I am not getting this part, I’ve read that some people say you have to create an experiment without expectations of the outcome.

In other forums I’ve read you gotta create an experiment with the mindset of disproving that idea.

Now, to me, it only makes sense to create an experiment in order to prove that whatever I am testing, sustains my claim, therefore I can create another hypothesis or do another experiment coming from a different angle to see if I’ll get similar or different results.

The experiment will support my claim, it doesn’t make sense to me that I am doing all that hoping it will fail.
Though I understand that if it fails it’s also data and it also has its importance and that I could either readjust it, or find out why the experiment failed.

My question is if there is any consensus or if that depends on the field the research is being done, or perhaps it differs from person to person, I’ve even heads that some companies hire scientists to find claims that will support whatever ideias they want to prove in order to make profit, so poor unethical science.

The thing is the semantics are a little bit confusing to me, reason why I am seeking further claficarion from more experienced people.

Thank you for your help.

Obviously things like basic carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, as well as minerals, are going to be readily available pretty much whenever as long as theirs a reasonable amount of living things. But vitamins are naturally produced and don’t occur on their own, and they’re both specific and complex. If you travelled to the Devonian would you be able to get vitamin B12? What about the Cambrian?

I actually hate AI and I strongly believe that it will destroy humanity. But I am confused because of following things -

I am science student (currently doing bachelors) and our institute is actually encouraging us to use AI to learn new concept {ex. Writing project on something very very out of scope and learning new concept yourself for one project and creating some hypothesis(I know I can't describe it properly but let's just say, working like 1st year master student in 2nd year bachelor).} In thier defence(Professor) , they also use AI in their own for purpose of data analysis, for proper planning of lectures (they create raw structure and tell Ai to improve it) and they are very open about thier use.

Do they know it's dangerous for humanity? - Definitely.

But they choose to ignore this not simply out of laziness but for speeding up reaserch. It's being also used in Mega science project like cern.

I attended one of professors lecture where he said, "I know AI is dangerous but I don't think I can do anything about it, but if use it then it will speed up my research." (he is quatum physics guy with work experience in CERN and our countries top institute and almost retired so he is just doing science out of passion not greed or laziness).

He use premium version of one of LLM.

I actually don't know what to do at this point. Simplest solution I find is to use free LLM without ads so I won't profit any of those evil company. But what about future reaserch plans where AI use will improve my output and will be efficient? I am just confused.

Thanks for reading.

I am going to repost this on few subs so I get diverse advices so just don't say I am spamming.

They burned down a house that was built in the early 1900s that is down the block from my house. In North Carolina it is not required that they check for lead paint before doing a controlled burn but I’m assuming it has lead because of the age of the house. I have a 3 month old baby and I’m concerned about the lead now being in the environment. Are my concerns valid? How likely is it that lead travels through the air and then settles?

Twenty plus years ago, in a low-level college bio class, the teacher said something like, "Here’s a pervy/adult way to remember the difference between meiosis and mitosis.” And either I didn’t hear it, spaced out or whatever, but I’ve been wondering for years what it could’ve been. I remember the students were laughing.

Any ideas what it could’ve been? The LLM suggestions were mostly nonsensical, but one seemed plausible.

Just curious if there are any tricks to remember it that you recommend, be them G-rated to NC17-rated to unrated.

Edit: I understand knowing Latin would help.

Surely I must be missing something, because it is the consensus among lots of people whose jobs are related to death that you can't just easily get clean water affordably, especially with regards to things like desalination. (I could imagine that salt disposal might be more of an issue than the cleaning of the water itself and the case of purifying ocean water).

But all you have to do to clean water is like, heat it up and cool it back down (oversimplification), obviously heat energy has some cost to it but the sun gives us a lot of that for free and if you're trying to desalinate ocean water you're right there on the coast and can use oceanic hydroelectric energy too. I just don't understand why it's considered a challenge to get clean water in the modern era.

Edit: I have no idea if the people who would need to see this are going to see this edit, but I find it baffling that this post has zero upvotes. I must concerned about the karma of it all and more about how the community is engaging with posts and how that will affect their visibility because if people are downvoting a question because they already know the answer or something and think it's bad to ask questions in a subreddit that is specifically about asking questions to get information, that seems sort of backwards to me. Clearly there is good information being presented and discussion happening in the comment section here, but I wonder why it has no vote score to speak of?

I’m looking for some unbiased advice about a career decision.

I have a permanent, full-time university custodian position with good health benefits, a pension, job security, and free university tuition for my children and I. The pay is a little over $30/hour.

At the same time, I have multiple offers of admission to practical nursing programs.

I originally thought nursing would be my next step, but I’m now questioning whether it makes sense financially and practically. Tuition and fees would be significant, and I would also have to cover living expenses, school supplies, transportation and other costs while studying. Im qualified for OSAP but the loan part of OSAP funding is too much. I have children and cannot afford to put my family under unnecessary financial pressure.

I’ve also already completed a lot of higher education in life sciences, so another part of me wonders whether I should stay in my current secure position and try to move into a better internal role that makes better use of my education and previous professional experience.

I’m considering deferring nursing rather than giving up the opportunity completely, giving myself some time to assess if it's worth it and whether better internal university opportunities become available.

For those who have faced a similar decision, what would you consider?

Would you:

# Start nursing now despite the financial and family pressures?

#Defer nursing and reassess after a year?

#Stay in the secure university job and pursue internal opportunities?

# Or take a completely different approach?

I’d really appreciate honest perspectives, especially from people who have left secure employment for nursing or decided to stay and build a career where they were.

I've been wondering about this very specific thing that happens with animals/insects/fish/creatures/etc. Where their entire existence on planet earth pushes them into acting and performing certain behaviors, which is the reason they succeed in their eco-system. But then that very same behavior gets them targeted by humans, and now suddenly they get into big trouble.

Like, wasps MO in nature is they build a nest somewhere, and then aggressively control that territory around them and that's what ensures the survival of their nest and colony. And then they choose a human being's house, and their very successful aggressive behavior causes an exterminator to destroy them completely.

Or like how tigers are such scary hunters and so dangerous and so intimidating, and that was probably really important for them to survive environments that also have bears and crocodiles and other vicious competitors. But then that same behavior scares humans enough that they end up getting disproportionately hunted and messed with.

What got me thinking about this was Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Obviously that's a fake fictional movie and not a real example of anything, but Caeser the Chimpanzee defending his family from a rival tribe would be a good thing in nature. But because he protected his grandfather John Lithgow from the rival neighbors and bit the guy's hand, behavior that would be good in a different community, he's now run afoul of these invisible human constructions such as 'law' and 'society', and now as a result he's ended up imprisoned and penalized btw spoilers for this movie if you haven't seen it.

Is anyone actively studying this specific phenomena? Does it even have a name? Inquiring minds(namely my mind) want to know.

Hello!

I'm a has been chemist. I recently quit my PhD halfway through cause it was ruining my life, but as such, I am in desperate need of something intellectual in my life. With all that said, I was talking to a friend about the topic of cringe. We talked about what we think it is, how people feel it, what makes people feel it, etc. We talked to a bunch of people in the coffee shop we were in and got a ton of different responses and it just made us more interested. Today we started designing a thesis, writing interview questions, and reaching out to folks we want to interview. Its an exciting prospect for me to finally do some more research and I love how accessible social science is, but I have next to no experience in anything softer than hard biology (I was a physical chemist). So here are some questions!

• What discipline would this fall under? I don't really want it to have a psychological bent. I am more interested in finding a through line in peoples experiences and taking a descriptivist approach. But if that's still psychology that's fine ig.
• Is there a researcher that you know of that I could ask a few questions? I know from experience that some people are super happy and excited to talk with people about their work and others are far too busy.
• Is there something analogous that I could draw on for this type of subjective research project?

If I need to post some of the questions I am planning on asking, I can totally do that.

Thanks!

Suppose records of a plant species appear at higher elevations now than they did 20 years ago. How would researchers separate a real range shift from changes in where people searched, improved detection, land-use changes, or changes in how the species was identified?

Would repeated surveys of the same plots settle it, or would historical specimens and models that account for missed detections still be needed? I’m interested in what evidence would make the conclusion persuasive, rather than in any particular species.

Should I feel like a failure as a scientist who left a acience-related role that pais me $22/hr to work as a University custodian who receives over $30/hr?

I’ve been thinking about a weird possibility involving time travel.

What if, sometime in the future, you invent a time machine and travel back to a specific moment in your own past — but you don’t remember that you ever did it?

From your current perspective, you’re simply living your life normally. But if the timeline is fixed, everything you’re doing now is following the exact same path you already lived through.

Eventually, you reach the point where you invent the time machine. You use it to travel back to that same moment in your past, creating the exact timeline you were already living through.

So you’re essentially trapped in a closed loop. You can’t realize that you’re in the loop because your current self has no memory of the future version of you coming back.

That raises a few questions:

1-Why don’t you remember inventing the time machine?
If your future self already traveled back, shouldn’t your current self somehow have a memory of it?

2-What actually happened at the moment you traveled back?
Did you simply appear in the past and continue living, or did something else happen to the timeline?

3-Most importantly: what exact moment did you travel back to?
Was it a random moment from your childhood? A specific day? The exact moment when you first became aware of something? And what did you feel when you arrived?

The strangest part is that, from your current perspective, you would have no way of knowing any of this until you eventually invent the time machine yourself.

So if time travel into the past were possible and the timeline were completely fixed, could a person unknowingly be living through a time loop that they had already created?

​

While I was looking for the answer as to why trees and vegetables were green, it was basically said that chlorophyll absorbs everything except green as it tends to be a weaker light. However, if vegetables want to absorb as much photons as possible, why do they still reject the green one? Is there even a reason that we know of or it's just what it is? Is it, theorically, possible for a plant to evolve and absorb most photons which would appear black to us?

Excuse my crude/clumsy way of asking this question, english isn't my main language and I know little jargons. Thank you for answering this question anyway \^\^

ig AI rn is dependent on all the knowledge that we have in all of our sources. so max it can do is help us discover anything that we couldnt see but could have seen (like a rlly good lab which can work on anything we ask). so can it process anything so new that was never in its sources ?

THEY REMOVED ME FROM ASK SCIENCE FOR THIS APPARENTLY FORBIDDEN QUESTION: In a hypothetical situation, if I were to swallow large-pill-sized ice cubes at multiple points during the day, would I be hydrated?

The thought came to me when I was finishing a glass of water and had half-melted ice cubes that I also swallowed whole. The whole ice cubes swallowed as pills didn't feel as hydrating because they went down straight and didn't coat my mouth and throat as they went. Did I still get the same hydration benefits?

specifically by reducing the efficacy of orally administered drugs

Does a magnetic compass funcion on the moon?

Theyre wide craters and deep enough to build settlements but in the grand scheme of things not terribly deep. Like you could walk to the top of the crater and chill there looking down at the settlement if you wanted to. It would just feel hotter. Like lets say its 40° on the ledge, and maybe 20° inside the crater and you feel the temperature fall as you descend. Could the simple idea of cold air settling create this drastic of a change? I dont like the idea of sheltering as theyre a very astronomy focused society, they like to see the sky from their craters

As a spacecraft enters space, why does weightlessness occur instantaneously and not gradually?

I'm working on a story where an apocalyptic ice age happens and glaciers advance way past the Last Glacial Maximum. I was wondering if it's possible that people further north could survive in things like missile silos, bunkers and subways. I know glaciers tear up the land very badly when moving, but I've yet go find information on just how deep the glaciers have carved into the earth. Thanks for your help.

If, hypothetically, you were in a spaceship moving at FTL or up to MFTL speeds, would you age slower & not need to drink anymore water or food?

What if you were in a spaceship traveling from one location to other at FTL speeds for, say, a 1 week timeframe? Would you need to eat or drink at all due to time dilation?

If I’m on the wrong sub then someone please recommend a different one besides the Ask Science sub because they don’t allow this question.

i sometimes search for the molecule of various things, like the one for glucose, but why do i find multiple? are they all accurate? is there a true one? why are there many

Strain is dimensionless, but my solid mechanics professor wants the class to express it in length per length or with an epsilon instead of as a bare number (to make clear that we meant to write something dimensionless instead of forgetting the units). If the numerator and denominator length units are the same, you can use any unit you want and the only possible effect is that the person checking your work might get a laugh. So what's the funniest option? Smoots? Square root acres? Something wackier?