Post by octoman on Jan 28, 2006 13:48:01 GMT -4
Hello everyone. Longtime lurker here, finally coming out. I started out at Bad Astronomy, but the posters there usually cover everything so I've never felt a need to post. Finally saw an avatar I HAD to use, though.
I seem to recall there being a thread here where the knowledgable described their background. Not finding it, so I'm starting this thread.
Many here are scientists and engineers and technicians at varying levels. Hoax believers might be benefited by knowing what kind of knowledge they're up against, so that maybe we could avoid more of the Margamatix and StarGazer "don't know nothin' so I don't believe" arguements.
I have a college education I'm not using, and a job for which there is no real education other than just doing.
I consider myself to be a scientist, both by training and by mindset.
I am a scientist of the type "amateur" as opposed to being a scientist of the type "academic," "professional," "pseudo," or "mad."
Here's what an amateur scientist is:
When I have a problem, I experiment with the parameters of the problem, I research other information, I develop a theory about my problem, and I design tests for that theory. When the theory needs adusting with new information I adjust it.
Hopefully at the end I solve my problem.
Example:
I had ants in my home. Commercial products applied as the label directs had little long term effect. I had to learn how to use Ant-Be-Gone (tm) BETTER than the instructions said, in a way that's safe for children.
I no longer have ants in my home. I have fruit trees in my yard, so I'll never get rid of the little black ants. What I've done is train them to stay out of the house. The training has lasted almost two years now, and is finally showing signs of wearing off.
I discovered that if I poisoned my kitchen floor enough, the scouts would find the sugar in my cupboards and send foragers there.
I discovered that my little black ants prefer cat food, cheddar cheese and peanut butter to anything in the upper cupboards, so I could keep them on the floor by leaving a bit of crumbs and a safe path.
I discovered that if you poison one food source, in one case cat food, ants will continue to avoid that food long after the original scouts and foragers have died off.
I went to the library (an offline storage device for hardcopy information) and checked out books on ants. Did you know there are people who's job it is to study ants? I read one by a doctor who goes to the Arizona desert every summer, and has colonies of ants in her lab at school every winter.
By finding out from her book that many kinds of ants send out scouts first, I was able to avoid ending a foraging cycle prematurely. I found out that foragers no longer do nest-maintenance once promoted to forager. I found out that foragers only bring back the food they've been told to by the scouts. Move the cheese at the end of the scent-path and replace it with peanut butter, and the foraging cycle ends.
In the end I sent naive and inexperienced foragers back to the nest with poisoned food of several kinds. For the next several days, nest maintenace workers learned that dead ants smell like my kitchen. Then I put poisoned food of various kinds around the propery. Now, ant still find poison in the yard. Mature and sophisticated scouts learn first as nest-maintainers and then as foragers that dead ants have a common set of smells, and it isn't always ant-be-gone.
Gather information, test your theory, eliminate your assumptions. Not the Hoax Believer way, but the scientific method.
How many others here consider themselves to be a scientist of one kind or another?
I seem to recall there being a thread here where the knowledgable described their background. Not finding it, so I'm starting this thread.
Many here are scientists and engineers and technicians at varying levels. Hoax believers might be benefited by knowing what kind of knowledge they're up against, so that maybe we could avoid more of the Margamatix and StarGazer "don't know nothin' so I don't believe" arguements.
I have a college education I'm not using, and a job for which there is no real education other than just doing.
I consider myself to be a scientist, both by training and by mindset.
I am a scientist of the type "amateur" as opposed to being a scientist of the type "academic," "professional," "pseudo," or "mad."
Here's what an amateur scientist is:
When I have a problem, I experiment with the parameters of the problem, I research other information, I develop a theory about my problem, and I design tests for that theory. When the theory needs adusting with new information I adjust it.
Hopefully at the end I solve my problem.
Example:
I had ants in my home. Commercial products applied as the label directs had little long term effect. I had to learn how to use Ant-Be-Gone (tm) BETTER than the instructions said, in a way that's safe for children.
I no longer have ants in my home. I have fruit trees in my yard, so I'll never get rid of the little black ants. What I've done is train them to stay out of the house. The training has lasted almost two years now, and is finally showing signs of wearing off.
I discovered that if I poisoned my kitchen floor enough, the scouts would find the sugar in my cupboards and send foragers there.
I discovered that my little black ants prefer cat food, cheddar cheese and peanut butter to anything in the upper cupboards, so I could keep them on the floor by leaving a bit of crumbs and a safe path.
I discovered that if you poison one food source, in one case cat food, ants will continue to avoid that food long after the original scouts and foragers have died off.
I went to the library (an offline storage device for hardcopy information) and checked out books on ants. Did you know there are people who's job it is to study ants? I read one by a doctor who goes to the Arizona desert every summer, and has colonies of ants in her lab at school every winter.
By finding out from her book that many kinds of ants send out scouts first, I was able to avoid ending a foraging cycle prematurely. I found out that foragers no longer do nest-maintenance once promoted to forager. I found out that foragers only bring back the food they've been told to by the scouts. Move the cheese at the end of the scent-path and replace it with peanut butter, and the foraging cycle ends.
In the end I sent naive and inexperienced foragers back to the nest with poisoned food of several kinds. For the next several days, nest maintenace workers learned that dead ants smell like my kitchen. Then I put poisoned food of various kinds around the propery. Now, ant still find poison in the yard. Mature and sophisticated scouts learn first as nest-maintainers and then as foragers that dead ants have a common set of smells, and it isn't always ant-be-gone.
Gather information, test your theory, eliminate your assumptions. Not the Hoax Believer way, but the scientific method.
How many others here consider themselves to be a scientist of one kind or another?
