Dogs Align With Earth's Magnetic Field While Pooping, Study Finds

[Someone Depressing]

This is almost as interesting as hippo castration.

 

[Caffiene]

The study is a load of DS.

The paper shows a clear bias, where the authors are trying to justify their chosen conclusion from the start rather than discussing the actual evidence. Just for starters, they examined multiple variables, which introduces "degrees of freedom" that allows all sorts of biases to creep in. They even state in the paper that they didnt get the result they wanted, so they changed their method - they pretty much say straight out that the first statistical analysis they tried didnt show anything so they tried a different one to get a result.

This isnt even remotely newsworthy unless or until a better, more reliable replication is done.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Great, so when I spend hours in my local park watching dogs poop I'm a weirdo, but when a bunch of Germans do it it's research.

Bloody double standards.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

Maybe the dogs were just trying to orient themselves away from the strange scientists and their cameras.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Random question, would an MRI scan really screw up these magnetically sensitive animals?

 

[Pyrian]

Just for starters, they examined multiple variables, which introduces "degrees of freedom" that allows all sorts of biases to creep in. They even state in the paper that they didnt get the result they wanted, so they changed their method - they pretty much say straight out that the first statistical analysis they tried didnt show anything so they tried a different one to get a result.

This. It's a huge red flag. If you just keep throwing analyses at a dataset without taking into account the increasing degrees of freedom, sooner or later you'll "find" a "correlation" just by chance.

 

[zerragonoss]

That this is an article is dwarfed by this being a study. No, there's no need to pour more funding into our sex robots and hover-cars, that dog's taking a shit and we must know it's secrets.

Agreed, instead of having Deus Ex: Human Revolution level Cybernetics or having Real Life Gundams, we have to pour our research in dogs taking a dump. (Sigh) God...Dang it. /facedesk

How is studying how organic life interacts with magnetic fields, and how they are affected by them, not working towards cybernetics?

 

[Fijiman]

Well, on the bright side at least this proves that they're doing actual research instead of just fucking around with the money they're given.

 

[Reed Spacer]

The fact that someone created a study on this suggests that our scientists have way too much time on their hands.

Shouldn't they be designing pollution-free cars or death rays or something?

 

[Olas]

TO EVERYONE QUESTING THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS RESEARCH.

-1. Many scientific discoveries happen by accident when studying something seemingly unrelated. You never know what could be important.

-2. Pouring more money and manpower into research isn't going to magically guarantee faster or better results, so it's not like this is all money going to waste that could be put towards finding a cure for cancer or something. People are already trying to do that elsewhere and won't be significantly helped by whatever measly assets went into this.

-3. Considering the popularity and ubiquity of dogs in many countries, and their usefulness in policework and other public services, I would think that understanding them and what they're capable of would be worthwhile knowledge.

 

[Strazdas]

I do not have a dog but i had to take care of one for my newphiew for a while they were out of country, and i call DogShit on this study. it pooped in every direction it could find.

think about it. people keep saying that they have either good or bad sense of direction but how? why?

I cant speak for anyone else, but personally i sort o "draw a map" whenever i visit a place ive never been in. sort of similar to how you "Explore the map" in RPG games. with landmarks that i notice being... well... landmarks. this way if i get lost i can always "look up at the map" inside my head to orient myself better. It doesnt work 100% of course, and its hard to ind landmarks when colelcting shrooms in a forest, but i have found a way out for the group couple times so i guess it counts for something.

-2. Pouring more money and manpower into research isn't going to magically guarantee faster or better results, so it's not like this is all money going to waste that could be put towards finding a cure for cancer or something. People are already trying to do that elsewhere and won't be significantly helped by whatever measly assets went into this.

While this is true, to be honest pouring more money into cancer research would help, or rather pouring more server power to cancer research would help since they do a lot of simulations on computer and are basically limited by computing speed there, so giving them a supercomputer or two to play with would speed up the process.

 

[AngloDoom]

TO EVERYONE QUESTING THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS RESEARCH.

-1. Many scientific discoveries happen by accident when studying something seemingly unrelated. You never know what could be important.

-2. Pouring more money and manpower into research isn't going to magically guarantee faster or better results, so it's not like this is all money going to waste that could be put towards finding a cure for cancer or something. People are already trying to do that elsewhere and won't be significantly helped by whatever measly assets went into this.

-3. Considering the popularity and ubiquity of dogs in many countries, and their usefulness in policework and other public services, I would think that understanding them and what they're capable of would be worthwhile knowledge.

This. Jesus, why is the Escapist so down on everything recently? Can't we have a website-wide Resolution to have a little bit of optimism for once?

OT:

That's just unfair. We have terrible senses and now it turns out that our 'best friends' have been holding out an entirely new sense we don't have.

Thanks a lot, dogs.

 

[Exterminas]

I love the Escapist's idea of science. Every time some obscure study is posted here people complain that this money could have been spent on world hunger!

"Somebody researched something that I think is silly! Clearly this person should be out of a job and we should put all that delicious money into cancer research! Why, I would have my hover-board by now if we scrapped all that silly arts stuff and put all their cash into engineering!"


There are two points to consider:
1. You can not buy scientific progress. Real life is not Civ. There are no Science points to be spent, which are being wasted on studies like this. "More Money = Faster Progress" is Bullshit. Sure the money helps, but after a certain amount of investment you will just have to wait for research to be done.


2. You really need to read up on your science history.
Huge scientific breakthroughs often start with the smallest things. Take for example the discovery of radium, which led to atomic weapons and nuclear energy. When they started all they could tell the general public was: "Well, we are investigating some kind of dirt and stones, which make this machine here beep a lot!" Sounds pretty dumb, right? You can not tell what kinds of applications or future application research will have. Not ever.

If you attempt to do so you put yourself into the proud line of people who thought that there would never be a market for railroads since nobody would want to drive that fast. Or all those people who thought that there was no market for personal computers. Or the guys that believed the theory of relativity was nothing but Einstein's weird stoner dream.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

Well, all the dogs my family has owned over the past twenty-nine years of my life must have been faulty, because none of them did this, and I should know because our house conveniently faces north and not one of them has consistently done their business looking straight towards or away from the house when doing their business.

So allow me to call "nonsense" on this "study".

 

[Verrik]

TO EVERYONE QUESTING THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS RESEARCH.

-1. Many scientific discoveries happen by accident when studying something seemingly unrelated. You never know what could be important.

-2. Pouring more money and manpower into research isn't going to magically guarantee faster or better results, so it's not like this is all money going to waste that could be put towards finding a cure for cancer or something. People are already trying to do that elsewhere and won't be significantly helped by whatever measly assets went into this.

-3. Considering the popularity and ubiquity of dogs in many countries, and their usefulness in policework and other public services, I would think that understanding them and what they're capable of would be worthwhile knowledge.

This. Jesus, why is the Escapist so down on everything recently? Can't we have a website-wide Resolution to have a little bit of optimism for once?

OT:

That's just unfair. We have terrible senses and now it turns out that our 'best friends' have been holding out an entirely new sense we don't have.

Thanks a lot, dogs.

Recently? Ha! I've been coming to this sight for a while now and what I've come to expect every time I click on a new thread, is negativity.

Seriously, very rarely do I see threads with any sort of optimism. If someone brings up a thread about how excited they are for something, then the rest of the thread is filled with people basically condemning it to failure lol.

Or my favorite P); someone will start a topic, the general consensus is then usually against the original poster, with a few people agreeing with and defending the OP. And these few people are then meticulously quoted many many times explaining how they're wrong and exactly why they are wrong (but still make sure to tell them they're entitled to their opinion). Just two examples, but you get my point.

And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, debates and such are healthy, it would be boring if everyone thought the same way. I just personally find it very entertaining to read.