(meteorobs) re "Forecast" of fireballs from NEO visit - huh?

Chris cdolman at telus.net
Mon Oct 17 15:26:25 EDT 2011


I have found this page interesting; learning common fallacies is a
useful tool in debate.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

Cheers

Chris

On Sun, 2011-10-16 at 11:09 +0000, metpaper at Safe-mail.net wrote:
> > I am reminded of the cartoon with two ostriches in conversation
> >--while their heads were stuck in the sand.  They were proclaiming
> >"Nagh  there are no lions around here! (if we can't see them)"
> 
> 
> 
> Pulling reductio ad absurdum debating tools into scientific arguments is at times popular, but it never addresses the issue in a factual way.
> 
> To turn the argument around. One ostrich looked at another and said "ah, there's a lion behind you!".  It was a blade of grass.  His feathered friend replied "argh!, there's one behind you!".  It was a rock.  Then they both screamed in loudest Ostrich and ran away from the pride descending upon them.  Which was a complete figment of their imagination.
> 
> Or to take another route.
> 
> There's a guy down the chipshop [who] thinks he's Elvis.
> 
> Now, he is obviously Elvis because I have not taken the good time and trouble to demonstrate that he cannot possibly be Elvis.
> 
> He has to provide no proof of Elvisness in any way or form, the onus is upon myself to demonstrate that he is not.
> 
> That is the crux of your entire argument, and that is where unfortunately where pseudoscience crawls in and overlaps with science.  Notice the small p, it's passive, not Pseudoscience, where people deliberately mislead, but instead the misconception that the scientific method involves demonstrating that something cannot be so with oodles of evidence.
> 
> Nope, the scientific method says someone claims something, people test the claim, and if they find no evidence, they can ignore it.  They don't have to show it is wrong, they don't have to give reasons.
> 
> People seem to think the latter is essential, but never for one second in your tirade have you applied the same damning logic to the green fireball claim as you do to the neighsayers of said.
> 
> What is a "green fireball"?  Is it defined, categorised, explained in such a way that its concept can be tested?
> 
> In the internet age people tend to think a well presented blog site with fancy interface riddled with anecdotal evidence consitutes data.  It can do, but it does not do so by default.
> 
> But you make some other statements that show you are condemning a situation that does not exist.
> 
> You see, there are databases of orbits for fireballs.  And for meteorite falls.  But they are patchy, as such surveys tend to congregate around the times of major showers.  In this instance however we are lucky, October 17/18 lies well proximate to the Orionid shower.
> 
> There's plenty of such coverage, in MORP, in the Prairie Network, in the European Network.  You'll have to take my word for it that no meteorite fall with known orbit matches well to fireballs in any of these databases.  Of course, that isn't scientific, I did the research years ago, never published it, it's long gone from the hard disk, not available in print for checking and reviewing as to validity of methodology, so my statement is meaningless.  Unless you give it the same credit you give the claims of green fireballs, then it's just as valid.  And I'm not the only one to look for such associations.
> 
> Oh, you can match NEO type orbits to some showers and objects easily enough, until you check the date and the radiants carefully.  Because they're all pretty much (relatively) rounded are the orbits, with low inclinations, because Jupiter family comets and NEOs tend to get injected into Earth passing orbits by Jupiter, and there are also certain aspects that means only ones fitting limiting criteria become relevant to Earth's orbit.  A bit of a selection effect that.  You can match some ecliptic showers to many a Near Earth Object or short period comet statistically and rigorously, and some have.  Not all such associations survive the tests of time.  They all become samey, so statistical tests based on random association, on independence, are not applicable as the showers and objects are not independent.  They are not necessarily connected either.  They were formed separately and independently and at varying times, but via a common mechanism in a restricted geometry space.
> 
> But I'm wondering a bit... Let's take one of your other points.  Colliding asteroids.  These are in the Main Belt of asteroids (although was there a TNO case recently?).  So, we ask, do these contextually relate to NEOs, do they correlate in any way?
> 
> Well, I say no, you may say "they could do".  I say I have seen no evidence for such a correlation.  You say possibly that I haven't been able to show there isn't any correlation, ie you require the impossible whilst avowing everything is possible.  To rephrase, green fireballs cannot be shown impossible according to your logic flow, therefore they are possible, and the onus is upon people to demonstrate they are impossible (which ironically is scientifically impossible due to the nature of the scientific method).  If they cannot be shown demonstrable, then they are not scientifically testable, therefore they are not within the remit of science.
> 
> There are many disparaties between main belters and neos, some neos are defunct comets for a start.  Have you checked the amount of time that passes between a NEO being injected into Earth Crossing orbit and related that to the timescales of all the "Effects" that clean up a debris field?  For instance, is insertion to a "stable" Earth crossing orbit a tens of millions of years thing, whilst all the other effects are at the tenths of millions of years at longest?  That's more like evidence, albeit carrying some unsmall theoretical baggage (well, assumptions based upon computerised numerical simulation work more likely).
> 
> We don't have to go that far anyway, the use of the word "correlation" has caused a misinterpretation as is.
> 
> You can correlate anything to anything in many ways without there being an iota of cause and effect involved.
> 
> But when you look back at that, we find that someone claiming that claims of green fireballs don't even correlate with anything.  Well, when something that doesn't even need the stringencies of causal connection doesn't even support the claim, that's worrying.
> 
> The data are there and have been looked at in many ways, no one has mentioned anything.
> 
> Incidentally, if you calculate from the orbit of this NEO the most likely, highest probability, very high probability, of meteors lies near midnight 18th October from a radiant just off from the "Circlet" asterism in Pisces.  Check for meteor radiants and fireballs around that time every year in the records.  After all, this thing has been in orbit more than one year, the suggestion is fireballs this year merely because the object is on a close flyby.  But other fireball sources which give fireballs at close flybies (whether objects themselves or relict streams like in the very recent Draconid case) give background meteors annual repeat times.  That is a test.  Actually I've just noticed this NEO has a two point zero zero year orbital period, so presumably comes close to earth regularly.  Sounds a bit resonant orbity...
> 
> Let's see, I find one MORP fireball nearish the radiant for late September one year, and one for latest November, that's not even bothering to look at orbital elements (although the perihelia are quite distinct).  That fails that scientific test then.
> 
> And why green?  What is all this green-ness about?  If you look back through ages of meteorobs lists you'll see this is a long and tedious thread going back ages with never anything more than anecdotal wittering.
> 
> When video meteors can be calibrated to magnitudes to around 0.1 or better of a magnitude maybe someone will stick cameras adjacent with one having a Johnson B and another a Johnson V filter on it and we can see if there are colour composition effects for meteors.  Mind you, that's the lowest resolution of spectrophotometry and will probably give ambiguous results.  Some do take spectra of meteors I believe, and should these be sufficiently high enough in dispersion the continuum can be summed, and any serious emission lines added in (or alternatively, the effect of loss of continuum by broad absorption bands assessed) and the optimum effective wavelengths measured/calculated to see what colour they are.
> 
> But note this, there is very little green in the rainbow.  Green-ness is a very narrow band compared to the adjacent colours. So you are going to need either massive absorption for some reason, which makes no sense (it'd have to be by the atmosphere) or strong emission from some element or other.  Persistent trains from fireballs often display the distinct green due to forbidden emission lines from reionisation of atmospheric oxygen (or is it nitrogen, I can never remember).  But that's not the fireball itself.
> 
> Or maybe the viewers of green luminescent objects are sat under orange sodium streetlights, no one ever seems to think of that.
> 
> Whatever.
> 
> Basically, in summary, you rip apart (in your view) the outlook others have upon the green fireball claims using viewpoints and tools you do not even remotely apply to the green fireball viewpoint itself.  You make some statements that are not evidentially sound, for it is not in principle possible to compare NEOs to Main Belt Asteroids in terms of dynamics and even in terms of composition and nature at times, you suggest people go look at data without realising that they have, and that this data exists, in an objective usable form, whereas the green fireball school go anecdotal all over us, and you display classic pseudoscience principles whilst using the debating technique of reductio ad absurdum (via the Ostrich Parable), which in itself failed in its premise because no one is burying their heads in the sand, meteor data and meteor orbits have been assessed in many ways in many papers over many years, either empirically or as a means of testing hypotheses and theories.  Th
>  ere has been no head burying.  Green fireballs equate more to chicken little: the sky is falling, and it is green.  The rest of us can say "I have not seen any such falling sky of any colour, let alone green", and you can then say that does not matter, for unless we provide incontrovertable proof that it is impossible then any such claim must be possible, we must perform the impossible to refute that which is merely _claimed_ to be possible.
> 
> Or again, and I keep repeating this in case I've phrased it wrongly more than once :- someone claims something, we say we have no evidence allowing us to accept these claims, you say we cannot dismiss it out of hand unless we can demonstrate that the claims cannot be made.  That is pseudoscience.  Science is :- someone claims something, we say we can see no evidence to support this claim, therefore the claim is invalid, or at least currently ignorable as nothing has been shown.  There is no "not looking".  An aspect of the scientific method is that if someone does come along one day with actual evidence, we have to look and accept the claim.  An aspect of pseudoscience is that no negative result is acceptable, people have either not looked properly or have refused to look properly, the claim is true until disproven.  Science relies on proof and disproof, not lack of disproof.  Lack of disproof is a double negative, thus becomes a positive, so in pseudoscience a claim is alway
>  s valid no matter how irrelevant or untestable, which leads knowledge nowhere within a scientific context.
> 
> I'm sorry, I found your somewhat righteous indignation post annoying because it contradicts its own principles (by not applying them to the green fireball claim itself) and implies and suggests much has not been looked at, when it has in fact been looked at, but you haven't bothered to look to see if it has been looked at (in a "I see no lions" sort of way).
> 
> A guy went into the shop and said "I've come for my new pair of glasses".  The guy behind the counter said "Ah, you must be looking for the opticians".  The first guy replies "Naturally..." somewhat confusedly.  The second guy says "Thought so, this is the butchers".
> 
> Cheers
> 
> John
> 
> John Greaves
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