Dimensional analysis

Adding to the long list of scientific words that woo-woos misdefine and then misapply, let's consider "dimension."

It's rising in popularity, and may soon outstrip "quantum" and "vibration" and "frequency," hard though that may be to believe.

Its misuse, of course, goes back a long way.  My wife got me the complete DVD set of the classic (i.e., terrible) science fiction series Lost In Space for my birthday a while back, a move she has lived to regret, because our son Lucas and I now constantly quote memorable lines from it, such as famous ones like "Danger, Will Robinson!  Danger!" and "Oh, my delicate back,' not to mention less-known ones like "Would you like another serving of Space Pie?" and "Golly!  They've turned him into a Cave Robot!"

But the subject comes up because of an episode I watched just a couple of days ago, called "Invaders from the Fifth Dimension."  In this wonderful piece of sf cinematography, we meet a pair of aliens who look a little like the love children of John Kerry and Stephen Miller:

These aliens are ultra-powerful because they come from the fifth dimension, we're told, and have made their spaceship impregnable by using a "fifth-dimensional force field."  Even so, they're no match for Will Robinson, who makes their spaceship blow up by, basically, feeling sad at them.

I'm not making this up.

In any case, this illustrates how the incorrect use of the word "dimension" isn't of recent vintage.  Back then, but lo unto this very day, woo-woos have somehow thought that "dimension" was a fancy way of saying "place," and that therefore a creature could "come from another dimension."

Take, for example, the piece that from Before It's News called "Inter-Dimensional Invasion Begins," which a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a couple of days ago, and wherein we learn that because "dimension" means "place," creatures can come from "between dimensions," just as you could say, for example, that you lived between Hoboken and Jersey City, even though you might not want to brag about that fact.

In this article, we're told that "when studying for his B.Sc. in physics," the author learned about string theory, which posits up to eleven spatial dimensions.  This, he says, opens the door for all sorts of weird stuff:

All events ever experienced by humans throughout history either from the mundane to the extraordinary have at best been reported or recorded using the language of 4 dimensions. 3 spatial (X,Y,Z) and one temporal (time). 

That leaves at least 7 dimensions that we are only dimly aware of.  If at all.  Most people intrinsically understand the spatial dimensions (X,Y, and Z) , it is the structure of all our movements, all the things in which we interact with , it is our life’s experiential structure.  But Time is also a dimension, albeit times [sic] arrow only runs in one direction under normal Newtonian situations.  But it is a dimension none-the-less.  It is a axis of freedom in which we move, ever trudging forward ceaselessly.  To quote William Shakespeare “Time is the fire in which we burn”.  What sort of experiences and entities burn in the higher 7 dimensions?

Right!  Whatever the hell that even means.

Later, though, he answers the question, of course. Those extra dimensions provide a place for Bigfoot to hide:

I believe that all forms of what we call “Paranormal” is normal, maybe just not in our 4 dimensional reality.  The “Inter-dimensional Hypothesis” states that UFOs, aliens, shadow people, crop circles, Bigfoot, and ghostly activity are all explained by the passage of beings from another dimension occasionally crossing into our dimension and being witnessed.  The method of cross overs are not understood at this time by science.

Okay, can we just hang on a moment, here?

The trouble I have with people like this is not only do they not understand science, they can't, apparently, even read a fucking Wikipedia page.  Because if you go to Wikipedia, and search for "Dimension," you are brought to a page wherein we are given, right in the first paragraph, the following definition:

In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a space or object is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it.  Thus a line has a dimension of one because only one coordinate is needed to specify a point on it – for example, the point at 5 on a number line.  A surface such as a plane or the surface of a cylinder or sphere has a dimension of two because two coordinates are needed to specify a point on it – for example, both a latitude and longitude is required to locate a point on the surface of a sphere.   The inside of a cube, a cylinder or a sphere is three-dimensional because three coordinates are needed to locate a point within these spaces.

So saying that UFOs come from the seventh dimension is a little like saying that your Uncle Steve comes from "horizontal."

Higher dimensional spaces may exist, of course, although that point is controversial.  The alleged physics student who wrote the article for Before It's News cited string theory and M-theory as support for his position, even though the very same Wikipedia article says the following:

In physics, three dimensions of space and one of time is the accepted norm.  However, there are theories that attempt to unify the four fundamental forces by introducing more dimensions.  Most notably, superstring theory requires 10 spacetime dimensions, and originates from a more fundamental 11-dimensional theory tentatively called M-theory which subsumes five previously distinct superstring theories.  To date, no experimental or observational evidence is available to confirm the existence of these extra dimensions.  If extra dimensions exist, they must be hidden from us by some physical mechanism.  One well-studied possibility is that the extra dimensions may be "curled up" at such tiny scales as to be effectively invisible to current experiments.

So if Bigfoot lives there, he's not so much Bigfoot as he is Submicroscopicfoot.

Anyhow. I'll just reiterate my wish that people would learn some basic science before they go blathering on, throwing around scientific terminology as if they actually knew what they were talking about.  As for me, I'm off to get a second cup of coffee.   Maybe if I can put some in a four-dimensional Klein bottle, I'll never run out, you think?

*************************

Last week's Skeptophilia book recommendation was a fun book about math; this week's is a fun book about science.

In The Canon, New York Times and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Natalie Angier takes on a huge problem in the United States (and, I suspect, elsewhere), and does it with her signature clarity and sparkling humor: science illiteracy.

Angier worked with scientists from a variety of different fields -- physics, geology, biology, chemistry, meteorology/climatology, and others -- to come up with a compendium of what informed people should, at minimum, know about science.  In each of the sections of her book she looks at the basics of a different field, and explains concepts using analogies and examples that will have you smiling -- and understanding.

This is one of those books that should be required reading in every high school science curriculum.  As Angier points out, part of the reason we're in the environmental mess we currently face is because people either didn't know enough science to make smart decisions, or else knew it and set it aside for political and financial short-term expediency.  Whatever the cause, though, she's right that only education can cure it, and if that's going to succeed we need to counter the rote, dull, vocabulary-intense way science is usually taught in public schools.  We need to recapture the excitement of science -- that understanding stuff is fun.  

Angier's book takes a long stride in that direction.  I recommend it to everyone, layperson and science geek alike.  It's a whirlwind that will leave you laughing, and also marveling at just how cool the universe is.

Shiny happy energy

As part of the ongoing effort by my readers to drive me completely insane, today I have two links that were sent to me with a "You Gotta See This" message.  And far be it from me not to want to share the experience with all of you.

I'll just assume you're showering me with thanks right now, shall I?

The first has the encouraging title Love Has Won, which sounds awfully nice although you'd think if love really had won, I'd have heard something about it.  When I read the news, it seems to be as much of a raging shitstorm as ever.  Be that as it may, the site is pretty optimistic about everything.  It opens with a bang:

With the arrival and crystallization of the God and Goddess energies within Gaia’s new energy grid the depolarization process begins!  The old eon worked on polarization of the masses and of the individual.  The new eon works very differently! 

It may come as no surprise that humanity has become highly polarized these last few years.  This polarization was the manifestation of the last of the old eon energetics.  The process that is now underway neutralizes all polarization completely and leaves the masses and individuals squarely in the same life circumstances but without the polarization or sense of urgency previously experienced.

Okay!  Right!  What?

I guess the problem here is that I'm starting from the admittedly silly assumption that when people use scientific terms, they actually understand what they mean.  Things like "depolarization," "crystallization," "energy," and so on.  I did read the entire piece to try to determine what the author was trying to tell us, and what I got out of it was that if you can depolarize your energetics, you will take part in ascension, an event that will make the Earth's aura really pretty.

Or something like that.

The aurora.  Not aura.  Which are not the same thing.  [Image courtesy of NASA]

So you don't have to read the whole thing, which I wouldn't suggest in any case unless you have a bottle of scotch handy, let me cut to the chase and let you take a look at the last paragraph:

Energetic activity will remain at the level of its origin unless transmuted consciously to other levels.  To creatively manifest something physically, the process must be driven by physical life force energy.  This means either hard physical work or magical tantric practices.  The astral levels have segregated and the beginning of all great cycles activates the lowest level first, that of life force energy and magic.  That is where we now find ourselves, in a completely magical world.  All the upper astral levels are energetically dead in regards to manifesting things physically.  All other energies will remain in their respective levels unless consciously transmuted.

So I guess that clears that up.

Then we have the site Earth Keeper: Energy Activation of the New Planet Earth, a somewhat flashier site that starts out by telling us about an event to be held in the third week of September in Little Rock, Arkansas, that is called, I shit you not, "ArkLantis."  It is, we are told, a "Crystal Vortex Star-Gate Event," which sounds pretty impressive.  I have to share the description of the event with you, because putting it into my own words just wouldn't convey the full effect, particularly since I wouldn't capitalize every other word:

Join the Earth-Keeper Family in the Incredible Transformational Energy of the Sacred Ark Crystal Vortex ...  The Epi-Centre of the Crystalline Shift.  Arkansas is a Geological Wonder, Containing the Largest Singular Strata of Quartz Crystal on the Planet. Beginning in Little Rock, The Amazing Crystal Deposits Extend 177 miles SW from Little Rock to Hot Springs National Park & onward to Talimena Ridge.  Within the Astonishing Crystals are Rare World Renowned Deposits of Magnetite (at Magnet Cove), the Toltec Mounds Pyramids, Renowned Natural Thermal Healing Springs, Aquifers, Mystical Massive Caverns, Sacred Mountains, Crystal Clear Rivers, Holy Lakes, Amethyst, and an Active Diamond Mine ( Crater of Diamonds State Park).  Arkansas was A Crystal Colony of the Benevolent Law of One Atlanteans.  There are Utterly Astonishing, Enormous Crystals Beneath Arkansas the Size of Buildings.  Three Temple Crystals Were Placed in the Underground Caverns Before the Final Sinking of Atlantis.  The Energy Has Awakened & The Crystal Vortex is Now the Most Potent Crystalline Energy Field on Earth ! Come Experience this Amazingly Sacred Vortexial Land of Ancient Atlantis, Spirit, Multidimensionality & Vision.

I have a good many friends in Arkansas -- it's the home of Oghma Creative Media, which publishes my books -- and I bet they'll be as gobsmacked as I was to learn that what is now Arkansas was once part of Atlantis.

Although, isn't the whole point that Atlantis sunk to the bottom of the ocean?  Arkansas, last time I went there, was dry land.  So that's kind of odd.  Maybe they were kept afloat by the Crystalline Shifted Sacred Vortexial Transformational Energy or something.

You can see how that could happen.

Downtown Little Rock, Arkansas, and/or Atlantis [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Anyhow, many thanks to my loyal readers, who with the best of intentions keep making me do near-fatal faceplants directly into my keyboard.  Me, I wondering how to recover from the aftereffects of reading Love Has Won and Earth Keeper in preparation for writing this post.  I guess my only reasonable option is to have a second cup of coffee, since it's still a little early for a double scotch.

Dimensional analysis

Adding to the long list of scientific words that woo-woos misdefine and then misapply, let's consider "dimension."

It's rising in popularity, and may soon outstrip "quantum" and "vibration" and "frequency," hard though that may be to believe.

Its misuse, of course, goes back a long way.  In fact, my wife recently got me the first season of the classic (i.e., terrible) science fiction series Lost In Space for my birthday, a move she has lived to regret, because our son Nathan and I now constantly quote memorable lines from it, such as, "Would you like another serving of Space Pie?" and "Golly!  They've turned him into a Cave Robot!"

But the subject comes up because of an episode we watched just a couple of days ago, called "Invaders from the Fifth Dimension."  In this wonderful piece of sf cinematography, we meet a pair of aliens who look a little like the love children of John Kerry and Karl Rove:

These aliens are ultra-powerful because they come from the fifth dimension, we're told, and have made their spaceship impregnable by using a "fifth-dimensional force field."  Even so, they're no match for Will Robinson, who makes their spaceship blow up by, basically, feeling sad at them.

I'm not making this up.

In any case, this illustrates how the incorrect use of the word "dimension" isn't of recent vintage.  Back then, but lo unto this very day, woo-woos have somehow thought that "dimension" was a fancy way of saying "place," and that therefore a creature could "come from another dimension."

Take, for example, the piece that appeared a while back over at Before It's News called "Inter-Dimensional Invasion Begins," wherein we learn that because "dimension" means "place," creatures can come from "between dimensions," just as you could say, for example, that you lived between Hoboken and Weehawken, even though you might not want to brag about that fact.

In this article, we're told that "when studying for his B.Sc. in physics," the author learned about string theory, which posits up to eleven spatial dimensions.  This, he says, opens the door for all sorts of weird stuff:

All events ever experienced by humans throughout history either from the mundane to the extraordinary have at best been reported or recorded using the language of 4 dimensions. 3 spatial (X,Y,Z) and one temporal (time). 

That leaves at least 7 dimensions that we are only dimly aware of. If at all. Most people intrinsically understand the spatial dimensions (X,Y, and Z) , it is the structure of all our movements , all the things in which we interact with , it is our life’s experiential structure. But Time is also a dimension, albeit times arrow only runs in one direction under normal Newtonian situations. But it is a dimension none-the-less. It is a axis of freedom in which we move, ever trudging forward ceaselessly. To quote William Shakespeare “Time is the fire in which we burn”. What sort of experiences and entities burn in the higher 7 dimensions?

Right!  Whatever the hell that even means.

Later, though, he answers the question, of course.  Those extra dimensions provide a place for Bigfoot to hide:

I believe that all forms of what we call “Paranormal” is normal, maybe just not in our 4 dimensional reality. The “Inter-dimensional Hypothesis” states that UFOs, aliens, shadow people, crop circles, Bigfoot, and ghostly activity are all explained by the passage of beings from another dimension occasionally crossing into our dimension and being witnessed. The method of cross overs are not understood at this time by science.

Okay, can we just hang on a moment, here?

The trouble I have with people like this is not only do they not understand science, they can't, apparently, even read a fucking Wikipedia page.  Because if you go to Wikipedia, and search for "Dimension," you are brought to a page wherein we are given, right in the first paragraph, the following definition:

In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a space or object is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it.  Thus a line has a dimension of one because only one coordinate is needed to specify a point on it – for example, the point at 5 on a number line.  A surface such as a plane or the surface of a cylinder or sphere has a dimension of two because two coordinates are needed to specify a point on it – for example, both a latitude and longitude is required to locate a point on the surface of a sphere.  The inside of a cube, a cylinder or a sphere is three-dimensional because three coordinates are needed to locate a point within these spaces.

So saying that UFOs come from the seventh dimension is a little like saying that your Uncle Steve comes from "horizontal."

Higher dimensional spaces may exist, of course, although that point is controversial.  The alleged physics student who wrote the article for Before It's News cited string theory and M-theory as support for his position, even though the very same Wikipedia article says the following:

In physics, three dimensions of space and one of time is the accepted norm.  However, there are theories that attempt to unify the four fundamental forces by introducing more dimensions.  Most notably, superstring theory requires 10 spacetime dimensions, and originates from a more fundamental 11-dimensional theory tentatively called M-theory which subsumes five previously distinct superstring theories.  To date, no experimental or observational evidence is available to confirm the existence of these extra dimensions.  If extra dimensions exist, they must be hidden from us by some physical mechanism.  One well-studied possibility is that the extra dimensions may be "curled up" at such tiny scales as to be effectively invisible to current experiments.

So if Bigfoot lives there, he's not so much Bigfoot as he is Submicroscopicfoot.

Anyhow.  I'll just reiterate my wish that people would learn some basic science before they go blathering on, throwing around scientific terminology as if they actually knew what they were talking about.  As for me, I'm off to get a second cup of coffee.  Maybe if I can put some in a four-dimensional Klein bottle, I'll never run out, you think?

Academic gibberish

About three years ago, I wrote a post on the problem with scientific jargon.  The gist of my argument was that while specialist vocabulary is critical in the sciences, its purpose should be to enhance clarity of speech and writing, and if it does not accomplish that, it is pointless.  Much of woo-wooism, in fact, comes about because of mushy definitions of words like "energy" and "field" and "frequency;" the best scientific communication uses language precisely, leaving little room for ambiguity and misunderstanding.

That doesn't mean that learning scientific language isn't difficult, of course.  I've made the point more than once that the woo-woo misuse of terminology springs from basic intellectual laziness.  The problem is, though, that because the language itself requires hard work to learn, the use of scientific vocabulary and academic syntax can cross the line from being precise and clear into deliberate obscurantism, a Freemason-like Guarding of the Secret Rituals.  There is a significant incentive, it seems, to use scientific jargon as obfuscation, to prevent the uninitiated from understanding what is going on.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The scientific world just got a demonstration of that unfortunate tendency with the announcement yesterday that 120 academic papers have been withdrawn by publishers, after computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University (Grenoble, France) demonstrated that they hadn't, in fact, been written by the people listed on the author line...

... they were, in fact, computer-generated gibberish.

Labbé developed software that was specifically written to detect papers produced by SciGen, a random academic paper generator produced by some waggish types at MIT.  The creators of SciGen set out to prove that meaningless jargon strings would still make it into publication -- and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.  “I wasn’t aware of the scale of the problem, but I knew it definitely happens.  We do get occasional emails from good citizens letting us know where SciGen papers show up,” says Jeremy Stribling, who co-wrote SciGen when he was at MIT.

The result has left a lot of folks in the academic world red-faced.  Monika Stickel, director of corporate communications at IEEE, a major publisher of academic papers, said that the publisher "took immediate action to remove the papers" and has "refined our processes to prevent papers not meeting our standards from being published in the future."

More troubling, of course, is how they got past the publishers in the first place, because I think this goes deeper than substandard (worthless, actually) papers slipping by careless readers.  Myself, I have to wonder if anyone can actually read some of the technical papers that are currently out there, and understand them well enough to determine if they make sense or not.  Now, up front I have to say that despite my scientific background, I am a generalist through and through (some would say "dilettante," to which I say: guilty as charged, your honor).  I can usually read papers on population genetics and cladistics with a decent level of understanding; but even papers in the seemingly-related field of molecular genetics zoom past me so fast they barely ruffle my hair.

Are we approaching an era when scientists are becoming so specialized, and so sunk in jargon, that their likelihood of reaching anyone who is not a specialist in exactly the same field is nearly zero?

It would be sad if this were so, but I fear that it is.  Take a look, for example, at the following little quiz I've put together for your enjoyment.  Below are eight quotes, of which some are from legitimate academic journals, and some were generated using SciGen.  See if you can determine which are which.

1. On the other hand, DNS might not be the panacea that cyberinformaticians expected. Though conventional wisdom states that this quandary is mostly surmounted by the construction of the Turing machine that would allow for further study into the location-identity split, we believe that a different solution is necessary.
2. Based on ISD empirical literature, is suggested that structures like ISDM might be invoked in the ISD context by stakeholders in learning or knowledge acquisition, conflict, negotiation, communication, influence, control, coordination, and persuasion. Although the structuration perspective does not insist on the content or properties of ISDM like the previous strand of research, it provides the view of ISDM as a means of change.
3. McKeown uses intersecting multiple hierarchies in the domain knowledge base to represent the different perspectives a user might have. This partitioning of the knowledge base allows the system to distinguish between different types of information that support a particular fact. When selecting what to say the system can choose information that supports the point the system is trying to make, and that agrees with the perspective of the user.
4. For starters, we use pervasive epistemologies to verify that consistent hashing and RAID can interfere to realize this objective. On a similar note, we argue that though linked lists and XML are often incompatible, the acclaimed relational algorithm for the visualization of the Internet by Kristen Nygaard et al. follows a Zipf-like distribution.
5. Interaction machines are models of computation that extend TMs with interaction to capture the behavior of concurrent systems, promising to bridge the fields of computation theory and concurrency theory.
6. Unlike previous published work that covered each area individually (antenna-array design, signal processing, and communications algorithms and network throughput) for smart antennas, this paper presents a comprehensive effort on smart antennas that examines and integrates antenna-array design, the development of signal processing algorithms (for angle of arrival estimation and adaptive beamforming), strategies for combating fading, and the impact on the network throughput.
7. The roadmap of the paper is as follows. We motivate the need for the location-identity split. Continuing with this rationale, we place our work in context with the existing work in this area. Third, to address this obstacle, we confirm that despite the fact that architecture can be made interposable, stable, and autonomous, symmetric encryption and access points are continuously incompatible.
8. Lastly, we discuss experiments (1) and (4) enumerated above. Error bars have been elided, since most of our data points fell outside of 36 standard deviations from observed means. On a similar note, note that active networks have more jagged seek time curves than do autogenerated neural networks.

Ready for the answers?

#1:  SciGen.
#2:  Daniela Mihailescu and Marius Mihailescu, "Exploring the Nature of Information Systems Development Methodology: A Synthesized View Based on a Literature Review," Journal of Service Science and Management, June 2010.
#3:  Robert Kass and Tom Finin, "Modeling the User in Natural Language Systems," Computational Linguistics, September 1988.
 #4:  SciGen.
#5:  Dina Goldin and Peter Wegner, "The Interactive Nature of Computing: Refuting the Strong Church-Turing Thesis," Kluvier Academic Publications, May 2007.
#6:  Salvatore Bellofiore et al., "Smart Antenna System Analysis, Integration, and Performance on Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs)," IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, May 2002.
#7:  SciGen.
 #8:  SciGen.

How'd you do?  If you're like most of us, I suspect that telling them apart was guesswork at best.

Now, to reiterate; it's not that I'm saying that scientific terminology per se is detrimental to understanding.  As I say to my students, having a uniform, standard, and precise vocabulary is critical.  Put a different way, we all have to speak the same language.  But this doesn't excuse murky writing and convoluted syntax, which often seem to me to be there as much to keep non-scientists from figuring out what the hell the author is trying to say as it is to provide rigor.

And the Labbé study illustrates pretty clearly that it is not just a stumbling block for relative laypeople like myself.  That 120 computer-generated SciGen papers slipped past the eyes of the scientists themselves points to a more pervasive, and troubling, problem.

Maybe it's time to revisit the topic of academic writing, from the standpoint of seeing that it accomplishes what it originally was intended to accomplish; informing, teaching, enhancing knowledge and understanding.  Not, as it seems to have become these days, simply being a means of creating a coded message that is so well encrypted that sometimes not even the members of the Inner Circle can elucidate its meaning.