Is SETI another of DU's sacred cows?

[laconicsax]

It's arguably pseudoscience, but when its private funding dries up, it's part of the Republican war on science?

[PVnRT]

1. How is it pseudoscience?

[TZ]

2. Yes, I don't believe it is psuedoscientific either

As far as I know its all based on actual physics, to look for real scientific evidence in terms of radio signals ect. Many of the SETI programs are generally part of very sound academic institutions.
If you are making the assumption that anyone actually looking for intelligent life with real hard data is a woo, I'm going to have to take issue with the OP.

[laconicsax]

4. It isn't testing anything and isn't falsifiable.

A null result doesn't mean anything.

While it's likely that life exists elsewhere in the galaxy (possibly in abundance), the SETI radio telescope method assumes that ETI is intentionally broadcasting EM radiation at levels we can detect. That's an unfounded hypothesis that relies on too many variables.

[Deep13]

16. So you are saying it's like bigfoot.

Proponents insist that we just aren't looking in the right places.

I think the difference is that we have pretty much looked everywhere for bigfoot and have found exactly squat. Plus we know that it was a hoax in the first place. On the other hand, there are solid theoretical reasons and circumstantial evidence to suggest alien civilizations exist and we cannot claim to have looked everywhere.

While a lack of evidence does not falsify the thesis, a positive result would falsify the antithesis.

[semillama]

18. Well, not exactly squat

but not enough to say there's really something there. And the fact that there are a lot of hoaxers involved doesn't invalidate the hypothesis. That's like saying because one scientist hoaxed his vaccine study, all vaccine studies are wrong.

Not saying that sasquatch is actually running around across the country, but having actually looked into the evidence presented because I had a childhood interest and wanted to follow up on it, I found it's harder then I though to dismiss it as just a couple guys here and there in monkey suits. There's definitely a lot of "Noise" to filter, but there's enough circumstantial evidence not to just dismiss it out of hand. Even if it is all a hoax, then it's still interesting to me that there's a dedicated, widespread group of hoaxers who know enough about hominid evolution to fool an expert in the evolution of hominid bipedalism, and that they've been operating since the 1950s or 60s when people first started making plaster casts of tracks.

[Deep13]

19. I guess I'm putting bigfoot in the woo camp...

...because something that big is hard to hide, no dead bigfeet have ever been found, no bigfoot scat or hair samples have ever been identified and the only evidence presented is highly suspect.

[Silent3]

21. Couldn't the same thing be said about searching for a cure for a disease?

Finding a cure means there is a cure, but, frustrating though it might be, not finding a cure doesn't settle the question of whether or not a cure is possible.

Yet I don't think searching for cures for diseases even when we don't know for sure there is a cure is automatically pseudoscience.

[laconicsax]

22. The methodology is different.

While I'm no expert on the subject, I do know that medical researchers don't just try random compounds to see if they work. The SETI method is, "let's try over there next!" with no reasoning other than "we might find something this time."

I'd love for SETI's search methods to not be pseudoscientific, but wishing something doesn't make it so.

[Silent3]

24. I still don't see how difficulty of narrowing a field of search...

...turns science into pseudoscience. There are plausible reasons to suspect the existence of alien life, there are plausible reasons to suspect that among that life is intelligent life, and plausible reasons to suspect that intelligent life would emit detectable radio signal with an information-bearing structure distinguishable from naturally-occurring non-intelligent sources. None of that's guaranteed of course, but then again, if it were guaranteed, there would be nothing left to investigate.

Before the first time we tried looking for alien radio signals, as far as we could have known, the sky might have been filled with an incessant buzz of alien radio chatter. Was it pseudoscience at that point to spend even a little radio telescope time to find out?

Once we knew that a few casual radio glances at the sky weren't turning up alien signals, is that the point we should have given up, lest we be trapped in a pseudoscientific pursuit?

At what point in a search like this, when very large portions of the sky and very broad expanses of the radio spectrum haven't been searched, does it become pseudoscience?

I can see a point being reached when we've gone over the entire sky numerous times, over a wide range of frequencies, and still haven't found anything, that we'd have to radically re-examine our approach, find a way to continue the search at a very low cost so that it isn't taking away from potentially more fruitful research, or just plain give up -- but I don't think we've reached that point yet, and even if we had, futility and pseudoscience are exactly the same thing.

[laconicsax]

25. The problem is what to do with a null result.

The SETI method requires multiple variables be exactly correct to find evidence of extra terrestrial intelligence. We're looking for evidence of a specific action at a specific time under the right conditions.

Suppose there's an intelligent civilization on a planet orbiting a star 500 light years away. In order to detect them using radio telescopes, they generally need to have progressed to the point where they can transmit EM signals and have transmitted EM signals with sufficient signal strength 500 years ago.

Not detecting anything (a null result) could result from any of the following:
500 years ago,
-they weren't advanced enough to transmit signals.
-they transmitted signals of a different nature.
-they were advanced enough, but didn't transmit signals.
-they didn't transmit signals strong enough to be detected.
-the gravity of another star diverted the signals just enough so they miss us.
-they had already been wiped out by a cataclysmic event.

Or, any number of problems on our end--absorption by the atmosphere, equipment malfunction, signals being misinterpreted, etc.

If a method is such that a null result can't falsify the hypothesis, it isn't science. That's why I call it pseudoscience. I'm not even sure it's possible to create appropriate controls for such an undertaking.

BTW: There's nothing wrong with poking around in the dark. Calling it science because it's based on some scientific principles however doesn't quite work.

On edit: "Protoscience" seems to fit better than pseudoscience, so I'll start using that.

[Silent3]

27. Same thing is true then in searching for a cure for a disease

If a "null result can't falsify the hypothesis", why even start the search?

I've never heard any definition of science or pseudoscience that hinges on the distinction you're trying to make. I can see calling SETI pseudoscience if the search were being done using seances or N-ray detectors, but there are probably a whole host of legitimate questions you can ask where only confirmation is positive and falsification is a mushy open-ended matter of growing unlikeness.

Claims have to be falsifiable, but questions don't have to be falsifiable. An adamant claim the alien life definitely exists is not what SETI is about.

If your standard of science vs. pseudoscience were adopted, how many interesting questions would have to be abandoned up front simply because a lack of positive results might lead to open-ended doubt?

[laconicsax]

28. In medicine, there's an actual research process and a null result means the drug doesn't work.

If medical researchers adopted the SETI model, there'd be no progress. There would be no research phase, just trying random drugs in clinical trials with no controls.

The whole SETI method is highly flawed and I'm not sure there's any way to make it actually scientific. There are simply too many variables involved that can't be controlled.

[Silent3]

30. A null result on one drug, however, doesn't mean a disease...

...you had hoped to use that particular drug for has no cure. You're blurring the issue of whether a particular instance of pointing a radio telescope at a particular patch of sky, monitoring a particular band of frequencies, yields a positive result under a particular analytical method with the overarching question of whether or not there are intelligent alien radio signals of any type coming from anywhere that we might be able to receive.

The desired goal for SETI is full sky surveys over broad ranges of frequencies over years of time. That we've only covered a small fraction of what we'd like to survey, making what has been surveyed so far a nearly random smattering, is a matter of time and resources, not a basic randomness in the methodology. Besides, when you're first starting out with something like SETI, random sampling is a perfectly valid scientific technique, not at all like throwing utterly random substances at a disease while trying to find a cure for it.

If you have a difficult to cure disease, an initial random sampling of possible cures is very likely to have already happened in the public at large -- if all it took to cure cancer in an immediately clear way were eating a carrot or drinking guava juice, somebody would have noticed already. Before first turning radio telescopes toward the sky looking for intelligent alien radio signals was done, however, the question of whether or not alien radio chatter might be common and abundant at strong signal levels -- which clearly it isn't now -- was an unanswered question.

[laconicsax]

35. I get your point, but it doesn't really address the main problem.

Let's say SETI is able to scan 100% of the sky for a total of 100 years. A null result under those conditions could still be attributed to the following uncontrollable variables:

A civilization could go undetected if, among other things,
-they weren't advanced enough to transmit signals that could reach us at the right time.
-they transmitted signals of a different nature.
-they were advanced enough, but didn't transmit signals.
-they didn't transmit signals strong enough to be detected.
-the gravity of another star diverted the signals just enough so they miss us.
-they had already been wiped out by a cataclysmic event far enough back that we would never see them.

The use of radio telescopes to detect ETI relies on us looking in the right place at the right time, and the right time is wholly unpredictable. If we had a 100 year long survey of the entire sky, a null result still wouldn't mean anything. Hell, 1 million years of radio telescope data from the entire sky could still yield a null result due to uncontrollable variables.

[skepticscott]

37. Exactly

what distinguishes SETI from pseudoscience is that it makes no claims to have found what it's looking for, and doesn't tout those claims based on evidence shown to be grossly inadequate or even fraudulent. Contrast that with parapsychology, cold fusion research or cryptozoology.

[laconicsax]

39. Hmm.

I'm definitely leaning heavily on using "protoscience" for SETI rather than pseudoscience.

[pscot]

51. How about pointless science

or One Hundred Astrophysicists in search of a grant. It's hard to justify SETI when NOAA's weather satellites are going begging.

[laconicsax]

52. SETI is privately funded now.

While it may not be the best use of funds, SETI and NOAA aren't competing for the same money.

[varkam]

3. I'm not so sure that SETI is woo, though.

I mean, I think it's often associated with woo-type things, like alien-abductions and UFOs. On the numbers, though, I personally would be surprised if there were no life anywhere else in the universe (that's not to say that they summer here on Earth, or anything).

Maybe I'm alone in that, though :shrug:

[laconicsax]

5. The idea that ET life exists isn't woo.

The notion that intelligent life would sending signals for us to receive however, is.

[TZ]

6. But the idea that there is other civilizations BROADCASTING signals

that we can detect IS NOT woo. The whole idea behind SETI isn't necessarily that there are other civilizations out there broadcasting TO US. Its that there may be civilizations that are like us, and the idea that we ought to be able to detect that sort of thing is actually a testable hypothesis. There is no time limit on these kinds of things, and there have been some detection of signals that have yet to truly be explained.
Personally, the idea that life evolved to this point here and no where else is complete and utter woo I believe, considering the thousands and thousands of other habitable planets we are just now finding.
NOT looking on the assumption that we are someone special and alone...that my friend is bad science and its something many creationists believe. SETI while its possible may never get any clear results in our lifetime is in fact trying to test that hypothesis..that intelligent life can and has evolved elsewhere.

[laconicsax]

7. A null result doesn't falsify the main hypothesis...

Just that no adequately strong signals of the right type were broadcast at the right time.

While it's highly likely that ETI exists, the chances that it broadcast adequately strong EM signals at the right time for us to detect it are very, very slight. A civilization 1000 light years away would have needed to broadcast 1000 years ago for us to know about them. If they hadn't progressed that far, never transmitted a strong enough signal, or had moved past EM to something else, we would never know they existed.

[varkam]

9. That's very true -- the chances of getting a hit are extremely small.

And I think there may be an argument to be had about the relative utility vs. cost of SETI. That, however, at least in my opinion, doesn't make it pseudoscience because the scientific principles underlying it are sound.

[laconicsax]

10. If it isn't falsifiable, it's probably pseudoscience, which says nothing about the underlying ideas.

The approach SETI uses isn't falsifiable.

[varkam]

11. Are you saying that you consider SETI to be pseudoscience because...

...it can't disprove the existence of other forms of life anywhere in the universe?

eta: I think it's important to bear in mind that the underlying assumption of SETI isn't that there is ETI trying to communicate with us. No one is waiving SETI around as proof of ETI. SETI is just a tool, nothing more and nothing less.

[laconicsax]

13. No, I'm saying that SETI's method is pseudoscience.

The underlying principles of what they're doing are well founded, but their method is hardly scientific.

Look at it this way: Imagine that someone, after studying biology makes the perfectly reasonable conclusion that life first started from basic chemistry. They then predict that if they put some compounds in a tank and wait, self-replicating cells will develop. The underlying science is good, but the method is pseudoscientific.

If people want to spend time and money waiting for something to crawl out of the tank, good for them. If they get the desired result, awesome. That doesn't make it science.

[skepticscott]

38. The term "falsifiable" is rather misapplied here

In strict terms, nothing can be proven false or non-existent. "Testable" is the more appropriate term. And SETI IS testable. There are tests, studies and experiments that can be performed that allow us to better evaluate the likelihood of its being true. The more we look where we would expect to find evidence for something and don't find, it, the more justified we are in concluding that it doesn't exist.

[laconicsax]

40. It's what it tests that isn't falsifiable.

I meant that SETI can only confirm ETI, not falsify it, but I did a piss-poor job of saying so.

[skepticscott]

41. Many things in science

are not "falsifiable". The existence of the Higgs Boson is not falsifiable. No matter how much we look, we can never show that it doesn't exist. Does that mean that looking for it is pseudoscientific?

[laconicsax]

43. The Higgs is a prediction of the Standard Model.

It's been ruled out at certain energies/masses at a 95% confidence level, and if further experiments suggest that it doesn't exist, the standard model may be
revised or replaced.

I'd hardly call that "not falsifiable."

[skepticscott]

44. Can those experiments ever PROVE

that it doesn't exist? To a 100% certainty? If not, then the claim that it exists is not "falsifiable". Again, it is TESTABLE, just as the hypothesis that intelligent life exists on other planets. You still don't seem to have a grasp on the difference.

[laconicsax]

45. I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing.

SETI doesn't test the general hypothesis that ETI exists. It tests for a specific set of circumstances tangentially related to the hypothesis that ETI exists. Null results in particle accelerators can falsify the Higgs boson to varying levels of certainty, but a null result with SETI can't falsify ETI to any degree of certainty because SETI doesn't test for ETI in general, but an extremely specific case of it.

I'm not saying that the idea of ETI is pseudoscience, or even the idea of looking for it. I'm saying that the SETI method is a terrible way to go about looking. Maybe I haven't made that clear.

[skepticscott]

46. Well, actually SETI CAN

"falsify" (as you are using the term) the ETI hypothesis. Perhaps to a much smaller extent than looking for HIggs Boson with particle accelerators can, but that's simply a matter of degree, limited by our current technology and not in principle.

And yes, you haven't been clear if you're arguing that scientific inquiry limited by technology is equivalent to pseudoscience.

[laconicsax]

47. I've given it a think and have to acquiesce.

SETI's problems don't make it pseudoscience.

I guess my main problem with it is that a null result is meaningless as far as SETI's mission goes.

[varkam]

8. That's sort of how I understood it, too.

That the idea isn't that there are other lifeforms out there trying to make contact with us, necessarily, but that if they're moving around "out there," maybe we can hear them do their thing.

[Odin2005]

12. How the hell is SETI woo?

They are looking for radio signals, not flying saucers.

[laconicsax]

14. It's pseudoscientific.

Its foundation is solid, its method is crap.

[semillama]

17. There's a difference between having a faulty method and being pseudoscientific

If the foundation is solid, then it's not pseudoscience. The main problems with pseudoscience is that the basic premises and foundations are faulty, and methodological problems spring from there.

[laconicsax]

20. What would you call it then?

I don't know what else to call something that misapplies science.

[Deep13]

15. It's not woo and I doubt that it is a sacred cow.

We may never hear a signal from an alien civilization, but there is no harm in listening. It's not an expensive program and however unlikely a jackpot is (and we don't know how unlikely it is) the payoff is sufficiently gigantic to make it worth while.

[salvorhardin]

23. Demarcation problem

I don't think the line of demarcation between science and not-science is so sharply defined. At worst, in my estimation, SETI is a protoscience. Whether it's promising or not is a whole other can of worms.

For what it's worth... I don't feel strongly about SETI either way. I doubt we'd lose much if it were canned altogether. On the other hand, I don't think it's an entire waste of time.

[laconicsax]

26. I like that. I think I'll start using protoscience.

It certainly isn't an entire waste of time, but I do question its value.

[skepticscott]

42. I like to think of it this way

Suppose there were two big parties for all of the intelligent civilizations in the universe, one for the civilizations that thought it was worthwhile to look for other intelligent life (even if they never made direct, face-to-face contact), and one for the civilizations who thought it was a waste of time and had no interest in knowing whether they were alone or not. Which party would you rather go to? Which group would you rather associate with?

[provis99]

29. well, there's zero evidence that aliens exist.

But that fact doesn't make SETI a pseudoscience. It merely makes SETI a gigantic waste of time.

You might as well sit in your backyard at night with a pair of binoculars, hoping to spot flying saucers.

[Silent3]

31. Properly done...

...SETI is much more like looking for flying saucers using a world-wide netword of people with very powerful binoculars systematically covering all portions of the sky. Given enough radiotelescope coverage, advanced broad-spectrum receivers, and powerful analytical software to examine the received signals, SETI can be a very thorough and methodical search, utterly unlike a single person in one backyard with one pair of mediocre binoculars.

[provis99]

48. SETI and the guy in the backyard have accumulated precisely the same evidence.

ie. none.

[Silent3]

49. And cancer researchers have cured cancer...

...as completely as homeopaths have. What's your point?

Science is in the approach, not in whether or not you get the results you want.

[provis99]

50. except we know that cancer is real.

no evidence exists for little green men from space.

[Warpy]

32. Dunno. I always thought it was a little preposterous

to assume another culture out there used slow radio waves for communication or that any radio communication could be isolated from the cacophony of naturally occurring radio transmission from stellar phenomena.

Sci Fi will have to find other plot lines now, I guess, unless some cracked and overpaid celeb comes out to support it with his own cash.

[Silent3]

34. "Slow" radio waves might be the fastest thing there is.

I'd love for it to be true that FTL communication is possible (in which case the use of radio as a primary means of communication would likely be a fleeting episode in the history of any intelligent species), but there are good reasons to doubt that an information-bearing signal can be sent faster than light, regardless of advancements in technology.

FTL leads directly to causality paradoxes. There are ways to possibly avoid those paradoxes, but the only three I know of aren't very convincing: (1) a "multiverse" version of reality where paradoxes are avoided via branching realities, (2) some how, some way, the forces of nature push us away from paradox-causing actions, with reality acting like some myth where the very actions we take to avoid a terrible prophecy are what make the prophecy come true, (3) a preferred frame of reference for FTL interactions where, in that preferred frame, causes always precede effects, even while in other frames of reference effects might appear to precede their causes.

[onager]

33. I heard a SETI researcher lecture once...

At a Skeptics Society meeting here in Los Angeles. This has been quite a long time ago.

I don't remember anything wooish. He mentioned that they knew the odds were against success, but thought it was still worth the effort.

The fun part - since S.S. (heh!) meetings are public, anyone who pays admission can walk in the door. And several hard-core Roswell Orphans did.

When the time came for questions, one of the crackpots jumped up and went on a long, tedious rant about how SETI was just another part of the Huge Government Coverup to hide THE TWUTH about Roswell, Area 51, alien anal probes, yatta-yatta-yatta.

The SETI guy just patiently waited, then said something like: "At SETI, we don't have enough money to do conspiracies."

[laconicsax]

36. Ha! That's great!