Science "works" when scientists bother to actually try to replicate claims, no matter how bizarre they may be. And as this video and my comment shows, that's not happening in a number of scientific fields. Which is really, really bad for human knowledge and society in general, as billions of dollars and countless work-hours get wasted since researchers base future research on what turn out to be unreliable past claims.

The "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" flies in the face of everything the scientific method espouses. Evidence is evidence. It is not supposed to matter who finds the evidence. Someone who is famous in the field should not be given more benefit of the doubt than someone who is not, yet that is exactly what happened in Shectman's case. He was removed from his lab and an actual expert in the field, Linus Pauling, verbally abused him for literally decades.

That's not how science is supposed to work at all. If someone finds evidence of something that contradicts current theory, you're supposed to look at their methodology for flaws. If you can't find any flaws, then the scientific method demands you attempt to replicate the experiment to validate it. You're not supposed to dismiss evidence out of hand because the person who found it isn't a leading expert in the field. In Shectman's case, other labs replicated his results and the "experts" still wouldn't budge... to this day in fact Pauling refuses to admit he was wrong.

Conversely, there are too many papers out there now with shoddy methodology that shouldn't even be published, yet because the author is a name in the field they somehow make it into top-tier journals and get cited constantly despite the dubious nature of the research. Again, that's not how science is supposed to work.

"Spurious bullshit," as you called it, is not being weeded out. Rather it is being foisted on others as "fact" because Dr. XYZ who is renowned in the field did the experiment and no one looked closely enough at it or bothered to try to replicate it. The spurious bullshit should be getting weeded out by actual scientific testing (like the studies in the video that were found to be unreliable) and not by mob mentality.

Theoretically, science works great. However, as has already been noted, in the real world in certain fields, the pressure to publish something "substantial" combined with the inability to get grants for certain experiments because they aren't "trendy" right now causes scientists to self-limit the kinds of research they undertake, which is not at all great for increasing human knowledge.

Another problem is the "expert opinion" problem--when someone with little reputation in the field finds something that directly contradicts the "experts" in the field, they often face ridicule. The most famous recent case of this was 2011 Nobel Prize winner Dan Shechtman, who discovered a new type of crystal structure that was theoretically impossible in 1982 and was roundly criticized and ridiculed for it until a separate group of researchers many years later actually replicated his experiment and realized he had been right all along. This web page lists several more examples of scientists whose breakthrough research was ignored because it didn't match the "expert consensus" of the period.

Finally, in the humanities at least, one of the biggest problems in research that uses a quantitative approach (i.e. statistics) is that researchers apply a statistical method to their data, such a as a t-test, without actually demonstrating that whatever being studied follows a normal distribution (i.e bell curve). Many statistical tests are only accurate if what is being studied is normally distributed, yet I've seen a fair share of papers published in respected journals that apply these tests to objects of study that are quite unlikely to be normally distributed, which makes their claims of being "statistically significant" quite suspect.

There are other statistical methods (non-parametric) that you can use on data that is not normally distributed but generally speaking a test of significance on data taken from a normally distributed pool is going to be more reliable. As is noted in this video, the reason these kinds of mistakes slip through into the peer-reviewed journals is that sometimes the reviewers are not nearly as well-trained in statistical analysis as they are in other methodologies.

You can replicate it yourself. Also, killing other insects? Murderer...

Except that you can't know all the properties of those atoms all at once. The Uncertainty Principle shows there is a fundamental limit to what we can know about particles. An exact replication would be impossible.

I don't know about giving it a "fail" on gravity, but a "cheat" on the storm. If you are willing to give it a "cheat" on the storm, then the reality of filming on Earth should give the gravity a "cheat" as well. It would have been much much harder to replicate the gravity on Mars itself and maintain any sort of sense of budget etc. I'd be more inclined to fail it for the storm than the gravity, the storm is a cheat to setup the story, the gravity is a cheat due to the reality of filming on Earth.

I'm amazed snopes is still saying undetermined. These look absolutely nothing like ants. They don't move like ants, they don't look like ants. It's CG, that's all. It would be easy to replicate this if it was true.

I've always thought this might be a great response to that statement, "I could do that". For sure you probably could, but you didn't know that there was something like that until you saw it first. What you are really saying is , "I could replicate that", but only after it was created first by someone.

I'd prefer this be replicated more times and by different people before I'm going to take it as gospel. Sealing the top to avoid air currents, and having the pool empty straight down (no bend under the outflow) would help too.

Man, if Replicators and Holo-Rooms become a reality, no one would ever leave the house. But I'm OK with that

So... the face shapes...

Matt Groening has a pretty particular art style that wasn't replicated well here. I think it's their mouths being too big in this instance.

Sorry, it bothered me the whole time.

So basically, in a completely new and not at all replicated in every other part of the world way......

it's the fault of British imperialism.

Who could've seen that coming?

That's really cool, and you have to admire his dedication and craft.


but....

I don't see creativity here.

Creativity comes from making something your own, not replicating the works of others. When you take the three things that are left in your fridge and somehow make a decent meal.... that's creativity to me.

Using a beer can to replicate the sound of a Lamborghini V10 has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Using-a-beer-can-to-replicate-the-sound-of-a-Lamborghini-V10

Sorry but I'm confused too.
How did your uncle replicate this sound with a dead duck and a shotgun?
Duck was on the lake and your uncle took a shot at it and the pellets skipped over the ice?