Physics is easy. Biology is hard

Physics is easy. Biology is hard

How can biologists do a controlled experiment when even genetic clones aren't identical? How can they compare plants in two labs when those labs use different soil and different lighting? Sometimes these sorts of things don't matter, and sometimes they mean your experiment is worthless! How do you know which is which?? Is there any hope for biology? Eric is a physicist who spent the last 25 years working with biologists. In this episode, he discusses some of his joys and frustrations, and tries to convince Sam that biology is much harder than physics (Sam remains skeptical). If you want to read more about the "reproducibility crisis" in science, see the paper: A Survey on Data Reproducibility in Cancer Research Provides Insights into Our Limited Ability to Translate Findings from the Laboratory to the Clinic. By Aaron Mobley, Suzanne K. Linder, Russell Braeuer, Lee M. Ellis, & Leonard Zwelling https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0063221 Got a topic you’d like to hear us talk about? You can email us at theBbrains@gmail.com You can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast

Did physicists invent a problem just to solve it?

The universe we can see is big … really big. But what if it’s just a tiny piece of something way, way, way bigger? In this episode, Eric teaches Sam about the evidence for this bizarre possibility. If we can’t even see 99 percent of the universe, how can we know it’s there? Can science really draw useful conclusions about something we can’t observe now and won’t be able to observe in the future? Spoiler alert: Eric has his doubts. This is the third part in our continuing series on the scientific method. Got a topic you’d like to hear us talk about? You can email us at theBbrains@gmail.com You can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast

Fun with probability … Yes, really

In this episode Sam takes the lead to discuss two of his favorite "paradoxes" from probability. The Monty Hall problem is a much-discussed challenge concerning the best strategy to win a car on a game show. The Sleeping Beauty problem describes a situation philosophers can’t seem to agree about, even today. Got a topic you’d like to hear us talk about? You can email us at theBbrains@gmail.com You can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast ** The paper Sam mentions on the Sleeping Beauty problem is: Minimizing Inaccuracy for Self-Locating Beliefs by Brian Kierland, Bradley Monton https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00533.x [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00533.x] https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1224/1/minimizing_inaccuracy6.pdf [https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1224/1/minimizing_inaccuracy6.pdf]

No one can stop the Big Bang

In this episode Sam and Eric discuss the evidence that our universe began about 14 billion years ago in a very hot, dense state, then gradually expanded and cooled. As late as 1920, Einstein thought this idea was obviously nonsense. Fifty years later, it was rock-solid science. Is the Big Bang Theory testable? After all, we can't grow a universe in a lab. How can scientists do their job in a situation where traditional experiments are impossible? This is part 2 of our discussion comparing the scientific method to actual science. Got a topic you’d like to hear us talk about? You can email us at theBbrains@gmail.com You can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast

The Scientific Method vs Actual Science, Part I

In middle school, most of us were taught the "scientific method" – a simplified list of steps meant to help kids understand how scientists approach the world. But how accurate is it, really? In this episode, we get to talking about the history of science, and discuss how the reality of scientific research stacks up against the famous "method". First, we discuss Galileo - the first person we know who took a telescope and asked, "what if I point this up??" And we discuss the less-well-known figure of Ludwig Boltzmann, a genius mathematician who thought he'd proved the existence of atoms, only to encounter a shocking amount of skepticism. Lastly, Eric will discuss his own idea: the “Three Nails in a Coffin” Theory of Scientific Progress. Is it as silly as it sounds? Let's find out right now... Got a topic you’d like to hear us talk about? You can email us at theBbrains@gmail.com You can also find us on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BoltzmannBrainsPodcast