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Las falacias del culto a Loeb

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Cuando el hype y el sensacionalismo mediático alimentan la fascinación pseudocientífica (Este artículo es traducción del original en inglés que se puede encontrar aquí ) Introducción La palabra «culto» se usa aquí como traducción del vocablo "cult" en el artículo original en inglés, en el sentido recogido en el diccionario Merriam-Webster ([1], 2.c): «un grupo de personas caracterizado por una gran devoción hacia una persona, idea, movimiento u obra». En los últimos meses he observado, o al menos esa es mi impresión, el surgimiento de un poderoso culto en torno al físico Abraham «Avi» Loeb y/o a su idea de que el cometa interestelar 3I/ATLAS no es en realidad un cometa, sino una nave espacial alienígena. Aunque no dispongo de estadísticas objetivas, mi percepción personal (admito que subjetiva) a partir de la interacción en redes sociales con muchos seguidores de Loeb sugiere un perfil bien definido. Suelen ser mentes curiosas, deseosas de desvelar los misterios del...
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The fallacies behind the cult of Loeb

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How media hype and misunderstanding fuel pseudoscientific fascination Existe una versión en español de este artículo aquí  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...
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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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