When Did Science Become the Enemy?

[SirUlli]

February 15, 2007
by Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute

You, dear reader, are one in a thousand.

The fact that you?re confronting this column on a web site devoted to space science and astronomy makes you roughly as rare as technetium. Despite the fact that astronomy is one of the two most popular science subjects in American schools (the other is biology), it?s really not that popular.
...

Full Story can be found here

http://www.seti.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ktJ2J9MMIsE&b=194993&ct=3558987

:Q

Greetings from Germany
Sir Ulli

 

[Smoke]

I like Seth.

Here's to you, SirUlli, my fellow one-in-a-thousand!

:wine:

 

[petrusbroder]

LoL, just right on the head of the nail ...

Thanks for the read, SirUlli! :sun:

 

[networkman]

Science isn't the enemy; looking for "little green men" is the enemy. While there are certainly many scientists that can appreciate the potential that distributed computing has brought to the science realm, popularized by the Seti@Home project, the actual quest of alien intelligence(s) is what many scientists see as a waste of resources and limited dollars.

SETI makes huge assumptions about what may or may not be out there and how to go about finding it IF there is anything to find in the first place. No, science isn't the enemy - junk science is the enemy.

So what does that mean for me, you say? Well, I had much fun being involved in the Seti@Home project for as long as I was.. made some great friends, had fun tweaking and crunching and competing in the races. But do I think it was somehow beneficial to science? Sure - to prove the model of distributed computing to break up large tasks into smaller more workable tasks. But that's it. Really.

 

[imaheadcase]

All the failures of NASA also seem to dampen the interest in science. A typical American could less about most of stuff NASA does now, putting a satellite, shuttle, or space station in space is so trivial to when everyone tuned into the moon landing. The pictures from Mars got people more or less looking, but nothing, I mean nothing is more inspirational to some kid/person wanting to learn about space than seeing someone in space.

I firmly believe China and India are going to fix lots of mistakes in that area. China's planned moon base and mars base is something NASA should of inspired to do following the moon landing.

 

[3chordcharlie]

I'm willing to accept and encourage all the 'lost cpu hours' and expense of SETI, because if SETI (classic) hadn't caught the interest of thousands of nerds (like me!) and really brought distributed computing together, we wouldn't have the projects we do now.

I for one don't plan to put a computer back on SETI but I think it's a cool project that brings a lot of attention to distributed computing, and that's good enough for me.

 

[SirUlli]

Originally posted by: networkman
Science isn't the enemy; looking for "little green men" is the enemy. While there are certainly many scientists that can appreciate the potential that distributed computing has brought to the science realm, popularized by the Seti@Home project, the actual quest of alien intelligence(s) is what many scientists see as a waste of resources and limited dollars.

SETI makes huge assumptions about what may or may not be out there and how to go about finding it IF there is anything to find in the first place. No, science isn't the enemy - junk science is the enemy.

So what does that mean for me, you say? Well, I had much fun being involved in the Seti@Home project for as long as I was.. made some great friends, had fun tweaking and crunching and competing in the races. But do I think it was somehow beneficial to science? Sure - to prove the model of distributed computing to break up large tasks into smaller more workable tasks. But that's it. Really.

i think we spoke at the Scíene at all

also Radio Astro......

Greetings from Germany
Sir Ulli