Is cherry picking evidence a hindrance to scientific progress?

[wolram]

Scientists are so confident that ligo will detect gravity waves, and are all ready using non detection as a tool.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=24501

 

[atyy]

Scientists are so confident that ligo will detect gravity waves, and are all ready using non detection as a tool.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=24501

That's nice. Non-detection seems to me harder than detection - eg. did I just forget to turn the switch on? In this case, the non-detection seems consistent with known physics. How many or what sort of non-detections are needed to suggest new physics?

 

[Nereid]

Disney's 14 items (part I)

PARTICULAR DIFFICULTIES FOR COSMOLOGY AS A SCIENCE

4. Need to work with what we can currently detect. [But . . . ]
5. Local background very bright.
6. Distances very hard to determine (standard candles).
7. Observational Selection insidious.
8. Distant galaxies hard to measure and interpret unambiguously.
9. Luminosity Functions unreliable.

10. Geometry, astrophysics and evolution often entangled.

3. Need to extrapolate physics over huge distances.
12. Human time-frame so short compared to cosmic.

2. Universe opaque for 56/60 decades since Planck era.
11. Physics of early Universe unknown (and unknowable?)

1. Only one Universe.

14. The singularity.
13. Origin of inertia.

I've re-ordered them somewhat.

In this post I'll comment on them from the POV of whether cosmology is unusual in having difficulties like these.

The first six are easy ... I think it would be quite difficult to find a branch of modern science that doesn't have something like these to contend with. Not the specific ones of course, though much of astrophysics has these specifics, but things like these are found in every branch of science that studies the real world, from linguistics to economics to ecology to climate science to geology to ...

The next (10.) is a transition item, it has characteristics of the first six and the next two.

These two (3. and 12.) are common to all 'deep time' sciences, such as geology and paleontology, with a key part of physics supplying the equivalence of 'huge distances' and 'deep time'.

The next two (2. and 11.) are just plain weird, when taken in conjunction with each other (and 3.). For example, 2 is only a 'difficulty' if you accept that 3 and 11 are not! Be that as it may, almost by definition, only two other branches of science share this difficulty - particle physics and astrophysics (again, equating time with distance in the usual way).

The penultimate one (1.) is, of course, a common difficulty for many branches of science, if you take "Universe" to mean "one and only one of". For example, the world economy, the English language, the psychology of Homo sapiens (the species), the Cambrian, ...

And the last two, well, I pass. I have no idea what Disney means by these, as 'particular difficulties'. Do you, dear reader?

Summary: except for the last two (maybe), it would seem that cosmology-as-a-science is not particularly unusual in the sense of having to address rather knotty 'particular difficulties'.

 

[wolram]

Number 6 on your list, standard candles.

I really do not know if any thing other than parallax measure is reliable, we have parallax measure for a small part of our galaxy.
I guess one can all ways argue that some thing effects light travel, but i know very little on the subject.

 

[turbo]

And the last two, well, I pass. I have no idea what Disney means by these, as 'particular difficulties'. Do you, dear reader?

The origin of inertia is a huge problem that has not been addressed by GR. Einstein felt that it arose from matter's interaction with the local "ether" in which it embedded, as well as gravitational effects. He rejected "spooky action at a distance" in his Leiden address in 1920, and expressed that more forcefully in his 1924 essay "On the Ether". Inertia was one of Fenman's favorite unexplained things, as well.

 

[Nereid]

The origin of inertia is a huge problem that has not been addressed by GR. Einstein felt that it arose from matter's interaction with the local "ether" in which it embedded, as well as gravitational effects. He rejected "spooky action at a distance" in his Leiden address in 1920, and expressed that more forcefully in his 1924 essay "On the Ether". Inertia was one of Fenman's favorite unexplained things, as well.

OK, thanks.

Accepting this, for now, at face value, why does it make for a "PARTICULAR DIFFICULT[Y] FOR COSMOLOGY AS A SCIENCE"?

I mean, none of the weird stuff to do with quantum mechanics is on his list (to take just one example), despite it surely being just as huge a problem/an unexplained thing ...

 

[Nereid]

Number 6 on your list, standard candles.

I really do not know if any thing other than parallax measure is reliable, we have parallax measure for a small part of our galaxy.
I guess one can all ways argue that some thing effects light travel, but i know very little on the subject.

Quite.

But what's that got to do with being a "PARTICULAR DIFFICULT[Y] FOR COSMOLOGY AS A SCIENCE"?

Sure, it's a difficulty, and it affects cosmology (and most of astrophysics, and no doubt other sciences too), but these sorts of difficulties are not unusual in many (most?) sciences ...

 

[wolram]

Quite.

But what's that got to do with being a "PARTICULAR DIFFICULT[Y] FOR COSMOLOGY AS A SCIENCE"?

Sure, it's a difficulty, and it affects cosmology (and most of astrophysics, and no doubt other sciences too), but these sorts of difficulties are not unusual in many (most?) sciences ...

I really do not know Nereid, When is science without a non elastic measuring stick useful?
Parallax is non elastic if there is a standard metric that every one agrees on, what can we deduce beyond that?
Edit for clarity ,with an elastic ruler.

 

[mysearch]

The intention is not to stoke up a debate that appears to have run its course, but I happened to come across 2 quotes, when reading about an entirely different topic, which I felt might be worth adding as a footnote to this thread.

The idea is to try and give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another. Richard Feynman

In this spirit of full disclosure, maybe you might like to look at a few basic questions in the following thread: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=282764

Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things can easily attain an authority over us such that we forget their worldly origin and take them as immutably truths. They are then rubber-stamped as a "sine-qua-non of thinking" and an "a priori given". Such errors often make the road of scientific progress impassable for a long time. Albert Einstein

As such, questioning accepted wisdom should not always be seen as sceptical, especially within any declared learning process.