SpaceandFluff @spaceandfluff - Tumblr Blog

Uni student Caine

one of the best academic paper titles

for those who don't speak academia: "according to our MRI machine, dead fish can recognise human emotions. this suggests we probably should look at the results of our MRI machine a bit more carefully"

derinthescarletpescatarian

I hope everyone realises how incredibly important this dead fish study is. This was SO fucking important.

imightbeobsessedwithsocks

I still don’t understand

derinthescarletpescatarian

So basically, in the psych and social science fields, researchers would (I don't know if they still do this, I've been out of science for awhile) sling around MRIs like microbiolosts sling around metagenomic analyses. MRIs can measure a lot but people would use them to measure 'activity' in the brain which is like... it's basically the machine doing a fuckload of statistics on brain images of your blood vessels while you do or think about stuff. So you throw a dude in the machine and take a scan, then give him a piece of chocolate cake and throw him back in and the pleasure centres light up. Bam! Eating chocolate makes you happy, proven with MRI! Simple!

These tests get used for all kinds of stuff, and they get used by a lot of people who don't actually know what they're doing, how to interpret the data, or whether there's any real link between what they're measuring and what they're claiming. It's why you see shit going around like "men think of women as objects because when they look at a woman, the same part of their brain is active as when they look at a tool!" and "if you play Mozart for your baby for twenty minutes then their imagination improves, we imaged the brain to prove it!" and "we found where God is in the brain! Christians have more brain activity in this region than atheists!"

There are numerous problems with this kind of science, but the most pressing issue is the validity of the scans themselves. As I said, there's a fair bit of stats to turn an MRI image into 'brain activity', and then you do even more stats on that to get your results. Bennett et. al.'s work ran one of these sorts of experiments, with one difference -- they used a dead salmon instead of living human subjects. And they got positive results. The same sort of experiment, the same methodology, the same results that people were bandying about as positive results. According to the methodology in common use, dead salmon can distinguish human facial expressions. Meaning one of two things:

Dead salmon can recognise human facial expressions. OR

Everyone else's results are garbage also, none of you have data for any of this junk.

I cannot overstate just how many papers were completely fucking destroyed by this experiment. Entire careers of particularly lazy scientists were built on these sorts of experiments. A decent chunk of modern experimental neuropsychology was resting on it. Which shows that science is like everything else -- the best advances are motivated by spite.

borzoi-superiority

WHY. WHY ARE THERE LAZY SCIENTISTS. Science is like the WORST field to go into if you AREN'T INTERESTED IN IT???

rlyehtaxidermist

It's extremely easy to be lazy about things you're interested in. Science is very small amounts of Cool, Inspiring Moments and a lot of paperwork. Having what looks like a dramatic breakthrough is a massive distraction from double-checking all the tedious documentation of exactly what you did to get there and how.

grox

zenimakitchen

召喚変身系の獣化

meltesh28

let's hangout together for the rest of our lives or something dude

rederiswrites

Quietly losing my mind over the fact that Elon Musk has straight up orchestrated a coup of our executive branch and like....I don't even know what, if any, system we have in place to fix this. Like... He's just taken control of the money and locked out the actual appointed officials. What the fuck.

rederiswrites

Nazis are taking over my government, and like, not even just the Nazis we fucking elected! And I'm...making hamburgers? Because somebody has to make dinner? I just feel completely unhinged.

derinthescarletpescatarian

I think that's how random civillians generally feel in these situations. Someone's gotta make dinner.

lizardlicks

If you're wondering, there is plenty to be done about it, and plenty being done about it already, even if it's not happening instantly in a way you can perceive.

Yes. Let me break it down for you.

rederiswrites

Reblogging because this is an excellent article that both tells you about some of what's being done and breaks it down in a way that will help you understand and think about future action. Please read!

syn4k

burning text gif maker

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minecraft logo font text generator w/assorted textures and pride flags

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FromSoftware image macro generator (elden ring Noun Verbed text)

image to 3d effect gif

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microsoft wordart maker (REALLY annoying to use on mobile)

you're welcome

The Death Generator

This is the greatest thing ever

slitherpunk

elf yuri except one of them is high fantasy and the other is one of santa's

jsketch12

9'6" forest guardian and her 4'5" toymaker gf

jsketch12

sorry for hijacking your post again op but after posting the initial elves i had ideas for more doodles i wanted to do so. elf yuri (but i elaborate)

athelind

Scheduling this to drop on December 1st for the holidaze.

mindboogling

I love making a gag character for D&D, forgetting they’re just a gag character, and then take a step back to look at the original ref

pansexualkiba

mosswall

No offense but I think some of you would be a lot happier writing a fictional atlas or encyclopedia instead of a narrative story

ramshacklefey

Concur! Go forth and write your Dragonology and your Guidebook to Fairyland! Write a traveler's diary of a setting! These are fun and legitimate things to do!