Rogue Waves

[Apathia]

So credible people telling similar stories over long periods of time does not constitute evidence?

I'm afraid not.
Years and years of UFO accounts doesn't add up to an alien invasion.
The Abduction accounts don't suggest we need an advanced alarm system to catch when the aliens enter our homes.

At nost these accounts make for an opportunity to study the Psychology and sociology of the human tendancy to create such things.

On the other hand:
For many years the Government of Singapore insisted that there were no cobras on the Island of Singapore. Countless people got bitten and had to go up to JB in Maylasia forb the antivenom that wasn't availible in Singapore for above reason. All these accounts of cobra biites where chalked up to anecdote.
Eventually with the capture of a cobra, the official position was altered and Singapore hospitals began to stock the antivenom.

Heresay and anecdotal reports may not measure up to the desirable level of evidence, but they do give a warrant for investigation.

 

[Oldpossum]

So credible people telling similar stories over long periods of time does not constitute evidence?

Correct.

I'm sure if I tried, I could get most of the population of Australia, to sign a petition, that Drop Bears are real, and we have all know someone who's aunt was molested by a Drop Bear, so they must be real.

I mean, Someone's Aunt, are such reliable witnesses, we automatically accept their version of events, if there is a conflict of views. And you can't get better credability that that now, can you....

I've personally seen US Marines walking around the Australian Bush wearing those silly hats with motorized propellers on them, Because everyone knows Drop Bears are easilly confused by rotating things, and so won't drop on someone wearing such a hat. So further evidence that Drop Bears are real, becaus they (the US Marines) wouldn't make themselve look like dorks, for a myth now, would they.

So there you have it, according to many credible people, telling similar stories over long periods of time, Drop Bears are Real!
Pity no scientist has even encountered, Live or Dead, a specimein of such a facsinating Marsupial Carnivore.

 

[politas]

So credible people telling similar stories over long periods of time does not constitute evidence?

More to the point, it doesn't constitute useful evidence. Anecdotal evidence gives imprecise data. You can't hope to build a mathematical model on such data.

So, even while they may have suspected that the waves may have been more frequent than the existing models predicted, until they got some solid data, they couldn't effectively adjust the model.

 

[TriangleMan]

Who was it who coined the phrase "the plural of ancedote is not data"? There are many things that thousands of people contend is (was) real but that doesn't make it true. Witch burnings occurred due to realiance on anecdotes. Scientists have to be more careful about the quality of information before they commit resources to investigating what, most of the time, would be a red herring.

 

[Roboramma]

It's obvious that there will be some claims that are not well supported that will turn out to be true. The flip side of that is that there are other claims that are not well supported that will turn out to be false.
The problem is that we have no way to distinguish between these claims until new evidence comes to light. If there were some other way, we'd use it, and that would become evidence.

So we have two choices when it comes to weakly supported claims. We can overestimate their truth - accepting many claims that are false, but missing less of the true ones. Or we can underestimate their truth, accepting very few false claims, but also missing more of the true ones.
I suggest that the best anyone can do is try to find a useful balance between these two, realizing of course that it is a balance.

That useful balance means knowing the cost of dismissing the claim if it is true, as well as the cost of accepting the claim if it's false. Based on what we know, we might judge that a claim has a likelihood of 1% of being true, but that if we disregard it (provisionally, but then almost everything is provisional) and it turns out to be true, tens of millions of dollars will be lost, whereas if we accept it and it turns out to be false, only a few thousand dollars will be spend on preventive measures. In that case, provisionally accepting the claim, at least to the point of taking measures against the possibility that it's true would be warranted. I think many people made an argument of that kind in the early days of global warming, and probably still do.

Accepting every claim would be dangerous. It would set back science, it would incapacitate economics. Denying every claim would be equally dangerous.
So we're left with assessing the costs and benefits of affirming or denying claims, and putting that against the likelihood of their being true or false based on what evidence we have to work with. This is bound to give both false positives and false negatives, but I can't see any way avoid that.

If you have any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.

 

[athon]

Correct.

I'm sure if I tried, I could get most of the population of Australia, to sign a petition, that Drop Bears are real, and we have all know someone who's aunt was molested by a Drop Bear, so they must be real.

I was the product of a drop bear molestation. Although, on account of more anecdotal evidence, I think it was actually an affair my mother had. Some accounts of that affair suggest it was not an affair at all, but my mother married the drop bear. I even understand it might not be a drop bear, but a rather hairy human. Although I do have an account of that person not being hairy at all, but is actually my father.

Hm.

Anecdotes are a great place to start in science, but a poor place to finish.

Athon

 

[Starrman]

So credible people telling similar stories over long periods of time does not constitute evidence?

Yes. That was the whole point of my second paragraph. There are lots of credible people telling similar stories of being abducted by aliens - what should science do about the aliens then?

The point is that the skeptical scientists didn't just sit there with their arms folded and do nothing until hard evidence came. They knew something had happened to the ships that were damaged or disappeared, so they used the best tools they had at the time to try and figure out what it was. Data at the time was not suggestive of monsterous waves. Time, study and better technology through, get this, science showed them to be wrong - so they immediately went to work on it.

Just like alien abductions - there is a reason all these people tell these stories, there is just no evidence that aliens are involved at all. So the sciences of psychology and maybe neurology work to figure out what is going on in the heads of these people. If something compelling does show up to suggest something other than confabulation or hallucination then that avenue will be investigated.

 

[Meffy]

Who was it who coined the phrase "the plural of ancedote is not data"?

(*raises paw*) That would be me. A friend of my friend will vouch for that.

 

[tsg]

So was it okay to lose many ships and lives on the basis that "[a]necdotes are not evidence"?

Okay, Rodney. How exactly do you propose we separate what's true from what's not?

 

[richardm]

That began to change on New Year’s Day in 1995, when a rock-steady oil platform in the North Sea produced what was considered the first hard evidence of a rogue wave.

This one, in fact.

I've heard lots of anecdotes about mermaids at sea who lured sailors to their death; I think we should put more research into anti-mermaid technology before we risk the lives of any more of our Brave Tars.

In fact sea travel sounds so dangerous I think we should ban it and fly everywhere, which we can now do thanks to those Wright Brothers Mojo keeps on about.

 

[gfunkusarelius]

anecdotes can give scientists a reason to investigate, so i dont really understand the problem. i think some people get testy when people say anecdotes are without any value, but i dont think many rational people would say that. however, a million anecdotes dont take the place of controlled observation. this is a perfect case, scientists were skeptical (they didnt say the waves couldnt happen, just found it unlikely) and when the very rare opportunity to observe a phenomenon in a more controlled environment came about, they took note. why is this so hard to swallow?

 

[Rodney]

Okay, Rodney. How exactly do you propose we separate what's true from what's not?

Roboramma's comments about striking a balance between blind acceptance and blind rejection of anecdotes make a lot of sense to me. The main point is not to ignore anecdotal evidence when it comes from many credible individuals over many years. Unfortunately, as the Times article demonstrates, there is currently an imbalance, with most of the scientific establishment blindly rejecting anecdotes that call into question the conventional wisdom.

 

[tsg]

Roboramma's comments about striking a balance between blind acceptance and blind rejection of anecdotes make a lot of sense to me. The main point is not to ignore anecdotal evidence when it comes from many credible individuals over many years. Unfortunately, as the Times article demonstrates, there is currently an imbalance, with most of the scientific establishment blindly rejecting anecdotes that call into question the conventional wisdom.

What should they have done differently?

 

[Rodney]

What should they have done differently?

Oceanographers should have begun to re-think their flawed mathematical models long before 1995 because the anecdotal evidence was overwhelmingly against their notion that rogue waves are extremely rare. As the article notes:

Over the centuries, many accounts have told of monster waves that battered and sank ships. In 1933 in the North Pacific, the Navy oiler Ramapo encountered a huge wave. The crew, calm enough to triangulate from the ship’s superstructure, estimated its height at 112 feet.

In 1966, the Italian cruise ship Michelangelo was steaming toward New York when a giant wave tore a hole in its superstructure, smashed heavy glass 80 feet above the waterline, and killed a crewman and two passengers. In 1978, the München, a German barge carrier, sank in the Atlantic. Surviving bits of twisted wreckage suggested that it surrendered to a wave of great force.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Oceanographers should have begun to re-think their flawed mathematical models long before 1995 because the anecdotal evidence was overwhelmingly against their notion that rogue waves are extremely rare. As the article notes:

Over the centuries, many accounts have told of monster waves that battered and sank ships. In 1933 in the North Pacific, the Navy oiler Ramapo encountered a huge wave. The crew, calm enough to triangulate from the ship’s superstructure, estimated its height at 112 feet.

In 1966, the Italian cruise ship Michelangelo was steaming toward New York when a giant wave tore a hole in its superstructure, smashed heavy glass 80 feet above the waterline, and killed a crewman and two passengers. In 1978, the München, a German barge carrier, sank in the Atlantic. Surviving bits of twisted wreckage suggested that it surrendered to a wave of great force.

2 anecdotes 33 years apart and one "suggestion" a further 12 years later?

Hardly a compelling body of evidence is it?

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Pity no scientist has even encountered, Live or Dead, a specimein of such a facsinating Marsupial Carnivore.

Or have they?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/5172292.stm

"The dig site in Queensland has yielded remains of at least 20 previously unknown creatures. "

including a "killer kangaroo":

"The flesh-eating marsupial would have lived between 10 and 20 million years ago, scientists say. "

 

[Diamond]

They laughed at the Wright Brothers.

They laughed at the Marx Brothers.

And they're still laughing.

 

[tsg]

Oceanographers should have begun to re-think their flawed mathematical models long before 1995 because the anecdotal evidence was overwhelmingly against their notion that rogue waves are extremely rare.

Assuming all this is true, to what end?

 

[Rodney]

Assuming all this is true, to what end?

The same end as now: "The goals are to better tally them, understand why they form, explore the possibility of forecasts, and learn how to better protect ships, oil platforms and people."

 

[tsg]

The same end as now: "The goals are to better tally them, understand why they form, explore the possibility of forecasts, and learn how to better protect ships, oil platforms and people."

Which they are currently doing. So what's the problem?