Cannae controvery step aside, Octopi maybe aliens!

[PB666]

Well, if you think mainstream science is weird, try filtering it through Reddit and you get

"Octopuses May Be Aliens, Scientist Claim"

But of course with all the stress and bickering over quantum and relativistic physics, space-time, dark whatevers, and quantum entanglement, we do need a bit of comic relief

This little bit of humor comes from

http://yournewswire.com/octopuses-may-be-space-aliens-scientists-claim/

It was as if the octopus genome had been “put into a blender and mixedâ€Â, said co-author Caroline Albertin, also from the University of Chicago.

A bigger question is do reporters need a license to practice, hmmmm I guess that would violate free speech.

[MinimumSky5]

My personal opinion is that free speech is voided in science, you should only state what you can prove to be true, or that is well known to be true. Free speech is no excuse for pseudoscience or misleading the public (and even if that article was a joke, many of my friends believed it.)

[sal_vager]

It's pretty hard to prove anything to be "true", but scientific claims should be backed by some evidence or experiment, they should also be falsifiable.

And anyone involved in a scientific discussion should be open to having their evidence, experiments and the claims themselves tested, and if they are found to be incorrect, dismissed.

[Kryten]

I think the problem in this case can be solved in a much more basic way than poking into philosophy of science stuff; making science reporters read at least the abstract of the paper they're supposed to be reporting on, rather than skimming a report in some rival publication on it. Stories like this usually come about by Chinese whispers rather than a single incompetent reporter.

[KerikBalm]

This isn't about scientists... this is about science reporting.

The authors of the paper never claimed that an octopus was an alien.

I'm not sure if that website is a joke... the article for the most part seems to be legitimate reporting, with a very illegitimate headline.

A scientist had a little sense of humor, and then gets a horribly misrepresented headline.

He said:

“The late British zoologist Martin Wells said the octopus is an alien. In this sense, then, our paper describes the first sequenced genome from an alien.â€Â

Basically he's saying their paper describes the first sequenced octopus genome.

The rest is description of that genome... nothing in there implies alien.

Interesting evolutionary process... but not alien.

[sal_vager]

Not "it came from outer space" alien at least, but definitely alien in appearance, thought processes, and many other ways.

But saying it's a space alien is more likely to get views.

[PB666]

This isn't about scientists... this is about science reporting.

The authors of the paper never claimed that an octopus was an alien.

I'm not sure if that website is a joke... the article for the most part seems to be legitimate reporting, with a very illegitimate headline.

A scientist had a little sense of humor, and then gets a horribly misrepresented headline.

He said:

“The late British zoologist Martin Wells said the octopus is an alien. In this sense, then, our paper describes the first sequenced genome from an alien.â€Â

.

.

But that statement to another scientist makes no sense. In the scientifc world the most alien things to human on earth either gave rise to the cell or their mitochondria. Other archea or certain types of soil bacteria are far more dissimilar to humans than a cephalopod.

This would be like me concluding that a chimp is a alien ape because of the anomolous evolution of its Y chromosome. When we say ape, quintessentially we think chimp or gorilla to a lessor degree orangutan, then gibbons, thus that logic means nothing. The other logic would be as an outsider, but octopus live in all oceans and preceed humans by millions of years so ..... There is only on sense that is left, they are not the product of abiogenesis.

[rtxoff]

Well the Kraken came from outer space too and it's the same family as the Octopus so it seems legit for me , they aliens from space

[vger]

My personal opinion is that free speech is voided in science

Good idea. And if anyone claims they've discovered something that the guild disagrees with, we can put the crackpot under house arrest!

[benzman]

Not "it came from outer space" alien at least, but definitely alien in appearance, thought processes, and many other ways.

But saying it's a space alien is more likely to get views.

Here is a report written by another popular press journalist without the gee-wizz alien slant.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/08/13/4292613.htm

[sal_vager]

It makes for a very different story when the reporter doesn't just capitalise on an offhand remark to get a headline.