This one contains more real examples of them ballooning:
If arachnids are able to detect magnetic fields and react accordingly, are humans also able to do the same?
Anecdotally, I've always had people commenting on how their mood is down when it is storming outside, and that they feel a 'negative energy' that doesn't motivate them to do anything. So I wonder if there is a relation?
Thanks for the video. Never heard of Veritasium before, now one of my new favorite youtubers
>First, they showed that spiders can detect electric fields. They put the arachnids on vertical strips of cardboard in the center of a plastic box, and then generated electric fields between the floor and ceiling of similar strengths to what the spiders would experience outdoors. These fields ruffled tiny sensory hairs on the spiders’ feet, known as trichobothria. “It’s like when you rub a balloon and hold it up to your hairs,” Morley says.
>In response, the spiders performed a set of movements called tiptoeing—they stood on the ends of their legs and stuck their abdomens in the air. “That behavior is only ever seen before ballooning,” says Morley. Many of the spiders actually managed to take off, despite being in closed boxes with no airflow within them. And when Morley turned off the electric fields inside the boxes, the ballooning spiders dropped.
One amazing thing to me is how this is the sort of experiment that an educated layman could do in his garage without the need for millions of dollars in funding and a research institute. Quaint and inspiring to aspiring citizen scientists at the same time.
Science isn’t the club; academia is.
Normally, when we say “scientist”, we mean “academic scientist”—i.e. someone who does science specifically for the enculturated ideals of academia (e.g. the advancement of common knowledge) using the process of academia (e.g. writing papers and sending them off to journals, attending conferences, etc.)
(You might define “academic scientist” in other ways, with something about a treadmill of papers and grants, but I would point out that any definition of academic science has to include tenured science professors, who aren’t subject to the same forces.)
Since academia (i.e. the global cooperation of academics to further knowledge by writing, reading and reviewing papers) is seen, by academics, as an unalloyed good, they see scientists who don’t take part in said academia to be doing something strange, something perhaps sub-optimal for the furthering of scientific knowledge.
And I feel like that’s maybe true, but also often misjudged: many “citizen scientists” are actually academic scientists. They may not be funded by a university or submit papers to Nature, but they collaborate and are in constant communication with people who do, such that their work isn’t advancing the boundaries of science any less optimally than their own work is.
Just the first example off the top of my head: Destin Sandlin, who some might call a “citizen scientist” (he’s a YouTuber who does science journalism but also often his own scientific experiments) works more heavily with “academic scientists” to do his experiments, than most University grad students ever even bother to do. He might be a “travelling” scientist instead of belonging to any particular institution, but he’s certainly an academic through-and-through.
I don't think there's anything demeaning or low-class in being a "citizen scientist" or an amateur (which means someone who does something for the love of it, "ama"). And I think it's proper to give respect to those who have gone the distance to become professional scientists. Certainly the few scientists I've been honored to meet pretty much are on a different level than us amateurs.
Strangely enough, I have been unable to find their definition for Citizen Management Consultants...
I hear you, but I'm curious why "citizen" sounds diminutive to your ear. Alternatives I've heard people use are "amatuer", "non-professional" or "backyard" scientist which all have a negative connotation to me. Honestly, I think using "citizen scientist" is to differentiate themselves from non-scientists who claim to be performing science:
1. Professional Scientists (professionals educated in a particular field of science) 2. Citizen Scientists (people attempting to do science, who recognize they are not professionals) 3. Self-described "scientists" (people ignore scientific method and reject science conflicting with their beliefs: industry lobbyists, homeopaths, flat-earthers, etc)
By making space for second-class members it means you can more easily have a club of people trying to do science (#1 and #2) and exclude #3 who seek to hijack science for their own personal purposes.
Citizen scientist seems to me to denote that one is actually a scientist despite lacking credentials unlike the 5000 other crackpots. To call someone who has no credentials a scientist would be misleading thus the term has utility and meaning.
In theory, your idea sounds plausible :)
