this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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Science Memes

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Considering the old model is made with shrink-wrapping this is viable option (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The reason old renderings of dinosaurs look like this is that these represent the threshold of the known. They are scientific renders, containing only the details that we can be reasonably certain actually existed on these animals. You can of course go further and fill in missing details with imagination and reasonable speculation, but this will always be more an exercise in art than science, a speculative exercise.

I feel like a better way to represent "the threshold of the known" would be sort of the pictorial equivalent of "error bars" — instead of doing one image showing an animal that basically looks like it has mange because that's all you can be sure of, do a matrix of images that show various extremes of possibilities.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I'm blanking on the exact phrase, but it's something like "never believe a number with unreported error".

To get further into the weeds there is a significant difference in approach between theoretical and experimental science. In experimental science it's not only enough to communicate what you "know" but to communicate the underlying biased, tolerances and precisions of the thing being measured and modeling approach being used.

these represent the threshold of the known.

I would argue that those representations are inherently bad science because they do not communicate the margin of error. Grue, I believe you are spot on with a concept in how you would make those drawings more scientifically accurate, but ultimately they are artistic renderings of scientific understandings, but not scientific themselves.

While I don't disagree with WoodScientist that modern scientific institutions are inherently conservative, the process of science is not, nor should it be. Apologizing for the inherent conservatism in science is unscientific, harms belief in vetted resulted, conflates institutions for processes and projects a people problem onto the inanimate.