Key moderating principles I try to keep in mind as I struggle to understand complex molecular materials
-correlation does not imply causality
-extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
-Kauzmann's maxim: people will tend to believe what they want to believe rather than believing what the evidence before them suggests they should believe
-use the method of multiple alternative hypothesis
-be mindful of the dangers of curve fitting
-in systems with many degrees of freedom it is very hard to find control variables, because most variables are not independent of one another
-Feynman's warning: the easiest person to fool is yourself
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Maxwell's demon and the history of the second law of thermodynamics
I recently reread Warmth Disperses and Time Passes: The History of Heat by Hans Christian von Baeyer As a popular book, it provides a beaut...
-
This week Nobel Prizes will be announced. I have not done predictions since 2020 . This is a fun exercise. It is also good to reflect on w... -
Is it something to do with breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation? In molecular spectroscopy you occasionally hear this term thro... -
Nitrogen fluoride (NF) seems like a very simple molecule and you would think it would very well understood, particularly as it is small enou...
No comments:
Post a Comment