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The fallacies behind the cult of Loeb

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How media hype and misunderstanding fuel pseudoscientific fascination  Introduction The word “cult” is used here in the sense given by the Merriam-Webster dictionary ([1], 2.c): “a group of people characterized by great devotion to a person, idea, movement, or work”.  In recent months I have observed (or at least it is my impression) the rise of a powerful cult around the physicist Abraham "Avi" Loeb and/or his idea that the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is, in fact, not a comet but an alien spacecraft. Although I do not have objective statistics, my personal (and admittedly subjective) perception from interacting on social media with many of Loeb’s followers suggests a distinctive profile. They tend to be curious minds, eager to uncover the mysteries of the universe, genuinely interested in science, yet lacking not only in-depth knowledge of the current body of scientific understanding, but even the most basic grasp of the philosophy of science itself. Moreover, they of...
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3I/ATLAS. A cat on my balcony

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(En español  aquí )  S ummary      Recently, a new interstellar object passing through our solar system has been discovered: 3I/ATLAS. This object has sparked much curiosity and is being intensely studied by astronomers worldwide. A paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server suggests the possibility that this object might actually be an alien spacecraft secretly preparing to attack us at the end of this year. This peculiar idea is based on a series of coincidences supposedly too unlikely for a natural object. In this article, written for a general audience without requiring prior knowledge, I counter each of these alleged improbabilities. The first sections (Sections 1 and 2) present general reflections on the danger of establishing criteria after the fact to defend an implausible hypothesis. We discuss aspects of the philosophy of science that are important to understand why science must be conducted with rigorous and disciplined methodologies. This first p...
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3I/ATLAS. Un gato en mi terraza

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(In English here ) Resumen     Recientemente se ha descubierto un nuevo objeto interestelar pasando por nuestro sistema solar, 3I/ATLAS. Este objeto ha despertado mucha curiosidad y está siendo intensamente estudiado por los astrónomos de todo el mundo. Un artículo subido al servidor de preprints  arXiv sugiere la posibilidad de que este objeto sea en realidad una nave alienígena preparándose en secreto para atacarnos a finales de este año. Esta peculiar idea es sustentada en una serie de coincidencias, supuestamente muy improbables para un objeto natural. En este artículo, escrito para un público general sin necesidad de conocimientos previos, contraargumento cada una de esas improbabilidades. Las primeras secciones (secciones 1 y 2) plantean reflexiones generales sobre el peligro de establecer a posteriori  criterios para defender una hipótesis poco plausible. Se discuten aspectos de filosofía de la ciencia que son importantes para entender por qué la ciencia deb...
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