Newton's Laser Sword, and Farts

I feel impelled to comment on Mike Alder's "While the Newtonian insistence on ensuring that any statement is testable by observation (or has logical consequences which are so testable) undoubtedly cuts out the crap, it also seems to cut out almost everything else as well. Newton's Laser Sword should therefore be used very cautiously.”

I take this as an admission that, when push comes to shove, Alder does admit that he has to agree with Daniel Dennett:

"There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.” — Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1995.

Newton's Laser Sword cuts out everything that Mike Alder has to say. In order to use it, a sense is needed of what is appropriate caution. That is a question that has to be settled by a framework of understanding (a philosophy, surely) through which we understand the world as we observe it.

Alder repeatedly lumps together, without evidence, the views of mathematicians with those of scientists. My own perception, equally based on nothing more than my own experience of engaging with mathematicians, is that pure mathematicians, and some slightly more applied mathematicians who work on the boundaries of cosmology and particle physics, do accept something akin to the view that Alder attributes (not quite accurately) to Plato. Nor is there much unanimity in the views of scientists.

Newton's Laser Sword does not seem to have much influenced Newton's religious views. Or is it that, in such matters as Newton's use of biblical texts to predict that the world would end in 2060, one really did have to wait until 2060 for the matter to be tested? There's a fascinating discussion of Newton's prophetic studies at https://isaac-newton.org/statement-on-the-date-2060/

From swords to farts — leave off the skeptics hat for a moment, and laugh

There's an article in the Sept 6 New Scientist headed "Men fart more when eating a plant-based diet due to good gut bacteria". The paper can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/8/2638/pdf

What particularly caught my attention was:

"As previously described, the volume of gas evacuated per anus was measured for 4 h after the probe meal [1,17,18]. In brief, gas was collected using a rectal balloon catheter (20 F Foley catheter, Bard, Barcelona, Spain) connected via a gas-tight line to a barostat, and the volume was continuously recorded.”

No photos are supplied as visual evidence, unfortunately!

Technically, the study was "a single-centre, cross-over, randomised, open-label study”. Anyone lecturing on study design who wishes to get the attention of a sleepy class will now be able to use this study as an example. Did it matter that the study was open label? Making the study double blind would certainly have been a challenge. Impossible?