Have a very cool video that Alom Shaha pointed out to me, without even mentioning that he’s the one wot wrote it. It’s narrated by Jim Al-Khalili. It’s about the difference between “just a theory” (as in a “theory” that Elvis is still alive or a “theory” that the reason your friend believes that is because she has low self-esteem) and a scientific theory.
It’s got brilliant animations.
Of course Elvis is still alive. He used to be manager of a Burger King in Great Falls, Montana until he retired a few years ago and moved to Tampa, Florida.
The animations definitely look like the animator was a big fan of the 1981 BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV series. Which was attempting to emulate a computer display using stencils with coloured filters and sliding black sheets to do the movement and reveal.
(This makes the fact that the sound design was by a Mr. Prosser kind of amusing; in HHGttG, Mr. Prosser was the bureaucratic foreman who was in charge of the demolitions crew come to knock Arthur Dent’s house down.)
That said, the video sounds pretty good in general. Could have gone on to distinguish the specific ‘conspiracy theory’ usage as well, but it’s understandable why it didn’t.
Jim Al-Khalili is super. Off topic but if anyone is interested his series on the history of the development and developers of electricity and magnetism is great (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_Awe:_The_Story_of_Electricity). Related to the topic at hand is “wot’s a fact?” and how to proceed from that in a recent article by Gustavo Romero (http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.3919)..
My only gripe about an otherwise excellent explanation, is that it could have pointed out that the conversational use of theory is more akin to the scientific use of hypothesis.
Very effective video. But about wings of birds and planes (2:11-2:35), the video implies Bernoulli’s law to explain lift. Newton’s laws are the fundamental explanation, explaining everything including vortex lift like the Concorde at high angles of attack, and things birds and bees do. By Newton’s momentum, you get lift any way you can throw air down. A wing is a momentum changer. Explaining lift with Bernoulli’s law is my pet peeve of science popularization. Stop Abusing Bernoulli!
Funny, I just came here to whinge about the wings at 2:21 and the fact that their appearance coincides with the phrase “strong evidence”.
But someone did it for me already. As you were.
The way I like to explain it: In the context of science, saying that an idea is “just a theory” is kind of like saying that Bill Gates is “just a multibillionnaire”.
I’m really not sure that it is. The colloquial usage of “theory” is pretty vague (more or less synonymous with “hunch”), whereas a scientific hypothesis is much more precise. A good hypothesis makes specific, testable predictions.
@3 John Wasson,
Another excellent Al Khalili book is ‘Pathfinders’ which describes the advances that Islamic scientists made during the Middle Ages, and their influence on the development of European science.
That’s presumably the same Jim Al-Khalili who’s written about in the December 2014 Discover, This Quantum Life, by Zeeya Merali. “The craziness of quantum physics might explain some of biology’s most fundamental processes.”
There’s only one Jim Al-Khalili!
There are, however, two Sean Carrolls, M and B. 🙂
@5, Dave Ricks: Thank you. One of my pet peeves as well. Modern supercritical airfoils are pretty much the opposite of the standard “Bernoulli” picture — they are flat on top and convex on the bottom.