Recapping the Challenger Disaster

Most people who find themselves on the opposite of a scientific consensus are just wrong. All throughout history many more ideas have been discarded as wrong than have successfully overturned prevailing views.

This appeal to the challenger disaster does Behe and ID no favors at all, as it still just remains much more likely that Behe is just wrong.

For every one example you can find where someone happened to prevail against the scientific establishment, you can find literally thousands that were simply wrong and failed to overturn anything. A priori Behe is much more likely to be just wrong, than he is to be someone who will some day succeed in overturning the prevailing views.

Now of course, rather than have this totally fruitless argument about whether the scientific establishment could hypothetically be wrong about Intelligent Design vs Evolution by appealing to the totally unrelated(because it has nothing to do with the biological sciences) case of the Challenger disaster, it seems to me someone who really is interested in what is true should put their effort towards trying to understand the actual science.

It’s already rather obvious that @Sam has no interest in the actual science. He’s here to propagandize for ID by regurgitating this new talking point about Feynman and the challenger disaster, as if this somehow makes it more likely than not that Behe is right. It does not. It’s still just much more likely that Behe is wrong. But I’m apparently talking to someone who has adopted the head-in-sand strategy.
:see_no_evil: :hear_no_evil:

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Alright, no more piling on Sam. Adequate disagreement has been expressed.

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But who do you think you are fooling. You Michael.

Here is what Mercer said.

So, after my quoting of Feynman’s warning that scientist be careful first to not fool themselves, (not imagining that anyone would not see the wisdom of that), Mercer responds stating that scientists ensure themselves that they don’t do so.
But now you challenge me that I haven’t rebutted something I never claimed to rebut - that scientists have tried ‘hard’ or done ‘their best’. But I didn’t say I took issue with that statement. Is there no difference in your calculus between ‘doing their best’ and ensuing?

I don’t. I haven’t claimed to know that anyone is not fooling themselves - Behe, Feynman, and myself included. Although I’m not sure I’ve made very many claims here. Are you aware of claims that I’ve made? It is rather difficult for me to search the thread for that. But I am pretty sure of the claim that I am probably wrong about things at least 10 times a day.
I am pretty sure that he (Behe) reads many of the critiques of his work. I’ve just read his latest book that is 500 pages of him responding to his critics.
Does that suffice as an answer to,

I don’t and I don’t think I ever claimed such for either myself or Behe.

No, no. Thank you for the concern, but bring it on. That is what I came here for. It makes me familar with what I can expect from peaceful science. Unfortunately I have limited time and can’t respond to everyone.
As Behe said in his latest, “Again, nothing shows the emptiness of Darwinism better than when very smart, dedicated proponents defend it so poorly.”
That I didn’t get responses to Feynman’s comment about being careful not to fool yourself, such as “good point, we all need to be careful of confirmation bias” but rather that scientist "ensure that we are not fooling ourselves” is amusing.
I wonder if I’d get a similar response here. Brian Cox supposedly an accomplished physicist responds terribly to a skeptic of climate change. If I was a climate change denier I might think that the scientist supporting it had something to hide. It seems the smartest of people can give the dumbest of responses.
Unfortunately, I can too.
The entire thing is worth watching, but if you only have 2 minutes, the link will take you to the point I refer to.

To those who want to hate on me, can you just concede that he could have answered Roberts’ questions straightforwardly? We don’t have to go through the whole Feynman thing again.
The simple, indisputable fact is that smart people can respond to questions very poorly.

I am not great at knowing how to navigate here. Was this comment originally directed to you?

Why was it endless? Wouldn’t you think that such a comment should have been uncontentious and that all people would have quickly concurred? But, alas, that was not the case and some suggested that scientists were above such mortal failings. I should be forgiven thinking, given the apparent opposition to such an almost self-evident claim, (about the need for care that we don’t fool ourselves) that anyone with theistic tendacies will be seen as someone needing to be opposed out of hand.

I agree. So what am I to make of the sentence that follows?

Am I in for what?
Can we take this back to the previous thread? It certainly doesn’t seem that we are going to talk about the Challenger.

You totally misread Mercer. Mercer is not saying that scientists don’t arrive at incorrect conclusions at times, rather with the way the scientific method works you or someone else is bound to come across data that invalidates those wrong conclusions. The self-correcting nature of science ensures scientists don’t fool themselves. Its that simple.

Then you have been dealing with a strawman you crafted in your mindscape, because Mercer has never claimed scientists don’t fool themselves, but that they do everything to ensure they don’t. Doing everything to make sure you don’t get fooled, doesn’t mean you can’t get fooled. If you get fooled though, someone else or yourself will eventually set things straight. That’s pretty much how science works.

Scientists are “mean”. They will scrutinize your claims to the minutest detail looking for major errors in logic or research methodology (you should watch someone defend a PhD thesis). Scientists are like roaring lions seeking for prey (other people’s findings) to devour. Heck, there are physicists trying to falsify Einstein’s theory of general relativity as we speak. Its tough, but it keeps the enterprise at the top of its game.

So why bring up Feynman’s quote? Behe challenged the consensus over 20 years ago but things have gotten worse for his position as new data keeps taking jabs at his claims. That indicates he has most likely being fooled ever since he wrote Darwin’s Black Box, and taken people like you in with his tomfoolery.

I have to ask you again. You think Behe’s claims have some merit, but its vital you tell us how you know he is not fooling himself or you. Answering you don’t know won’t cut it, because his ideas on IC or the limits of evolution have been out there for a long time, but haven’t stood up to scrutiny, but you still think they are valid, so how in the world do you know the man has not being fooled?

Homeopaths, flat-earthers, germ theory deniers and the entire bandwagon of pseudoscience peddlers reply their critics all the time, so I am not surprised Behe responded. He replies so that people like you who can’t properly vet his claims go away thinking he has got the objections of those pesky scientists covered. What matters in science is whether your claims are consistent with rigorous observations and the last twenty years has seen the likes of Lenski’s LTEE and other findings demolish many of Behe’s arguments.

I am done with you though because this convo is headed nowhere, unless you tell me how you know Behe isn’t mistaken despite the production of contradictory findings for over two decades now.

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Fine. Consider us done.
I don’t see that we can communicate anyway. How you have construed me saying that I ‘know’ Behe isn’t mistaken is beyond me. I don’t think that I’ve said anything like that. (see the last line in my previous comment to you. The one you just quoted me saying. Hello! How often do I have to repeat this.)

Thanks for being a good sport about it, but Peaceful Science wants better than this. You might be better too (we can work on it).

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What are the chances of this sort of disaster repeating itself in the 21st century?

High. As Ron and other’s have pointed out, this was a failing of management. There is really no perfect way to manage groups of imperfect people. I say this as an engineering manager who spends a significant amount of my time trying to understand risk and how to manage it within the context of complex engineering projects. Sometimes despite everyone’s best efforts, all the holes in cheese line up.

If you want a more recent example, take a look at the Boeing 737 Max problems.

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How should one respond to such a blatant falsehood, other than encouraging the reader to ensure he has an adequate background to understand those defenses and then read them for himself?

I have already mentioned a specific example of one of Behe’s very few contributions to the peer reviewed literature, that is repeatedly held up by the DI as an example showing that ID Creationists actually do research.

In this paper, Behe and Snoke devised a mathematical model in which they purported to determine whether, after a gene duplication event, it is plausible that a gene can persist long enough to accumulate sufficient mutations to perform a new function, or if it will be removed by negative selection before this can happen.

But in creating their model, the made the assumption that every single mutation other than the ones leading to the new function is deleterious and therefore subject to negative selection.

This has no bearing on reality and would be the equivalent of NASA engineers testing their O-ring with modeling that assumed it remained functional until it reached temperatures far below any that exist in the known universe.

Behe then admitted that the new trait could evolve when different assumptions were made, as in Michal Lynch’s response. He did not admit that Lynch’s model used parameters that far more closely approximate those found in reality, but that is the case if one cares to do the necessary research.

Behe, it would seem, either did not do that research, or simply pretended it did not exist.

I can only wonder if Lynch’s paper is one of the examples Behe has in mind when he speaks of proponents of “Darwinism” defending it poorly.

Now, to my mind, this is a perfect example of “fooling yourself”, if one assumes that Behe actually believes the conclusions of his own paper.

You can decide for yourself.

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There was also the Columbia shuttle disintegration during reentry in 2003. From wiki:

During the launch of STS-107, Columbia 's 28th mission, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the left wing of the orbiter. Similar foam shedding had occurred during previous shuttle launches, causing damage that ranged from minor to nearly catastrophic,[1][2] but some engineers suspected that the damage to Columbia was more serious. Before reentry, NASA managers had limited the investigation, reasoning that the crew could not have fixed the problem if it had been confirmed.[3] When Columbia reentered the atmosphere of Earth, the damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate the heat shield and destroy the internal wing structure, which caused the spacecraft to become unstable and break apart.[4]

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Speaking as someone who has participated in a great deal of risk assessment and mitigation, I would say that for very high impact, front pages for weeks, congressional investigation scale events, your guess is as good as mine.

Its probably inevitable as risk is inherent to maintain modern life. Quick example - we would starve without fertilizer, and fertilizer plants can blow up. As to what shape and form the next disaster will take, who knows. It is the unknown unknowns that bite you.

Its like waiting for the “big one” in terms of earthquakes. Minor tremors are frequent. Major fault movements are overdue, but most people in vulnerable zones just get on with their lives. Smaller scale losses of containment, with losses limited to perhaps a worker or two, happens somewhere every year. A sawmill I worked in back in college days subsequently exploded, killing 4 workers and injuring 19. The agent? Fine sawdust. Such are harbingers of larger impact events. Major companies which follow best practices pay a great deal of attention to reducing the count of minor incidents and near misses, because there is a proportionality to major events.

Most large scale industrial accidents are found to have multiple factors, a series of unfortunate events; as @cdods stated, the holes in the cheese lining up. This tends to happen when operating outside of steady state, such as start up and maintenance. Companies in financial difficulty often do not prioritize and properly resource safety. Companies have little control over outside development and municipal councils which rezone adjacent lands. Bhopal had urban density right to the fence line.

Although not related to release of potential energy, we are certainly living through a disaster right now. I am not encouraged at the response, to be honest. If the entire leadership of the WHO were replaced by some random high school student council at the beginning of 2020, could it have been any worse?

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And the risk of fine sawdust is very well understood by anyone - no degrees required. Every working sawmill is a fire waiting to happen. Based on the mills in the area I grew up, it’s a question of WHEN they will burn, not IF. The implication is that occasional rebuilding is cheaper than careful prevention. (There is also unequal burden of risk, but that’s another topic).

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I used to have a table saw located in the same room as my gas furnace that had an open pilot light. A brief discussion with a heating engineer who was working with our contractor was all I needed to convince me to move the saw to the garage…

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I entirely concur with you here. Overall, I think engineers do a good job avoiding or containing disasters. These mishaps happen, but at a low rate (not less painful though to those who lose loved ones due to them).

I can imagine the feeling of horror the astronauts felt as the Challenger began to malfunction and eventually succumb to the whims of gravity. It must also be pretty tough for the managers under whose regimes these accidents occur: bruised conscience, and possibly lawsuits.

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Yeah. I remember heading a little chemistry demo for my classmates back in varsity and most of what I thought of was how it could all go wrong: mixing the wrong reagents, mixing the wrong concentration of reagents, or some other unknown issue. We pulled through though, but that luck ran out on some other occasions. So I can imagine trying to manage the planning and launching of a massive space shuttle: it can get nasty.

Well, related to the topic, yet not necessarily the main conversation points thus far, Allan McDonald–one of the people who refused to sign off on the Challenger launch–died yesterday.

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Which is one reason why you shouldn’t use quotes from the interwebs without checking their source.

One thing I have noticed is that human’s have a short memory. We dial back protections and regulations until an accident happens that those regulations were supposed to prevent. We dial them back up to where they were, and then over time we dial them back down until an accident happens again.