On my first day every
year, lecturing in the degree on Telecommunications Engineering, I used to say
this to my students:
Don't believe any
scientific news published in the press or in generalist media. Most of them are
false or have been misunderstood.
In previous posts I have mentioned several cases of scientific misrepresentation by the media, although sometimes the fault lies not with the journalist, but with the scientist, who tries to sneak in philosophical ideas based on reductionist materialism as if they were science. In this post I'm going to comment on three relatively recent news stories, published in the Spanish press, and try to explain what is really behind them.
1. Reference
Headline: "Signals
from a quantum universe": the investigation of a Uruguayan scientist that
can help reveal the origin of galaxies.
Text: Uruguayan
physicist Rafael Porto studies what could have happened in the first fraction
of a second after our universe began to exist.
What is really behind the news: Physicists Daniel Green and Rafael Porto have received an award as a
result of an article in
which they propose a new method to distinguish quantum from classics effects, which
are based on Einstein's General Relativity. The proposed method is based on effective field
theory, which is used in particle physics to study the influence
of the strong force on collisions taking place in particle accelerators.
It is well known that Einstein's theory of General
Relativity is no longer applicable to study what happened in the universe, near
the Big Bang, in the first 10-43
seconds of its existence (Planck time). During that time quantum effects
dominated, and we should apply a quantum gravity theory that doesn't exist. Some
think that this new procedure could help to develop a new theory of quantum
gravity that may be more successful than the several theories previously proposed
with little success, as well as design experiments that would make it possible
to verify that theory.
It is easy to see that the headline, with its
reference to galaxies, does not have much to do with the real news, although
the quoted text is more in line with it.
2. Reference
Headline: "Absolute
nothingness" has been measured for the first time. A clever experiment makes
it possible to begin to understand the elusive quantum nature of vacuum.
Text: The
vacuum, meaning the total absence of anything, be it matter or energy, does not
exist. Even if in a given region of space we managed not to run into anything,
not even a single solitary particle, there would still be a series of
"fluctuations", tiny waves of a quantum nature that, continually
appearing and disappearing, would make that space to bubble with energy.
What is really behind the news: First, the usual confusion between nothingness and vacuum.
Nothingness does not exist. Vacuum exists, having properties such as space,
time, and energy. I discussed this in another post,
where I described various methods proposed to detect those virtual particles
that are supposed to continually appear and disappear in vacuum as a
consequence of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Behind this
news there is a new method proposed to achieve this goal, although to tell the
truth, rather than detecting virtual particles, it tries to see if passing through
a vacuum affects light photons in some way.
3. Reference
Headline: Human
mini-brains genetically modified to look like Neanderthals. Brazilian biologist
Alysson Muotri claims he will "rebuild the mind" of the extinct
species.
What is really behind the news: In this research, modern human nerve cells grown in vitro have been genetically
engineered to insert a gene that originally belonged to Neanderthal man.
Apparently, the nerve connections established between these manipulated cells
are not the same produced between non-manipulated cells of modern man, so these
connections should have been affected by the inserted gene. However, if it is
true that the researcher has said that he will "rebuild the mind" of Neanderthals
using this procedure, this is a scientific outrage, which only makes clear his
philosophical principles based on reductionist materialism. As I have explained
several times in these posts,
when someone says that the mind is just a property of the brain, fully
explicable in terms of discharges of neurons, this is a philosophical and unscientific statement,
although there are scientists who insist on presenting it as though it were science.
Text: In this case, however, the journalist who reported on this news did not
buy what has been said, as shown by the fact that in the text of his article he
has written the following words: Muotri speaks of “reconstructing the Neanderthal mind on
a lab plate”, but the result, in fact, is just a ball of cells the size of a
grain of coarse salt.
Thematic Thread on Popularization of Science: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
No comments:
Post a Comment