do scientist take unexplained mysteries seriously?

[sasamiblue]

I was watching a show on tv about unexplained things, here is one example not just this but also things like ghosts, magic powers etc, and wondering how is it that we have such a hard time explaining things? . why do most people look at things like this with strong skepticism ? what would it take to sway people in to saying for fact "I know what this really is here is the truth" why can't we find the missing parts of the puzzle? is it that the scientific community doesn't think theres any thing to find and aren't paying attention , that they aren't investing there time in to looking? or is it that people are looking and not finding evidence? and what would be the evidence that would saw the disbelievers? what could explain why no one's finding the missing puzzle pieces? or do we have a tendency to accept misinformation as fact and close our minds to truth? did we get carbon dating wrong? is our math off? are we wrong to dismiss the super natural as a form of hallucination? is the truth being covered up and ignored because it sounds ridicules? or are people making too much of some thing whose explanation is as simple as "people in them days were creative and had imagination "?

[Vryko Lakas]

Strong skepticism is actually the only way science looks at things, and it REQUIRES you to take things very seriously. Just because scientists don't generally support the existence of ghosts and magic powers doesn't mean it hasn't been seriously considered. Perhaps the opposite: they have been seriously considered, and found lacking.

[Golden Dysprosium]

sasamiblue

is the truth being covered up and ignored because it sounds ridicules? or are people making too much of some thing whose explanation is as simple as "people in them days were creative and had imagination "?

I've been through every scientific topic you can think of, and that stuff that is true is stranger than any haunting or miracle. Sound, gravity, electrolysis, mitosis, Doppler effect, black holes,string theory...what the scientific community accepts as being "true" (by their rigorous standards) is by far stranger than anything you can imagine.
When they say that that truth is often stranger than fiction, then mean it.

[vipr230]

I hate people who confuse "unexplained mysteries" with "unscientific unverfiable unlikely stories".

sasamiblue

I was watching a show on tv about unexplained things, here is one example not just this but also things like ghosts, magic powers etc, and wondering how is it that we have such a hard time explaining things?

Because there is no verifiable evidence they even exist, let alone warrant an explanation beyond human psychology and people being stupid. The ideas of ghosts and magic and what not go so far against our physical understanding of the universe, and the total complete lack of verfiable demonstrable evidence showing their existance, does not lend itself well to providing explanations.

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why do most people look at things like this with strong skepticism ?

That is how science functions.
Scientist: "I figured out how X works!"
Scientific community: "we don't believe you"
Scientist: "here's my research papers, all my data, and I preformed the experiement 3 times getting consistant data"
Scientific community: "We still don't really believe you, we're going to do it ourselves" "we got the same results, lending credibility to your hypothesis"

Do that enough and a hypothesis can become a scientific theory, but the scientific method is entirely about skepticism, we don't believe things on people's word, we care about demonstrable evidence as stated above.

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what would it take to sway people in to saying for fact "I know what this really is here is the truth" why can't we find the missing parts of the puzzle? is it that the scientific community doesn't think theres any thing to find and aren't paying attention , that they aren't investing there time in to looking? or is it that people are looking and not finding evidence? and what would be the evidence that would saw the disbelievers? what could explain why no one's finding the missing puzzle pieces? or do we have a tendency to accept misinformation as fact and close our minds to truth?

You're asking the same thing numerous times. You're assuming there ARE missing pieces, the scientific community is not convinced and there are "ghost hunters" who have all consistently failed to provide empirical evidence. Instead of say, going into a "haunted house" with some random ghost hunting tool, they should come up with a hypothesis about the physical nature of ghosts and conduct an experiment designed to test for whatever traces they leave. Clearly there is some physical interaction if we're seeing them, so there's something to test for, maybe provide evidence of spontaneous bursts of electromagnetic radiation (see: light) that consistently takes the shape of a human with absolutely no source. That'd be pretty damn hard for scientists to explain away trivially.

The better question is, since all we have is anecdotal evidence showing they do exist, what would convince believers they don't?

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did we get carbon dating wrong?

This... is utterly irrelevant, and put simply, no, except in a few special cases.

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is our math off?

What math?

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are we wrong to dismiss the super natural as a form of hallucination?

If there's no evidence for the supernatural, no, no we're not.

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is the truth being covered up and ignored because it sounds ridicules? or are people making too much of some thing whose explanation is as simple as "people in them days were creative and had imagination "?

Chances are, it's the latter.

[vipr230]

Golden Dysprosium

sasamiblue

is the truth being covered up and ignored because it sounds ridicules? or are people making too much of some thing whose explanation is as simple as "people in them days were creative and had imagination "?

I've been through every scientific topic you can think of, and that stuff that is true is stranger than any haunting or miracle. Sound, gravity, electrolysis, mitosis, Doppler effect, black holes,string theory...what the scientific community accepts as being "true" (by their rigorous standards) is by far stranger than anything you can imagine.
When they say that that truth is often stranger than fiction, then mean it.

Woah woah woah, String theory is FAR from being considered true, it's far from a scientific theory, there are a lot of other possible quantum gravity candidates.

[Golden Dysprosium]

vipr230

Golden Dysprosium

sasamiblue

is the truth being covered up and ignored because it sounds ridicules? or are people making too much of some thing whose explanation is as simple as "people in them days were creative and had imagination "?

I've been through every scientific topic you can think of, and that stuff that is true is stranger than any haunting or miracle. Sound, gravity, electrolysis, mitosis, Doppler effect, black holes,string theory...what the scientific community accepts as being "true" (by their rigorous standards) is by far stranger than anything you can imagine.
When they say that that truth is often stranger than fiction, then mean it.

Woah woah woah, String theory is FAR from being considered true, it's far from a scientific theory, there are a lot of other possible quantum gravity candidates.

Yeah, that one was a last-minute edit. MY bad. sweatdrop
Then again, I see "quantum gravity candidates" and I think of time-travelling politicians, so it's clear that QM is not my forte.

[sasamiblue]

@ vipr230

Im not just talking about ghosts , angels, demons, magic, bigfoot, and things like that.

Im also talking about the potability that our system for determining the age of fossils and rocks and things could be flawed and that humans and dinosaurs could have coexisted or that we mis judged the technical know how of ancient people and that some civilization 1,000s of years old or more could have had telescopes, air craft, electricity, surgery, levitation, .....kangaroos cpould ahve existed in places other then Australia Im talking about Ica stones lear more here and here

if you need evidence there are videos and photos, but maybe you should travle to a museum and see one in person?

in a less direct way Im also talking about Coral Castle , The crystal skulls,

advanced technology pre-20th Century

another site worth looking at

and included in the topic but far less direct are things like the easter island statues egyptian hieroglyphs.

some people look at the drawling of animals and gods and monsters and say "these things realy existed"

others say "proof that people in those days had advanced technology"

some say "proof of aliens"

some say "its proof that the Bible is true"

others say "them people were high on drugs and had active imaginations"

I just got done waching another interesting program saying that a mysteriouse figure known only as "the professor" was present at the signing of constitution read more here some call him a ghost or what ever...others say its because Our founding fathers farmed hemp for its oils, fiber, its many medicinal uses and its pleasures and the whole mystery man thing was in there heads, further more hemp, Opium, LSD, strange gases , mental illness, Neurosyphilis, demencha...there is always some one trying dismiss the seeing of things others cant see or the hearing of voices as some form of insanity people never consider the possibility that if its true that we only use 10% of our brain power, that if people weren't told it was impossible that they could have enough faith in them selves or God or what ever, to summon up all kinds of amazing powers.
there could even be long forgotten technology that could generate energy we can't even begin to imagine.

all it takes to make the age of the Earth and the things buried under it wrong is a mathematical miscalculation. if we discovered a telescope or a scull or a book and said it was age A when it was really Age B because we used the wrong method for dating its age we could get every thing about it wrong. people out there say all kinds of things that sound crazzy or impossible , things like the moon landing was fake or there is no such place as wyoming , Lincon was a woman, and reality as we know it doesn't exist and this could all be a dream or a delusion, blue may not be blue, fire may not hurt when it burns, trees may not make sounds when they fall, and there are people who say things just as crazy but Im more willing to accept them the write brothers didn't invent the 1st airplane, cars may have existed before 1908, dragons and birds evolved from dinosaurs, giant mythological animals could be real, ancient people never believed the Earth was flat, and there are things people said that the scientific community refused to believe when they 1st heard it, like the Earth revolves around the sun, microscopic life is possible, all the colors of the rainbow exist in any beam of normal light....and there are things that scientific minded men belied in that was proven false, like the Cottingley Fairies and the The Santilli film alien autopsy , we generally accept them as fakes but does it rule out the posablity of the current or once existence of other unproven life forms? my UFO theory is space Jelly fish...but thats just me theory UFOs dont sound logical to me, but I dont reject considering the posability as long as no one rejects space jelly fish. after all they proved the existence of giant squid, mermaids may be fake but we know the giant squid exist, we have found the dead bodies and the parts of bodies and have even got one on film. there was even a time when Gorillas were considered a myth till we found one, and we also found the Coelacanth, the world is vast and untill we find some way to see under very inch of the sea and every foot of the earth and explore every spotin spance and maybe even send probes back in time to pangea, we may never know for shore what is and is not. I feel if your given a scull and told its 10,000 yeas old and belongs to an ape that you shouldn't just accept that you should study it to amke shore its not a man or a big food or an alien or a cave man or a rock with holes or a clever reproduction or what ever. the iguanodon spent most of the 80s with its thumbs on its nose! The thumb spike is one of the most well-known features of Iguanodon. Although it was originally placed on the animal's nose by Mantell, the complete Bernissart specimens allowed Dollo to correctly place it on the hand, as a modified thumb. (This would not be the last time a dinosaur's modified thumb claw would be misinterpreted; Noasaurus, Baryonyx, and Megaraptor are examples since the 1980s where an enlarged thumb claw was first put on the foot, as in dromaeosaurids.) so there are things we need to rexsamin, we cant just acsept facts that fit in with what makes us comfortable, we have to consider the possibility of every thing untill we can find evidence that proves it did or did not exist.

the question is, if there is a bigfoot, why hasn't deforestation and urbanization displaced it from its habitat and forsed it in to the city? are the Unconfirmed sightings of the Tasmanian Tiger real? if so could bigfoot also be out there some how still hidding?
and if the ica people really had advised technology and knowledge of strange animals. were are any records that would go beyond the writings and drawling of these people? were are the actual inventions them selves ? the bones of the animals?
if there was an atlantis what happened to it and were is it? and if we can't even find the lost airplane of Amelia Earhart how can we find a lager thing like a continent? are these missing things from the fact that we simply havnt looked hard enogh or is it that they don't exist? or is it that they do exist and some one foolishly desmised the findings because they did poor math and gave the findings the wrong age?

perhaps it is human nature to see what we want to see? perhaps people who want to believe in conspectuses and secret shadow governments will see them every place and those who want to believe that every thing they learned in school books is true and there is nothing new to discover, that history can not be rewriten will always believe that and never consider the posablity of some thing unbelievable. I say its just as wrong to follow a generally accepted fact as it is to believe that every thing you know is a lie. we , perhaps for our own sanity, need to blindly accept that Abraham Lincoln was a real white male who lived from February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865 and automatically reject any idea of him being any thing else but we should keep an open mind and be willing to consider new information if some one told me that we had his hight wrong or that he spoke in a high soft voice or that he wore a wig it would be wrong to reject such ideas with out hearing them out. if some one said they had an audio recording or moving picture of Lincon then that would completely change every thing we know and accept about history but I wouldn't call it impossible. I wouldn't call it fact, but I would accept it as possible and I would look forward to some one diging around in an attempt to unearth the civil war era phonograph that would prove the the theory. thats what a missing puzzle piece is. now it could come back that said phonograph was under the white house and no one would allow it to be dug up, that would be a reason to leave the mystery unsolved, but the very idea of the mystery would be fascinating and should not be dismissed as impossibility.

[vipr230]

sasamiblue

@ vipr230

Im not just talking about ghosts , angels, demons, magic, bigfoot, and things like that.

>.> I'm a bit afraid where this is going to go... I wish I had another joint ready >.<

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Im also talking about the potability that our system for determining the age of fossils and rocks and things could be flawed and that humans and dinosaurs could have coexisted

... Yes, it's possible, it's also possible that every time I let go of a ball it really moves away from the planet and my eyes, consistently, every single time, are playing tricks on me. It's also possible that the moon is a large giant gas cloud and we only think it's solid, but possible does not mean likely, nor something we should take seriously.

Isochron dating, it relies on one basic assumption... "radioactive substances undergo exponential decay". This is backed up experimentally, as well as theoretically, we have a very good quantum mechanical explanation (thanks to what's called "quantum tunneling" wink to explain why radioactive substances undergo exponential decay. Given exponential decay, our dating of rocks and the like, of fossils, all comes down to remarkably basic math.

It's possible it's all wrong, but it's possible the sun and all the planets revolve in circular orbits around the earth.

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or that we mis judged the technical know how of ancient people and that some civilization 1,000s of years old or more could have had telescopes, air craft, electricity, surgery, levitation,

... Possible, but once again, "possible" does not mean "worthy of consideration". It is also "possible" that cells don't really exist, instead, your body is made up of, in layra's words, turtles. There is nothing special about your "possibilities" rather than cells really being turtles.

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kangaroos cpould ahve existed in places other then Australia Im talking about Ica stones lear more here and here

if you need evidence there are videos and photos, but maybe you should travle to a museum and see one in person?

Oh come on can people really be this gullible? Even your wikipedia source makes a rather strong case why they're a forgery, Uchuya has admitted (though granted retracted) his statement it's a forgery, their source has never actually been shown and uncovered... usually not a good sign for archaeological discoveries, and one would expect a highly advanced technological civilization to have left SOME impact besides a few stones. What advanced society, by the way, would think obscure stones are the best way to record their history when even ancient Egypt realized the advantages of things that hold a bit more words. *cough* papyrus *cough*

This is what counts as evidence to you?

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in a less direct way Im also talking about Coral Castle , The crystal skulls,

advanced technology pre-20th Century

another site worth looking at

Uh huh... >.> You... don't actually know what verifiable evidence is do you? Question, have you ever even studied the scientific method? Better yet, you seem to hold all of scientific inquiry with such skepticism, as though it all is wrong, based on this stuff, which you show almost no skepticism towards despite some very good reason why you should show some extreme amounts of skepticism.

I find this odd. "I don't trust scientific findings, but this stuff, yeah it makes way more sense".

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and included in the topic but far less direct are things like the easter island statues egyptian hieroglyphs.

I'm done appeasing your insanity, instead, I'm more curious why you keep saying "less direct".

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some people look at the drawling of animals and gods and monsters and say "these things realy existed"

others say "proof that people in those days had advanced technology"

some say "proof of aliens"

some say "its proof that the Bible is true"

others say "them people were high on drugs and had active imaginations"

Which do you think is the most likely? The one that fits copious amounts of empirical evidence, or ones that fly in the face of it and all seem rather unreasonable given the magnitude of the evidence for, and the magnitude against... (A baby fighting a dragon)

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I just got done waching another interesting program saying that a mysteriouse figure known only as "the professor" was present at the signing of constitution read more here some call him a ghost or what ever...others say its because Our founding fathers farmed hemp for its oils, fiber, its many medicinal uses and its pleasures and the whole mystery man thing was in there heads, further more hemp, Opium, LSD, strange gases , mental illness, Neurosyphilis, demencha

LSD wasn't around then, and please PLEASE tell me you're a troll and not just an idiot. Have you ever even heard of a good source? Do you know how to find them, do you know what a good source looks like?

I'm going to give you 5 links, 2 are horrible sources, 2 are good sources, and 1 is a joke, I want to see if you can tell the difference.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,483477,00.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0512
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/55807
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/key-age-of-earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform

Two are good sources where you can get good information regarding a subject of interest, two are such poor sources the scientific failures hurt the eyes, and one is a joke.

I want to see if you know the difference.

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...there is always some one trying dismiss the seeing of things others cant see or the hearing of voices as some form of insanity people never consider the possibility that if its true that we only use 10% of our brain power, that if people weren't told it was impossible that they could have enough faith in them selves or God or what ever, to summon up all kinds of amazing powers.
there could even be long forgotten technology that could generate energy we can't even begin to imagine.

And it's possible that monkeys really are controlling us like puppets on a string and we really don't know, or that the government is trying to turn our brains into mush by adding an evil magical compound into our breakfast cereals, but ANYTHING is possible, the reason we don't consider the possibility is because we've got no reason to. It's possible that you will die if you don't run out into the street naked by exactly 12:35pm tomorrow shouting "I like ham and pickles!!!" but are you really going to do it just because it's POSSIBLE? It's POSSIBLE I put a spell on you to do that, it's POSSIBLE that the world will blow up if you don't sing, in perfect pitch, "what a wonderful world" followed by "who will buy" but does that mean you're going to start singing?

It's POSSIBLE that the next joint I have will make my brother's guitar come alive and eat me, doesn't mean I'm terribly likely to give up smoking because I'm afraid of my brother's guitar.

Why should we consider possibilities that have no demonstrable evidence for them? Why do you so skeptically consider ALL of scientific inquiry, but don't apply the same skepticism to your own fantasy?

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all it takes to make the age of the Earth and the things buried under it wrong is a mathematical miscalculation.

... Yes because the best scientific and mathematical minds can so consistently ******** up a basic relationship like exponential decay right? You know, if our mathematicians and physicists were so poor at math to mess up the calculations needed for radiometric dating, which you could do in high school even if you're a math idiot, there'd be very little way for them to figure out how to get a rocket into space. GPS satellites? ******** that. You consider a few rocks that show CLEAR signs of being an ADMITTED forgery to be more important than some of the most brilliant minds on the planet? How do you sleep with such arrogance? Paranormal freaks like you tend to believe they're "in" on special information, that they understand what "scientists" don't. You see the "truth" and they're blinded doing bad calculations huh?

If you held your own beliefs to the same level of scrutiny you seem to hold scientific inquiry, they'd crumble into dust in an instant.

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if we discovered a telescope or a scull or a book and said it was age A when it was really Age B because we used the wrong method for dating its age we could get every thing about it wrong.

If you're going to spout crap, at least learn about the scientific discipline you're talking about. Do some ******** research and LEARN about radiometric dating.

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people out there say all kinds of things that sound crazzy or impossible , things like the moon landing was fake or there is no such place as wyoming , Lincon was a woman, and reality as we know it doesn't exist and this could all be a dream or a delusion, blue may not be blue, fire may not hurt when it burns, trees may not make sounds when they fall, and there are people who say things just as crazy but Im more willing to accept them the write brothers didn't invent the 1st airplane, cars may have existed before 1908, dragons and birds evolved from dinosaurs, giant mythological animals could be real, ancient people never believed the Earth was flat, and there are things people said that the scientific community refused to believe when they 1st heard it, like the Earth revolves around the sun, microscopic life is possible, all the colors of the rainbow exist in any beam of normal light....and there are things that scientific minded men belied in that was proven false, like the Cottingley Fairies and the The Santilli film alien autopsy , we generally accept them as fakes but does it rule out the posablity of the current or once existence of other unproven life forms? my UFO theory is space Jelly fish...but thats just me theory UFOs dont sound logical to me, but I dont reject considering the posability as long as no one rejects space jelly fish. after all they proved the existence of giant squid, mermaids may be fake but we know the giant squid exist, we have found the dead bodies and the parts of bodies and have even got one on film. there was even a time when Gorillas were considered a myth till we found one, and we also found the Coelacanth, the world is vast and untill we find some way to see under very inch of the sea and every foot of the earth and explore every spotin spance and maybe even send probes back in time to pangea, we may never know for shore what is and is not. I feel if your given a scull and told its 10,000 yeas old and belongs to an ape that you shouldn't just accept that you should study it to amke shore its not a man or a big food or an alien or a cave man or a rock with holes or a clever reproduction or what ever. the iguanodon spent most of the 80s with its thumbs on its nose! The thumb spike is one of the most well-known features of Iguanodon. Although it was originally placed on the animal's nose by Mantell, the complete Bernissart specimens allowed Dollo to correctly place it on the hand, as a modified thumb. (This would not be the last time a dinosaur's modified thumb claw would be misinterpreted; Noasaurus, Baryonyx, and Megaraptor are examples since the 1980s where an enlarged thumb claw was first put on the foot, as in dromaeosaurids.) so there are things we need to rexsamin, we cant just acsept facts that fit in with what makes us comfortable, we have to consider the possibility of every thing untill we can find evidence that proves it did or did not exist.

... God that's a mess of pure inaccuracy and bad typing. I'm not capable of dealing with that, the stupid, it burns. >.< At the very least, please, if you're going to defame their name, SPELL IT RIGHT! Wright brothers not write!

... >.< Please... please after I finish this response someone else correct her, I'm no longer able to be civil, I'm too awestruck at the stupidity and really hoping it's a troll. If it's not, further proof there is no god! (You know what I mean)

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the question is, if there is a bigfoot, why hasn't deforestation and urbanization displaced it from its habitat and forsed it in to the city? are the Unconfirmed sightings of the Tasmanian Tiger real? if so could bigfoot also be out there some how still hidding?
and if the ica people really had advised technology and knowledge of strange animals. were are any records that would go beyond the writings and drawling of these people? were are the actual inventions them selves ? the bones of the animals?
if there was an atlantis what happened to it and were is it? and if we can't even find the lost airplane of Amelia Earhart how can we find a lager thing like a continent? are these missing things from the fact that we simply havnt looked hard enogh or is it that they don't exist? or is it that they do exist and some one foolishly desmised the findings because they did poor math and gave the findings the wrong age?

>.> There's a simple answer to all of that which also happens to agree with empirical evidence. A very simple answer, so simple I'm surprised people don't all say "the alternative is just plain stupid".

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perhaps it is human nature to see what we want to see? perhaps people who want to believe in conspectuses and secret shadow governments will see them every place and those who want to believe that every thing they learned in school books is true and there is nothing new to discover, that history can not be rewriten will always believe that and never consider the posablity of some thing unbelievable. I say its just as wrong to follow a generally accepted fact as it is to believe that every thing you know is a lie.

You have 1 of 2 choices. Is it "just as wrong" to consider the sun will rise tomorrow as to consider the sun won't rise tomorrow? Ontologically speaking, it is, but considering the track record of following evidence, you'd be stupid to plan for the sun not to come up.

Is it "just as wrong" to think you will die tomorrow if you don't run naked into the street singing "I'm a little teapot" as it is thinking you won't?

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we , perhaps for our own sanity, need to blindly accept that Abraham Lincoln was a real white male who lived from February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865 and automatically reject any idea of him being any thing else but we should keep an open mind and be willing to consider new information if some one told me that we had his hight wrong or that he spoke in a high soft voice or that he wore a wig it would be wrong to reject such ideas with out hearing them out. if some one said they had an audio recording or moving picture of Lincon then that would completely change every thing we know and accept about history but I wouldn't call it impossible. I wouldn't call it fact, but I would accept it as possible and I would look forward to some one diging around in an attempt to unearth the civil war era phonograph that would prove the the theory. thats what a missing puzzle piece is. now it could come back that said phonograph was under the white house and no one would allow it to be dug up, that would be a reason to leave the mystery unsolved, but the very idea of the mystery would be fascinating and should not be dismissed as impossibility.

... >.> Nothing should be dismissed as impossible, but unless things have evidence, why bother considering them real in the slightest? Why bother considering you'll die tomorrow if you don't shoot a neighbor in the face? Why bother considering your family will die if you don't run your car into the side of the house? They're all possible, but why bother considering them, why give them a second thought? Are you going to consider running your car into the side of the house, or shooting your neighbor to save your family? It's possible it's the only way to save your life and your families, but it's horribly unlikely and just plain stupid to bother wasting time on ideas so absurd.

[Vryko Lakas]

TL;DR version:
Science has extremely good reasons for calling certain things bullshit. It's not just scientists being close-minded. It's far more likely that the people talking about ghosts or selling "anomalous" Ica stones or saying that the Age of the Earth are off are the ones making the mistakes (or lying).

Brief explanation:

Do you know why they might be lying about, say, finding rocks carved with dinosaurs? Because people love to prove an established position wrong. There's a lot of fame, respect, and possibly even money in it if you offer something fantastic that could revolutionize the way we understand our history. By and large people don't remember the ones who maintain the status quo: we idolize the movers and shakers who disrupt what we thought we knew.
You know who loves this the most? Scientists do. But in order for a scientist to prove the establishment wrong, they have to do and show actual work. They must show their colleagues every step along the way that they've done the best work possible, they aren't screwing anything up or lying. That's why science is so open: having everyone check your work is a good way to eliminate mistakes. This process is called "peer-review." Scientists don't just take your word for it, or go along with hear-say. Their default attitude is "this is probably a mistake, maybe even a fake," and the person giving them the story has to work very hard to prove their case. Facts speak for themselves, and eventually the best answer wins out.
That's what makes scientists different from street hucksters: scientists have to do everything possible to be credible, rather than just look credible, because by default nobody believes them without substantial evidence. And if a scientist is found to commit fraud, their scientific career is basically over. Make a habit of fudging the data and people stop taking you seriously.

So, about those dino-rocks. No scientist has ever been shown the cave where they're allegedly found. That's a big ol' RED FLAG that it's a hoax. If someone genuinely wanted to prove the authenticity of this find, they'd have every scientist they could get ahold of to crawl all over it, study every piece of rock in the place, dig down through layers of accumulated sediment, studiously map the entire site, take samples for analysis and dating and comparisons to other artifacts of similar age. That's what someone who wanted to show they're being honest would do. Instead scientists are being kept away, and the stones are being sold for a profit. This indicates that the motivator is purely financial, not scientific.

[Golden Dysprosium]

Bah! I guess Xenu's nuclear bombs couldn't have destroyed all the charlatans! Here is the TRUE history of our planet! *snicker*

[sasamiblue]

I get my sources from the travel channel, the discovery channel, the history channel and the science channel as well as from professors and people with teaching jobs who bring this stuff to my attention in verbal discussions, Im not saying I believe or don't believe any thing Im asking why hasn't any one proven or disproven any of these things with solid evidence. if any of that is true what solid evidence would get the whole world to accept it is true and why hasn't such evidence been presented? if its a lie were is the evidence that the information was a forgery? I don't accept any thing as fact or fiction until I see it on Mythbusters, or some other show of that quality. What Im looking for definitive proof one way or the other. these things always end in arguments between 2 people who are both scientists and who both have strong arguments but you never see any thing solid.

[Golden Dysprosium]

sasamiblue

Im asking why hasn't any one proven or disproven any of these things with solid evidence. if any of that is true what solid evidence would get the whole world to accept it is true and why hasn't such evidence been presented?

I don't think you can convince everyone that something is true unless it's blatantly obvious to the observer(s). People love a good story; the sales figures of Sci-Fi media confirms this. It's even better if you can link the Sci-Fi to real life, because it makes seemingly impossible things real. Plus, it doesn't involve a lot of thinking. Ex: When you see a tree in a park, you automatically assume one of 2 things: it grew there, or someone put it there. Who put it there? Could be anyone, but the most likely culprit is the muniple gov. wanting to make their city pretty. So, you just accept it was the city planners and don't check into the matter because that's boring. You've already made up some huge, though understandable series of assumptions, that the idea that it just grew there seems absurd.
In my experience, it's easier to tell a story to explain the unknown than to actually explain it to someone. But that's how they did stuff thousands of years go; they used mythos to explain what they couldn't explain through blatant observation.

[Vryko Lakas]

sasamiblue

I get my sources from the travel channel, the discovery channel, the history channel and the science channel as well as from professors and people with teaching jobs who bring this stuff to my attention in verbal discussions, Im not saying I believe or don't believe any thing Im asking why hasn't any one proven or disproven any of these things with solid evidence.

Um, some of those things you've mentioned HAVE been disproven. Like isochron and radiometric dating of rocks. We know how that works, with solid evidence. There's no reasonable question about it now. If someone told you that radiometric dating of rocks is questionable, it's probably because THEY don't know how it works. If someone says that the Rigveda are about "quantum physics," they're probably bullshitting for attention or because they're so deluded that they don't understand what they're saying. And by the way, you use all 100% of your brain (if you're healthy). That 10% thing is a persistent myth that only sticks around because people think it's very interesting and don't bother reading the science that proves it wrong. People want to believe strange things. They're far more likely to come across these "mysterious" claims than to come across the science that debunks them.
You know why you never see this on TV? Because TV producers think average people would be bored to tears learning how we can tell the age of rocks or the collection of hymns in the vedas. Ghost stories draw tourists, but a team of scientists finding perfectly mundane explanations is dismissed with a wave of the hand. That's the nature of sensationalism. The simple answer for why all this "mysterious" stuff persists is because people want it to.

So to loop back around and answer the question you have at the top of the thread: Yes, scientists take these things seriously. Very seriously. The problem is that many people don't take science seriously.

[vipr230]

sasamiblue

I get my sources from the travel channel, the discovery channel, the history channel and the science channel as well as from professors and people with teaching jobs who bring this stuff to my attention in verbal discussions, Im not saying I believe or don't believe any thing Im asking why hasn't any one proven or disproven any of these things with solid evidence. if any of that is true what solid evidence would get the whole world to accept it is true and why hasn't such evidence been presented? if its a lie were is the evidence that the information was a forgery? I don't accept any thing as fact or fiction until I see it on Mythbusters, or some other show of that quality. What Im looking for definitive proof one way or the other. these things always end in arguments between 2 people who are both scientists and who both have strong arguments but you never see any thing solid.

>.> Not that I dislike discovery or anything, but you really don't know a good source do you?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,483477,00.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.0512
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/55807
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/key-age-of-earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform

Once again, which of those contain decent information, which contain crappy information that would make anyone in the sciences cry, and which is a joke.

[Golden Dysprosium]

Vryko Lakas

And by the way, you use all 100% of your brain (if you're healthy). That 10% thing is a persistent myth that only sticks around because people think it's very interesting and don't bother reading the science that proves it wrong. People want to believe strange things.

Fixed the link.
The thing people don't realise is, if we only used 10% of our brains, after about 1000 or so years, evolution (that's right, I used the E-word) would eventually phase out the other 90%. The entire brain is put to use, but the part that controls say, running, isn't used when you're sitting on your butt watching t.v.
The sad part of all this is that all the con artists can use it as a cheap trick to sell their "magic cystals" and other assorted crap. It really is a sad world we live in when the thousands of hours of lab work by low-paid scientists is used by con artists to make millions by decieving people.
Like my dad always says:

Quote:

It pays to be smart because it's costly to be stupid.