Talk:2656: Scientific Field Prefixes
Interestingly enough, the last time I was at a dentist, I ask them if they had seen any research work on how to do dentistry in zero-g, like if you got a toothache halfway to Mars.
162.158.107.56 01:58, 9 August 2022 (UTC) BCS
Comment on comment: there should have been work done on dental procedures aboard orbiting stations, and also on e.g. Antarctic bases. 162.158.134.25 04:39, 9 August 2022 (UTC) Pär Leijonhufvud
Those who say that there's no such thing as High-Energy Theology should be taken with a pinch of salt. Or even a Lot! 172.70.91.80 02:05, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
I'm a little concerned with Theoretical Theology. How much more theoritical can base theology be? 108.162.250.198 02:22, 9 August 2022 (UTC) Beechmere
'Theoretical theology' is a tautology. So the first word is redundant. MarquisOfCarrabass (talk) 06:47, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
I'd love to conduct research on Marine Massage! How do I find the link? (Purposes.)
Unfortunately the "Marine dentistry" one appear to be a false positive: it contains the test string "...Marine, Dentistry..." in a list of possible fields where AR technology could be useful (Novakova, N.G., 2019. Innovation potential of augmented technologies in industrial context. Industry 4.0, 4(1), pp.24-28). Also the "high-energy psychology" one was similarly a dud: student newspaper with a help wanted ad for a "high energy psychology student" (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/217247671.pdf). The lack of manual curation of Scholar sometimes gives you these finds. Thirdly, Randall definitely searched with quote marks: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=marine+dentistry yields over 100 k results while https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%252C5&q=%22marine+dentistry%22 only yields one, with at least one of the former being papers on marine mammal dentistry (I have for practical porpoises no interest in dentistry, but I *want* to read https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119545804.ch11). In summary: by searching for the exact phrase Randall eliminated a large number of false positives, but also missed a large number of interesting papers. 162.158.134.157 04:32, 9 August 2022 (UTC) Pär Leijonhufvud
honestly I'm mostly worried about computational theology 172.71.6.65 04:40, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
- It's a fairly common subject in science fiction. Fredric Brown's short story "Answer", for example. BunsenH (talk) 04:46, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
- Isn't that better known as numerology? 172.70.85.221 08:49, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some research into use of synchrotron radiation in treating cancers in the jaw. Doesn't that count as "high energy"? BunsenH (talk) 04:46, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
'High Energy Theology' sounds like an area of study extremely NOT conducive to the long-term survival of the human race. See this quote from the PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA:
'Mal-2 was once asked by one of his Disciples if he often prayed to Eris. He replied with these words: "No, we Erisians seldom pray, it is much too dangerous. Charles Fort has listed many factual incidences of ignorant people confronted with, say, a drought, and then praying fervently -- and then getting the entire village wiped out in a torrential flood."
We got ourselves into enough trouble when we split the atom. Gods only know what would result if we ever manage to split the thaum.
MarquisOfCarrabass (talk) 06:58, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Why is the "explanation" someone nitpicking the search method (and mixing up the "former" and "latter" order of unquoted vs. quoted), rather than an explanation of the joke? Conster (talk) 08:13, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
- Because sadly after ParL did their nitpicking, nobody else felt qualified to actually explain the joke 256.256.256.256 (talk about me behind my back) 10:09, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
I worked on giving actually competent editors a base to modify, but then someone else had already made an explanation. Here's my attempt:
"Within each branch of science, like physics, chemistry or biology, there are different scientific fields. Some of the prefixes, like theoretical, quantum or astro-, are used across multiple branches of science. For example quantum physics is about the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles, while Quantum chemistry is about the application of quantum mechanics to chemical systems.
Randall combines a bunch of different Scientific Field Prefixes with another bunch of scientific branches, creating combinations that form several real fields of science, but also nonsense ones. To get a grasp on whether that scientific field is real and/or well-known, he searches for the combinations on Google Scholar, a web search engine that indexes the contents of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines, counting the number of results for each combination. Some term combinations are common, and can thus be assumed to be real scientific fields, while others are uncommon, suggesting that those fields are not well known. Four combinations are not found even once, suggesting that they are "potential research opportunities", as the title text says.
There are problems with Randall's method though:"
Maybe some of this may be useful, I don't know 256.256.256.256 (talk about me behind my back) 11:21, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
