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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:59 pm 
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Thats fine Iowa61,


You may notice I post under my full name, and hence can be held responsible and accountable for my comments.

I think you would agree that the internet is disrupting traditional media and forms of communication such as newsprint and broadcast TV.

The notion that I need to or can only respond to a peer reviewed paper via the journal its published in, and only if I hold peer qualifications is a quant but largely by-passed convention, the net is full of discussions that question medical and other scientific papers which still eventually inform the relevent parties - I am sure Tighar is already monitoring this debate as they did with 22V1, and that relevent weaknesses will be taken up with Dr Jantz.

As you would also likely know - the vast majority of Tighar reports from Gillespie, Glickman or King are not subjected to any peer review or published in a professional journal.

I dont recognise those who hide behind anonymous online profiles as defining much if any of my activities or infact the wider forum.

However - if you must know - I have previously taken my concerns and comments directly to Subject Matter Experts such as Prof Eagar and Dr Jantz.

I dont take my concerns to Tighar itself as any brief examination of their past and present forum activities show that alternative points of view are rarely tolerated, however another of Tighar members have in the past had Tighar members contact and engage my views in a forum such as WIX or AMF, or even privately.

Of course there are now far less active Tighar members to do so.

So I will leave my critique stand if you dont mind - and let others than yourself read it and consider its proposition in regards to Mr Glickmans estimates, and hence implications on the data Dr Jantz has based his conclusions on.


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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2018 11:43 pm 
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Mark_Pilkington wrote:
Thats fine Iowa61,



Regards

Mark Pilkington



You are certainly entitled to your opinions and they do seem well-considered; I don't disparage them in any way. And I applaud you for both taking your concerns directly to the sources and seeking expert input.

Under normal circumstances, I subscribe to the idea that opinions should best be expressed under one's true signature and not a nom de plume. But my brief experience on this WIX thread confirms that my first suspicions were correct: My ideas would have even less chance of being objectively considered should they not be offered anonymously.

I've already forgiven you for the dress incident; I think that demonstrates my good faith:)


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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 4:32 am 
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I probably should keep my mouth shut on this topic, but arguing to Dr Jantz's credentials is unscientific in itself. Argument from authority - a logical fallacy - is a really poor starting point.

You judge an argument by its merits, not by the merits of its author, however brilliant he is.

On a lighter note, I find this exchange on the "argument from authority" to be quite hilarious:

Quote:
Meno: Is this true about yourself, Socrates, that you don’t even know what virtue is? Is this the report that we are to take home about you?

Socrates: Not only that, you may also say that, to the best of my belief, I have never met anyone else who did know.

Meno: What! Didn’t you meet Gorgias when he was here?

Socrates: Yes.

Meno: And you still didn’t think he knew?

Socrates: I’m a forgetful sort of person, and I can’t say just now what I thought at the time. Probably he did know, and I expect you know what he used to say about it. So remind me what it was, or tell me yourself if you will. No doubt you agree with him.

Meno: Yes, I do.

Socrates: Then let’s leave him out of it, since after all he isn’t here. What do you yourself say virtue is?


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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 7:50 am 
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On a slightly different topic I have a couple of questions for iowa61:

How much fuel did Earhart leave Lae with (in hours) and after how long do you think she gave up the search for Howland and headed for Gardner island? How much fuel do you think they would have had at that point? And how complicated was her modified fuel system to operate? Under normal conditions would she ever have had to run both engines off of one tank? (never a great practice but sometimes necessary). I've often wondered if she might have "blown a tank" at low altitude and ended up in the water before she could have gotten an engine running again because if I were giving up my search for Howland and heading south for somewhere that I could have found, I'd have been broadcasting my intentions blind every few minutes after that until it was time to ditch or I found where I was going and there doesn't seem to be any record of that.

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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:59 am 
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gamary wrote:
I probably should keep my mouth shut on this topic, but arguing to Dr Jantz's credentials is unscientific in itself. Argument from authority - a logical fallacy - is a really poor starting point.

You judge an argument by its merits, not by the merits of its author, however brilliant he is.

On a lighter note, I find this exchange on the "argument from authority" to be quite hilarious:

Quote:
Meno: Is this true about yourself, Socrates, that you don’t even know what virtue is? Is this the report that we are to take home about you?

Socrates: Not only that, you may also say that, to the best of my belief, I have never met anyone else who did know.

Meno: What! Didn’t you meet Gorgias when he was here?

Socrates: Yes.

Meno: And you still didn’t think he knew?

Socrates: I’m a forgetful sort of person, and I can’t say just now what I thought at the time. Probably he did know, and I expect you know what he used to say about it. So remind me what it was, or tell me yourself if you will. No doubt you agree with him.

Meno: Yes, I do.

Socrates: Then let’s leave him out of it, since after all he isn’t here. What do you yourself say virtue is?



That's great for philosophy. Not so much for scientific inquiry. That's why we have the Scientific Method.


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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 1:36 pm 
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iowa61, if there's been anything at all worthy of your contributions to this thread, I'll give you credit for 'encouraging' me in taking some time to research the Scientific Method you exhaustively champion. Usually my approach to research and understanding starts with the 'cons' before the 'pros'. This approach is not for everyone and usually I prefer to be an optimist before a pessimist but in reality being a 'realist' has worked the best for me for many years. But when I'm skeptical of something, especially when that 'something' is being preached far too aggressively, I tend to look at the negative before the positive. But that's me.

That being said. Regarding the Scientific Method, I spent some time the last few days performing some research to reach some of the 'quoted' conclusions below. And fortunately these conclusions were nicely explained and easy to follow from a 'laymans' perspective.

"What flaws exist within the scientific method? Not surprisingly, the minute you try to answer this question, the present method's flaws begin to surface."
The scientific method is great for what it does, but what it does is widely misunderstood. Science cannot prove anything, it only generates evidence that supports or disproves hypotheses.

"The Definition Problem: As the brilliantly acerbic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein (of whom I've never heard of until now) so often pointed out, there can be no precision in words alone. And as the equally brilliant mathematician, Kurt Gödel wrote, no system of logic or numbers can ever be complete. (“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.”) The current scientific method chooses to ignore these two maxims and proceed as if they do not exist. And as a temporary answer, this is understandable. But to deny this problem exists or worse; to stop looking for a solution to this problem, is to forever infuse legitimate science with some of the worst defects present in a pseudoscience."

"The Measurement Problem: When Jacob Bernoulli wrote the first book on statistics (The Art of Conjecture, 1713), he warned against equating stochastics (statistically based predictions) to tangible evidence. Bernoulli literally wrote the book on statistics. Yet most scientists have never even heard of this man, let alone felt the need to heed his warning. Imagine if you used the current scientific method's pseudo mathematics to reconcile your checkbook? How long would it take for your financial life to be reduced to chaos?"

"The Real World Translation Problem: Most of the current method's efforts center on isolating a select few variables, then manipulating them to gain knowledge. In theory, this knowledge can then be used to reconstitute a useful picture of natural reality. Unfortunately, there are no real world settings in which such limited variables exist, let alone do not impinge on the entire setting. Thus most of science's theoretical knowledge cannot, and will never, translate well to real world settings."

"The "Starting with an Answer" Problem: The present scientific method requires you to begin with an educated guess; an answer; a hypothesis. Unfortunately, doing this creates yet another example of Gödel's circle. Indeed, the smaller science shrinks the circle, the more which gets left out. Science then uses statistics to mediate this deficiency, then claims these answers are "mostly true."

Would you be okay with "mostly true" as an answer to a pregnancy test? How about as an answer to whether your car brakes will work the next time you step on them? Or what about when, on the day of your picnic, meteorologists offer you science couched in words like "chance of" and "partly"? Does this feel like real science?

The point is, if you leave out even one number in a math problem, you guarantee uncertainty."


"The scientific method is a continuous process, which usually begins with observations about the natural world. Human beings are naturally inquisitive, so they often come up with questions about things they see or hear and often develop ideas (hypotheses) about why things are the way they are. The best hypotheses lead to predictions that can be tested in various ways, including making further observations about nature. In general, the strongest tests of hypotheses come from carefully controlled and replicated experiments that gather empirical data. Depending on how well the tests match the predictions, the original hypothesis may require refinement, alteration, expansion or even rejection."

So what do I feel are the 'pros' of the Scientific Method? For one the fact that no other method of inquiry comes remotely close to rivaling the scientific method from what I've researched. What science discovers, technology applies. we are surrounded by evidence for the efficacy of science. Wireless communications, GPS, the Internet, space exploration, DNA sequencing . . . the list goes on and on. These technologies prove the usefulness — but not the “truth” — of scientific discoveries.

"Since the Scientific Method relies to a great extent on reasoning by induction, there is no way we can be absolutely sure if a scientific theorem/ principle will fail to hold. No one can show conclusively that a scientific theory WILL NOT cease to hold true the next day or perhaps even the next minute. It's just an assumption made on the grounds of very obvious utility. Because Science is based mainly on inductive logic, it is in fact often considered to be INFERIOR to the pure logic of deduction characterized by Mathematics."

Confirmation bias not least of all. It mustn’t be supposed that scientists unlike other human beings are completely devoid of any kind of bias and could possible have NO agendas. i.e. Dr Jantz and R.G.

To sum up the ONLY reason the Scientific Method is believed, wrongly so, to be infallible by many is because it has been highly useful in the advancement of civilization. Although that is undeniably true, it does not constitute incontrovertible evidence for its infallibility.

So all the above has been my studies for the past few days with more research scheduled, and so far my faith in Dr Jantz paper being a 99.9% valid and conclusive paper regarding AE's alleged bones are no more stronger nor weaker than before. And as far as any other website(s) dedicated to the disappearance of AE, I'm certainly not convinced there's anything "astronomically" conclusive they have come up with either other than much longer blaw blaw blaw posts than this one. Bottom line is one I've preached and practiced all my life and that's "don't tell me what you'll do, show me what you've done" and in this case "don't give me your scientific conclusions, show me your concrete proof" ...

There's one thing I failed to state that's the most obvious conclusion of this whole AE debate, whether it be from the pro-TIGHAR camps or the anti-TIGHAR camps, and that's that no matter how many people who like to type these long-winded (yes even longer than this one) posts using all kinds brilliant words, fancy scientific formulas and text as long as a book with photos and diagrams to boot. No one, and I mean no one, anywhere has been able to prove what happened to the ole gal. Except of course to prove they haven't the foggiest fricken idea what happened to her. But they sure have gotten real good at wasting time (and WIX's time) trying to figure it out.

So much for the Scientific Method or TIGHAR or AE cult websites.

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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 5:11 pm 
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Mark Allen M wrote:
iowa61, if there's been anything at all worthy of your contributions to this thread, I'll give you credit for 'encouraging' me in taking some time to research the Scientific Method you exhaustively champion...

So all the above has been my studies for the past few days with more research scheduled, and so far my faith in Dr Jantz paper being a 99.9% valid and conclusive paper regarding AE's alleged bones are no more stronger nor weaker than before. And as far as any other website(s) dedicated to the disappearance of AE, I'm certainly not convinced there's anything "astronomically" conclusive they have come up with either other than much longer blaw blaw blaw posts than this one. Bottom line is one I've preached and practiced all my life and that's "don't tell me what you'll do, show me what you've done" and in this case "don't give me your scientific conclusions, show me your concrete proof" ...



Happy to have been an inspiration. Any human endeavor is flawed by the nature of it being human. The beauty of the Scientific Method is that it's self-correcting--however that might be in a halting, slow, and frustrating manner. The truth will out.

Earhart would not have met her fate in the manner she did were it not for the Scientific Method. The progress of my mom's dementia would not be slowed were it not for the Scientific Method. We would not be engaged in this conversation--across time and space at the speed of light--were it not for the Scientific Method.


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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 5:37 pm 
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iowa61 wrote:
Happy to have been an inspiration.

Yah! you've been an "inspiration" alright ...

iowa61 wrote:
Any human endeavor is flawed by the nature of it being human

That's certainly true of the human endeavor regarding peer reviewed scientific papers as well. Glad you agree.

iowa61 wrote:
We would not be engaged in this conversation--across time and space at the speed of light--were it not for the Scientific Method.

Agreed, as well as we would not be engaged in this conversation it it weren't for the Scientific Method unable to be exact and susceptible to flaws. That's human nature as well as scientific study.

Like I stated, no one has a f*cking clue as to what happened to AE and no one's even close to having a f*cking clue. Until the day her old soggy or dried up bones are found and then PROVEN BEYOND A DOUBT that they belong to her, you people, who are obsessed, will continue to keep p*ssing in the wind.

Has anyone checked Mount Everest yet? I hear she may have been close by there as well. Does the Scientific Method work better in warm areas or cold?

What a waste of time.

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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:03 pm 
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Quote:
That's great for philosophy. Not so much for scientific inquiry. That's why we have the Scientific Method.


I think the odds of the scientific method being associated with anything Tighar does is vanishingly small. Like maybe 1% and I'm being generous. See Bevington Object as an example.

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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:14 pm 
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Mark Allen M wrote:
Like I stated, no one has a f*cking clue as to what happened to AE and no one's even close to having a f*cking clue. Until the day her old soggy or dried up bones are found and then PROVEN BEYOND A DOUBT that they belong to her, you people, who are obsessed, will continue to keep p*ssing in the wind.

Has anyone checked Mount Everest yet? I hear she may have been close by there as well. Does the Scientific Method work better in warm areas or cold?

What a waste of time.


There are actually many "clues" to Earhart's fate.

You still don't grock the Scientific Method but you might be getting there.

If you find the pursuit of Earhart's fate such a "waste of time," you have an odd way of showing it. Particularly ironic given your demand to be "shown" incontrovertible fact.


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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:17 pm 
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Quote:
There are actually many "clues" to Earhart's fate.


Please share some with us!

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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:21 pm 
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PinecastleAAF wrote:
Quote:
There are actually many "clues" to Earhart's fate.


Please share some with us!


Good lord. You're on the internet, aren't you? I'm the last guy you should ask.

And exactly who ISN'T looking for Half Tracks and Parts? My Dad had one. Quad fifties mounted in the back.


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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:28 pm 
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Quote:
And exactly who ISN'T looking for Half Tracks and Parts? My Dad had one. Quad fifties mounted in the back.


Most people I know are not looking for one. But if you need a quad I have some and a bunch of halftracks too. They are much easier to find than Amelia and I don't have to ask other people for money to find them.

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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:38 pm 
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PinecastleAAF wrote:
Quote:
And exactly who ISN'T looking for Half Tracks and Parts? My Dad had one. Quad fifties mounted in the back.


Most people I know are not looking for one. But if you need a quad I have some and a bunch of halftracks too. They are much easier to find than Amelia and I don't have to ask other people for money to find them.


My Dad gave his up when he left the Army. Would you ask me for money for one of those quad turrets?


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 Post subject: Re: Earhart bones
PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:58 pm 
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Would you ask me for money for one of those quad turrets?


Yeah I normally don't give stuff away I paid money for.....I have to really like someone for that to happen. I salute your Dad. I like to hear stories from guys who used quads in action. Not too long ago I had a visit from a vet that shot down an ME-109 with a M15 with the dual .50's and 37mm autocannon. He said he could hear it coming down the valley his way and knew exactly what it was from the engine sound. He put a 37mm round just in front of the cockpit and the guy went straight in.

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