"Dan Bloomquist" <EXTRApublic21@lakeweb.com> wrote in message
news:4171EC17.2090008@lakeweb.com...

I can't speak for Thomas, but the present condition of science is to
model. And any new model is based on an impartiality to previous
conditions. Consider the radical thinking of Einstein when he broke from
Newtonian mechanics. To do good science requires that you don't base
your work on what may be dogma. In other words, it does no good to
assume the completeness of science. Until it is complete, and IMHO it
never will be, we can not know how complete it is.

I would never accuse science of being complete.  I just have to call
bullshit when some piece of kook-stain with only a dull child's grasp of the
scientific method (that would be you Thomas) takes a twisted thought about
how little science knows, turns it into electrons and beams them across the
world to pop up as letters on computer monitors in all manner of places.
It's patently silly.  And by pointing out the silliness of it I am in no way
claiming that I, or anyone else, knows it all - or even most of it.  If
Thomas wants to point out how little science knows he shouldn't use this
form of technology to make the claim.  It's disingenuous.

As for modeling, there's too much junk science being done with impotent
little one or two box models that are then being used to guide policy
decisions.  As the saying goes, all models are wrong; some models are
useful.  Build a model and then use it to test predictions to see if your
understanding of whatever is getting better - all the while hoping that your
assumptions don't get in the way and that your ability to collect data isn't
left behind by the sophistication of the equation.

Here's an example.  Here in Florida we have a seriously screwed up lake
called Okeechobee.  Nothing is as important in this area as the variable
hydroperiod in the littoral zone when it comes to ecosystem function and
biological diversity.  They pretty much shot that all to hell by putting a
dike all the way around the lake and then holding the water levels so high
that there essentially was no littoral zone.  But hey, the sugar barons were
happy so what the hell, right?

There's an endangered species issue - the snail kite.  So the powers that
manage got someone to model the response of the snail kite to high water
tables.  Someone very good at math without a fucking clue as to how
ecosystems work fancied himself an ecologist and built a model that looked
at one parameter - water level.  They found that increased water levels made
more apple snails.  As you might imagine the snail kite eats snails.  More
snails is therefore good for the kites.  A policy decision was then made
based on that.  (I am simplifying for the sake of not typing a dissertation,
but this is the gist of it)

Trouble is, when you hold the water level high you cause a massive shift in
the species composition of the shallow zones, and the changed vegetation
becomes so dense that the snails do really well but the kites can't find
them.  I wouldn't expect a math major to know that, but I'd damn-sure expect
students in a survey level ecology class to.

What's the take-home message?  Self-professed
math/physics/business/statistical "experts" should keep their fucking noses
out of a subject they don't understand (unless they become students of that
subject, then more power to 'em).  That keeps the real biologists from
having to go in and clean the mess up behind them.  "Soft science" indeed.
And yes I do sorta have this Elifritz idiot in mind.  Take a look at his
website - I tremble at the thought of some science student using his
discharge as a "source" on a report and writing about how "optical photons"
supply all the energy used by life on earth, etc.