Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication
Qs people asked me on science and my replies to them - part 159
1. Lack of skills to understand things put before you the correct way.
2. Conditioned minds. Majority of people find it difficult to come out of culturally, traditionally, ideologically, religiously and politically conditioned mindsets. Some people who try to control others will not allow their followers to go out of their control by manipulating their minds. A fear stricken mind can never go out of its comfort zone.
3. Cognitive dissonance is difficult to deal with. Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort because this can lead to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviours to reduce the discomfort and restore balance. It will be easy to discord a new one instead of the one that is already well established in ones mind.
4. Lack of critical thinking skills. Only Critical Thinking can make you overcome cognitive dissonance. If you don't have this skill, you refuse to think neutrally.
5. People find sticking with their group, family, and friends is more comfortable and safe than going against the tide.
6. Just putting facts across need not make people take them in the way they should be taken. Science communication researchers say that most people will interpret these facts not with their heads, but with their guts – their emotions, prior opinions and biases. Human perceptions and expectations are huge determinants in basic research as well as its understanding, we tend to see what we expect. We see things as we are, not as they are! Research has shown that only one- tenth to one-fourth of people can really do unbiased reasoning and accept a fact based on evidence. Rest of the people will go with emotions and biases! So they resort to motivated reasoning.
7. The researchers also say that various characteristics of the information source – from credibility, to gender, to political affiliation, to occupation, to familiarity – affect how the reader receives, processes and interprets the information. Most people trust celebrities and spiritual leaders (who actually deal with pseudo-science) while dealing with science than real scientists!
8. Most people don't know the difference between evidence and opinions. They treat your evidence as your opinion!
So just because you have shown evidence based facts doesn't make people accept them.
We, the people of scientific community, are fighting all these things to make general public understand scientific facts and come out of their ancient mind sets.
Q: Which idea always appears new to you?
Each moment brings in something new, some thing knowledgeable, something thrilling, making the world around me super special!
Q: Why is the national science day observed in India and in whose name?
Why Feb 28th? To commemorate the discovery of the Raman Effect in India by the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Sir CV Raman on the same day in the year 1928.
On a boat trip back from England in 1921, Indian physicist C.V. Raman, considering the question of why the sea is blue, got started on a line of research that would lead to the discovery in February 1928 of a new scattering effect, now known as the Raman effect, which is very important.
To commemorate and honour this event, 28th of February was designated as a National Science Day in India as requested by the National Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC) in the year 1986. From then on, the national science day ‘s celebrated all across India as a great event in the field of science.
Q: How do I learn all the scientific names?
But you can learn as many as you can by reading genuine scientific research papers. Or going through articles that deal with science.
Q: You do tremendous work, Dr. Krishna. I really congratulate you but at the same time worried too. Do you get attacked? Do people try to stop you?
Krishna: Thank you very much for your concern.
Do I get attacked?
Yes, by professional astrologers, homeopathic practitioners, pseudo-science peddlers, people who try to hoodwink people on black magic, and anti-science crusaders do attack me.
Do people try to stop me?
Yes. All the time. But they don't know that I am unstoppable! :)
But I do understand their fears and why they do this.
If you remove ignorance, people learn things and refuse to get manipulated.
That is bad news for them because their own survival depends on people's ignorance.
But causing harm to others to feed themselves is bad. Do they try to understand that?
No? Why?
Q: What's your opinion on the discovery of invisible footprints by scientists?
Whatever was there was found. There is evidence. Scientists explained things in detail . It becomes a scientific fact. What opinion can you have on that?
If I understood your Q right, I think you ‘re looking for some sort of supernatural or paranormal or magical explanation for it. Sorry, this discovery doesn’t provide any evidence for such things.
I know some journalists and people who want to create ‘eye-ball catching sensational news’ use the words ‘ghost tracks’, ‘invisible foot prints’ and things like that. But it doesn’t mean anything in reality. If you got excited by them, I am sorry to say you were fooled by them.
They are just fossil foot prints of animals including humans. Nothing more and nothing less. Period.
This is just another scientific research paper for us: 3-D radar imaging unlocks the untapped behavioral and biomechanical...
https://weather.com/en-IN/india/science/news/2019-11-13-scientists-...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-52996-8
Journalists, have you seen how your sensational headlines are misleading people?
Q: Do you think the feeling of nationalism is good for a scientist or not?
Any person who has seen how the scientific rules are followed universally in a given set of conditions, and understood its beauty can never think in local terms and can never come under the influence of artificially created races, castes, groups, communities or citizenships. He sees all the living beings as his own images - following universal rules of life and as citizens of this universe.
Nationalism doesn’t exist in the dictionary of science.
If a scientist still acts in a biased manner despite his scientific background, I feel the person didn’t understand science properly and that he couldn’t overcome his cultural and, nationalistic conditioning of mind with his scientific temper!
So the brief answer to your Q is a big NO!
Q: What is hapten in Microbiology?
Krishna: Hapten is a small molecule which, when combined with a larger carrier such as a protein, can elicit the production of antibodies which bind specifically to it (in the free or combined state).
Detailed explanation: Haptens are relatively small molecules that elicit an immune response on on their own but only when attached to a large carrier such as a protein; the carrier may be one that also does not elicit an immune response by itself (in general, only large molecules, infectious agents, or insoluble foreign matter can elicit an immune response in the body). Once the body has generated antibodies to a hapten-carrier adduct, the small-molecule hapten may also be able to bind to the antibody, but it will usually not initiate an immune response; usually only the hapten-carrier adduct can do this. Sometimes the small-molecule hapten can even block immune response to the hapten-carrier adduct by preventing the adduct from binding to the antibody, a process called hapten inhibition.
The mechanisms of absence of immune response may vary and involve complex immunological mechanisms, but can include absent or insufficient co-stimulatory signals from antigen-presenting cells.
Haptens have been used to study allergic contact dermatitis (ACD) and the mechanisms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) to induce autoimmune-like responses.
Q: According to science why are people right or left handed?
Q: Are there any scientific reasons for a person to be right-handed or left handed?
Krishna: Researchers who study human hand preference think that the side of the preferred hand (right versus left) is produced by biological and, most likely, genetic causes. The two most widely published genetic theories of human hand preference argue that evolutionary natural selection produced a majority of individuals with speech and language control in the left hemisphere of the brain. Because the left hemisphere also controls the movements of the right hand--and notably the movements needed to produce written language--millennia of evolutionary development resulted in a population of humans that is biased genetically toward individuals with left hemisphere speech/language and right-hand preference. Approximately 85 percent of people are right-handed. These theories also try to explain the persistent and continuing presence of a left-handed minority (about 15 percent of humans).
One common theory as to how handedness affects the hemispheres is the brain hemisphere division of labour. Since speaking and handiwork require fine motor skills, its presumption is that it would be more efficient to have one brain hemisphere do both, rather than having it divided up. Since in most people, the left side of the brain controls speaking, right-handedness predominates. This theory also predicts that left-handed people have a reversed brain division of labour.
Verbal processing in right-handed individuals takes place mostly in the left hemisphere, whereas visuospatial processing is mostly done in the opposite hemisphere. Left-handed individuals have a heterogeneous brain organization in which their brain hemispheres are either organized in the same way as right-handers (but with the hemispheres reversed) or even such that both hemispheres are used for verbal processing. When the average is taken across all types of left-handedness, it shows that left-handers are less lateralized.
Genetic factors: Handedness displays a complex inheritance pattern. For example, if both parents of a child are left-handed, there is a 26% chance of that child being left-handed. A large study of twins from 25,732 families by Medland et al. (2006) (1) has indicated that the heritability of handedness is roughly 24%.
However, the growing weight of evidence from linkage and genome-wide association studies suggests that genetic variance in handedness cannot be explained by a single genetic locus. From these studies McManus et al. (2) now conclude that handedness is polygenic and estimate that at least 40 loci contribute to determining this trait.
Epigenetic fa ctors: Identical twin studies indicate that genetic factors explain 25% of the variance in handedness, while environmental factors explain the remaining 75%. (3)
Hormonal effects: Some studies have indicated that individuals who have had in-utero exposure to diethylstilbestrol (a synthetic estrogen based medication used between 1940 and 1971) were more likely to be left-handed over the clinical control group. Diethylstilbestrol animal studies "suggest that estrogen affects the developing brain, including the part that governs sexual behavior and right and left dominance"Prenatal vestibular symmetry:After reviewing a large number of studies, researchers found evidence that the position of the fetus in the final trimester and a baby's subsequent birth position can affect handedness. About two-thirds of fetuses present with their left occiput (back of the head) at birth. This partly explains why prematurity results in a decrease in right-handedness. They argue that asymmetric prenatal positioning creates asymmetric stimulation of the vestibular system, which is involved in the development of handedness. In fact, every major disorder in which patients show reduced right-handedness is associated with either vestibular abnormalities or delay, and asymmetry of the vestibular cortex is strongly correlated with the direction of handedness (4,5).
There are also links to ultra sound (US) exposure of a pregnant woman to her children becoming left-handed but there is no solid evidence to correctly link left handedness with US.
Q: Is there any scientific way to decrease the temperature level by 5 to 6 degrees in Delhi in the summer? Krishna: Listen to the climate scientists and ask your government to do what the scientists recommend to decrease the global temperature.
But you cannot go beyond a certain range even if you follow the scientists’ guidelines. .
Q: If you can instantly become an expert in something, what would it be and why?
I want to become an expert in science, and I already started working towards it.
Why? Nothing can be compared to it. Science is responsible for the beginning and end of our universe. It is heroic. It fuels the economy, it feeds the world, it fights disease and … even death. It is thrilling, it makes every moment of my life very interesting.
Without knowledge of science, you cannot become a whole human being. You exist, but your life isn’t worth living at all! As an intelligent human being, I cannot afford to become another stone on a mountain, gathering dust and weathering day in and day out without any real purpose.
And I want to help the world with my scientific knowledge and alleviate its suffering to the extent possible.
Q (Based on the above one): Without knowledge of science, you cannot become a whole human being?”…this statement of yours is very vague, I think so. Just like science, a human being needs to understand so many other disciplines to become a complete human being.
Krishna: OK. I can understand. Without a whole picture of this universe and its working in the human mind, such vagueness is natural.
Q: Is it true that if I keep on repeating in my mind that I'll be successful, it comes true? What is the scientific reason behind it?
No, it doesn’t!
You will have to put in your efforts in the right way to succeed. Without doing anything - do excellent work to be more precise - how can you succeed in the first place?
What's the scientific reason behind it?
There is no scientific reason behind it. It is all pseudo-science, if anybody uses the word ‘science’ to authenticate their beliefs.
This pseudo-scientific theory too is owned by a thrash can!
Q: What are the signs that one has a scientific brain and thinking?
Krishna: There some specific traits with which you can recognize a scientific mind.
A scientific mind breathes, eats, sleeps, drinks, reads, writes, thinks and lives science all the time.
And … there are more qualifications. Read here what they are : The specific traits of a scientific mind
Q: Does being educated come with a price as ignorance is bliss?
People who still stick to ancient thoughts and practises despite tremendous progress in scientific understanding of the world around us are actually ruining our societies.
Examples I read in today’s papers:
A father who took his two children who fell sick to a fake doctor (quack) and took ‘treatment’ from him until their health deteriorated till a point of no return to realize his mistake. The children paid with their lives for their father’s foolishness.
A politician who got cheated by a fake baba.
People who pray to trees to get healed:
Magical Mahua: Hundreds of patients on oxygen support visit ‘healin...
Don’t tell me these people are illiterate and ignorant. Even literate and highly qualified people do this because they are illiterate scientifically. I have seen them with my own eyes and tried several times to drill some sense into their minds.
Literate people living in urban areas are too scientifically illite...
How scientific illiteracy can harm you...
Q: Is there any scientific evidence of curing diseases by acupressure?
Krishna : There are no immortal human beings!
Anyway, let me answer your Q.
A child learns from its environment. From parents, other elders in the family (like grand parents, uncles, aunts), teachers, other children, culture, society it lives in, TV, movies.
If you can first make this environment science-friendly, automatically the child becomes science-friendly too. Now can you expect science based TV stories? Or movies (not science fiction)? Can you imagine parents or grand parents thinking scientifically on our societies? Can you expect your culture to be science-based (not pseudo-science based like some people boast by linking science with their customs, traditions, culture and religions)?
One of my professors told me she brought up her only daughter very carefully using only science as a medium to think and work. But after getting married, her daughter faced severe problems in her husband’s home because of this. The poor girl was intimidated, warned, teased, and bullied until she changed to their unscientific ways. She became a nervous wreck in the end.
Now tell me how can any child survive in an unscientific world?
Either you have to be like me - a rebel who doesn’t give a damn what the world says or thinks about her - or obedient and dance to society’s tunes to have peace of mind.
If you want your child to be scientific thinking bring her or him up in a totally scientific world and also teach - this is very important- how to face the consequences and survive boldly whenever s/he goes out of it.
Well, it is very easy but time consuming and laborious. Give every answer to child based on science, If the child does not understand then explain more. By doing that the child will develop a mind that does think scientifically only. But only if you are ready to answer too many questions then only do this.
I know there are people ( like artists, lawyers, spiritual leaders) who argue with scientists about science! And try to teach science to scientists. Where did they get this dare? From internet of course! We call these people ‘"Internet Scientists"!
Lab scientists versus internet scientists
But think about this: Can a few hours googling be equivalent to a Ph.D. of a specialist? Never!
Searching the Internet for information may make people feel smarter (The Dunning-Kruger Effect possessed individuals) than they actually are, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. It seems internet searches create false sense of personal knowledge. With the Internet, the lines become blurry between what you actually know and what you think you know.
But still we face these people day in and day out. And get lectured all about science! Uff!
Don’t become one of these internet scientists to talk about scientists and science. We have enough of them already who waste our time like hell.
Q: Why do pseudoscience peddlers like ...... (the names are deleted) gain so many followers?
These pseudo-science peddlers know how to manipulate people’s emotions using their ignorance. Their EQs ( emotional quotients) are very high.
That is why people think all that they say is real science.
Science, the study with which we try to understand the universe, is still in an infant stage when compared to the age of this universe. You can’t expect a child to answer all the questions that a human mind poses. It has to grow a lot to do that. Meanwhile this growing phase of science is being used to manipulate human minds and make them think untested, unprovable and imaginative things are real. What is worse is to make people attack science so that they can continue with their games.
That is how they gain name, fame, money and followers.
Q: What are some grandma myths in science?
A habitable zone planet has the potential to support life!
The habitable zone is the range of distances from a star where a planet’s temperature allows liquid water oceans, critical for life on Earth. The earliest definition of the zone was based on simple thermal equilibrium, but current calculations of the habitable zone include many other factors, including the greenhouse effect of a planet’s atmosphere. Its magnetic field . Its plate tectonics . Its life itself ! And several other conditions .This makes the boundaries of a habitable zone "fuzzy." Therefore, scientists are now realizing that 'The Goldilocks Zone' that has long been defined as the band of space around a star that is not too warm, not too cold, rocky and with the right conditions ( rocky surface) for maintaining surface water and a breathable atmosphere ( right atmospheric mix), which to date scientists have only been able to calibrate using observations from our own solar system, may be too limiting. If a planet is too gaseous, atmospheric pressures and temperatures will be too intense for complex molecules like DNA to be stable. In a diffuse and gassy atmosphere, it might take too long for atoms to encounter each other, react and form new molecules. And scientists think the planet-formation can take different routes and can be dissimilar to the one of our solar system. So 'Habitable Planets' may lie outside the "Goldilocks zone" in extra-solar systems, and that planets farther from or closer to their suns than Earth may harbour the conditions necessary for life.
Q: How can you tell the difference between a fake expert and a true one on various science topics while watching them on TV?
I myself participated in some TV debates and discussions. We have noticed some disturbing things while analysing these debates and wrote on it too.
People usually think those who confirm their pre-conceived notions and biases are experts and others who contradict them are stupid people (Cognitive dissonance acting here) .
Viewers think people who speak loudly and dominate others or can act well and can appeal to emotions of viewers are experts and those who have soft voices are not experts. [ this is completely opposite to what reality is - non-experts who are participating in the debates are often really so aggressive, trying to attack you with all their might because they are worried they would be outdone by facts and truth that they don't give you chance to even think , breathe and talk. You will be forced to withdraw and keep quiet! (According to some psychologists this type of aggression is related to dog's way of doing things. Dogs, it seems, attack first by barking aggressively so that the person they are barking at get mind-blocked with fear by the aggression, fail to think, and don't attack them in return so the dogs can be safe! Nice strategy)]. Only critical thinking can make you realize this.
The time given won’t be sufficient to put all your facts right.
The anchors will decide what way the debate or discussion should go - it usually will be the way they want, or their producers want, not the way the experts want. So they will make you think the experts are stupid.
Read this article that gives you more information on why experts can’t win TV debates : Why it is difficult for scientists to debate controversial issues w...
This is why most experts and specialists refuse to come live on TV. TV doesn’t give you the right picture. It always gives a distorted one.
Most of the time we come out of these debates highly disillusioned.
But the anchors will introduce the experts to you. If they correctly project the qualifications of experts , you will get an idea.
Q: What is the science behind the link ball in cricket?
You can also visit some sites like this one: Science Simplified!
Internet also gives pseudo-science, misinformation, stupid theories, along with science. Can you differentiate between genuine science and pseudo-science? If you can’t , stick to the genuine ones.
Q: What happens if there is only one subject in the world and that is science?
:)
Just now I answered a similar Q (see above).
Without a whole picture of this universe and its working in the human mind, such Qs are natural.
All the other fields become incomplete without science! They can’t even exist without science!
Heard about sports science, data science used in business and commerce, science related to spirituality, science of love and other emotions, science-art, the science of music? Name any field, I will show you how science is making them whole. Without science this universe, you and me - leave alone other fields - don’t exist at all. You can’t remove science from anything now!
Science can work independent of other disciplines and human existence. E=MC2 can work without a human mind but other things cannot work without a science- run human mind. Other fields cannot work without science. This is an established fact.
Science has two aspects to it.
One: The principles with which this universe came into existence (to atheists), or created (to theists) and run by it.
Two: The process with which we study this universe.
People usually take only the second one into consideration, not the first one while dealing with this aspect. But the truth is, without scientific principles, this universe in which we live, wouldn't have come into existence in the first place. Only when the scientific principles based universe came into existence, the consequences like galaxies, stars, planets, origin of life, its evolution, human beings and finally their religions and other disciplines became a reality.
So science is the basis for everything. Without science everything in this universe and the universe itself become non-existent.
Q: Does a scientist automatically not believe in a higher power when they can't explain everything with science?
If you are unable to understand something, you build better tools to deal with it. You improve your mind power to overcome the problems. You develop artificial intelligence that could help you. That is how you progress in science. Not by resorting to helpless gestures.
Technology is based on these principles. Technology works because what we found is correct.
Now religion. Most religions came into existence when human thinking was at a primitive stage. When scientific thinking and methods didn't get established. Most of the religious stories originated from the human mind's imagination. There is no evidence to say that they are true. It is just a blind belief system.
When scientific facts get established, they shatter these myths of religion. You get the story 'as it is' and not as you want it to be like it was told in the religious stories.
When you understand this, you awaken to reality. You realize that religious stories were narratives written on water, melting and getting erased as the scientific flow continues.
In what way do you understand religion then?
That depends on the type of person you are!
If you are afraid, you completely deny what science says and stick to your ancient mind set and still believe in religious stories.
If you want to make peace with science, but still can't come out of your ancient mind set, you try to connect science and religion and create pseudo-science and try to live in that pseudo-world.
If you are a critical thinker you understand what science says is true and completely abandon ancient thinking and religion and live a peaceful and enlightened scientific way of life.
Citations:
1. Medland, SE; Duffy, DL; Wright, MJ; Geffen, GM; Martin, NG (Feb 2006). "Handedness in twins: joint analysis of data from 35 samples". Twin Res Hum Genet. 9 (1): 46–53. doi:10.1375/183242706776402885. PMID 16611467.
2. McManus, IC; Davison, A; Armour, JA (June 2013). "Multilocus genetic models of handedness closely resemble single-lo.... Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1288 (1): 48–58. doi:10.1111/nyas.12102. PMC 4298034. PMID 23631511
3. Medland, SE; Duffy, DL; Wright, MJ; Geffen, GM; Martin, NG (Feb 2006). "Handedness in twins: joint analysis of data from 35 samples". Twin Res Hum Genet. 9 (1): 46–53. doi:10.1375/18324
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on November 13, 2019 at 6:23am
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All the other fields become incomplete without science!
Heard about sports science, data science used in business and commerce, science related to spirituality, science of love and other emotions, science-art, the science of music? Name any field, I will show you how science is making them whole. Without science this universe, you and me - leave alone other fields - don’t exist at all. You can’t remove science from anything now!
Science can work independent of other disciplines and human existence. E=MC2 can work without a human mind but other things cannot work without a science- run human mind. Other fields cannot work without science. This is an established fact.
Science has two aspects to it.
One: The principles with which this universe came into existence (to atheists), or created (to theists) and run by it.
Two: The process with which we study this universe.
People usually take only the second one into consideration, not the first one while dealing with this aspect. But the truth is, without scientific principles, this universe in which we live, wouldn't have come into existence in the first place. Only when the scientific principles based universe came into existence, the consequences like galaxies, stars, planets, origin of life, its evolution, human beings and finally their religions and other disciplines became a reality.
So science is the basis for everything. Without science everything in this universe and the universe itself becomes non-existent.
I hope I removed your vagueness now.
By the way, I am a polymath :)