you probably want that message to go beyond the well-educated.
The difference between a hypothesis and a theory is that a hypothesis has no evidence to support it while a theory has at least some supporting evidence.
An important part of science is that, given enough evidence, any theory can be overturned in favor of a better theory. Scientific theoretical models are just "This currently fits demonstrated evidence of reality the best".
Some theories have mountains of evidence in support (evolution, gravity, the standard model, for example) that will necessarily need a huge amount of evidence to overturn. It is far more likely these theories will just be refined with further evidence rather than broken by new evidence.
Part of the scientific model is the built-in assumption that any model or theory is at least a little incorrect. They are fuzzy generalities that are constantly being refined to hopefully more closely match reality.
Here's one dictionary's definition of theory: "a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained."
According to the dictionary you have it exactly backwards. A hypothesis requires some supporting evidence. A theory requires none. Though the dictionary won't reflect scientific definitions. I like these definitions, though we have to add verbiage about falsifiability to make them scientific.
One can still refer to Newton's theory of gravity as a theory, and indeed one does even though it has been falsified. Well, I suppose one could say the same thing about "the flat earth hypothesis" -- there is no evidence supporting it, and one might still refer to it as a hypothesis because there might once have been evidence for it when people did not recognize the evidence for the Earth being round.
So what is the difference between those words? Both are "suppositions". Both can be falsified. A theory must be falsifiable in order to be a scientific theory (the dictionary didn't say this, but this is a pillar of modern science). A theory is a "system of ideas", something much larger than a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a starting point for a theory.
If I search for those phrases I can find them floating around in random unrelated places. However, if I look up the definition of the words, really common dictionaries have definitions that match what I just said.
Here's MW for example:
hypothesis: an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument
theory: a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena
It even has this handy bit of text after the definition
> A hypothesis is an assumption, an idea that is proposed for the sake of argument so that it can be tested to see if it might be true.
> In the scientific method, the hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done, apart from a basic background review. You ask a question, read up on what has been studied before, and then form a hypothesis.
> A hypothesis is usually tentative; it's an assumption or suggestion made strictly for the objective of being tested.
> A theory, in contrast, is a principle that has been formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data. It is used in the names of a number of principles accepted in the scientific community, such as the Big Bang Theory. Because of the rigors of experimentation and control, it is understood to be more likely to be true than a hypothesis is.
Oxford Languages. First one offered by Google. Oxford's definitions are close enough to Merriam Webster's.
Consider gravity. A hypothesis 400 years ago might have been that massive bodies exert a pull on each other, but that would not have been a theory. To get to "theory status" you'd have to add enough content that one could start making falsifiable predictions. That would require working out that gravity is an inverse square law, and that's exactly what Newton did.
There were gravity hypostheses before Newton, but to be a theory required adding enough mathematics to make those falsifiable predictions.
So I'd say that both, hypotheses and theories are suppositions, but hypotheses are weakly supported by evidence and lack predictive power, while theories have predictive power but must be falsifiable. Both hypotheses and theories can be falsified, and once falsified we refer to them as such (incorrect, failed, falsified). In mathematics a theory doesn't even need to have "evidence" for it -- it's just a system of axioms and principles, though it could prove to be inconsistent.
I would also say that even in scientific communities we're a bit loose with these things. Is the Big Bang a hypothesis or a theory? I would think we'd need quite a bit in the form of equations and thinking behind them that yield falsifiable predictions, but I'm not sure that those exist in the level of detail that we'd normally require. The less amenable a scientific field is to experimentation, the more we can expect this sort of looseness from. In Big Bang theory we mostly make predictions that can't be subject to experiments, only to measurements of reality (e.g., the uniformity of the CMB, the distribution of visible matter, etc.).
My point is not to discard the term "science" as loosely referring to much of the above, of course, but to point out that semantic ambiguity is inherent in language and should never occlude good-faith interpretation; certainly not when the semantics are so unambiguously communicated as they are here. The distinction between "theory" and "hypothesis" and indeed "supposition" is irrelevant in the context presented in the article.
It's not a sign of a lack of sophistication or knowledge to use simpler language if the point you're making is still clear.
I don't think we agree here. The distinction between a theory and a hypothesis is fairly binary. Theories have supporting evidence; hypothesis either have no evidence or so little evidence that they need further investigation.
But I would agree that the general understanding of the words is such that no useful distinction is made by using one or the other. I bristle a little at it, though, because the word "theory" is often used by scientific critics because they conflate "theory" with "guess". In fact, for general communication I would rather an article like above use "guess" instead of "theorized" as it's both simpler language and it doesn't trigger this sort of conversation.
We prove theorems, which until proved are referred to as conjectures. But even in mathematics we don't prove theories. E.g., group theory. This is because a) the definition of mathematics theory is not quite the same as scientific theory since mathematics theories are axiomatic, and b) because it's entirely possible that some mathematics theory (e.g., group theory) could eventually be shown to be inconsistent (which is essentially how you disprove a theory in mathematics).
If we abondon meaning, we're abandoning reason.
It's worth the fight.
Don't shirk your duty to educate others.
[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiomes/articles/10...
I bet to this day no other gophers believe the story those gophers tell at the pub. :)
In oceans, whales also mix different layers of sea water with their vertical movements.
So the sea water layers are probably less mixed than natural. No idea what effects that might have.
> In 1982, an individual pocket gopher (Thomomys talpoides [Richardson]) from a nearby clearcut was placed in a 1m2 enclosure around a single L. lepidus individual for 24 hours
If this is true though, I also find it weird that the gophers dug deeper than the leftover plants / ecosystem buried beneath the surface could do themselves; seeds want to go up, after all, breaking up the soil as they emerge. Of course, the ash may have been too dense, idk.
i do like it when they take slight liberties with their captions. fantastic
So no, I don't think the title was designed in such a way.
As for gophers causing it to erupt, that type of connotation implies a very different type of publication.