Of course you’re right. I should know better. :smack:
Y’know, this just came to me: Some of us are looking at this as scientists, and for scientists the scientific method is vitally important. The group Cecil wrote about, the National Fire Protection Association, is mostly composed of non-scientists concerned with fires. Someone who writes a property insurance policy or a local fire code probably doesn’t care if the precise mechanism of lightning rods is not properly explained or even proven to work under experimental conditions. Instead, they will look at centuries of good results when lightning rods were used and let that be that. What scientists recognize as proof is seen as not only unnecessary but pretty silly when the “truth” stares them in the face every day.
Sure, this might seem like belief in dowsing to some of us, but to me it’s more like a belief that willow bark tea can relieve a headache. Sure, eventually scientists were able to prove it worked, explain why it worked, purify the active ingredient, and modify it to make it easier on your stomach, but the basic belief was not wrong.
Hey, I’ve been around for decades without being protected by a lightning rod and never yet been hit by lightning. Not being attached to a lightning rod works! And it makes things a lot easier when I’m putting on my pajamas.
Or like the belief that laetrile cures cancer. It was self-evident to lots of people, then finally it was scientifically evaluated, and found to not work. Wait a minute…
Lightning rods may be just dandy. “But it’s obvious that they work, people having been saying so for centuries” is not a credible way of demonstrating it.
Oh, please.
Conspiracy theories are something very specific. They occur after an official, usually government, explanation of an event has been propounded, and insist, usually in so many words, that the officials have been lying about the explanation.
Conspiracy theories are not conspiracies. Conspiracies happen all the time. A few people got together and decided to assassinate several government officials. That’s a conspiracy. Everybody agrees that it happened. A conspiracy theory would be that the Radical Republicans wanted Lincoln dead so that they could punish the South more than he wanted to, so they got Booth and the others to do their bidding, knowingly or unknowingly. That’s a conspiracy theory. Nobody sane believes that. And there is not a particle of evidence to show that it’s true.
All conspiracy theories boil down to the same propositions. The Mafia isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s not even a conspiracy, except for the often overblown RICO definition. It was open and known to everyone, except the FBI. Why the FBI refused to acknowledge the existence of the Mafia is the subject of conspiracy theories, but no good evidence exists for any of them either.
Actually, the existence of conspiracy theories is possibly the best empirical evidence of confirmation bias around today. To believe in any conspiracy theory, to believe that such a thing can ever possibly be true, requires complete denial of all contrary facts, all standards of evidence, all basic meanings of the very words involved. But anything that confirms a conspiracy theory in the lunatic minds of those who believe is given total credence, no matter the source or likelihood of the evidence.
Bah. Humbug. There are no conspiracy theories that have ever been proven true. None.
Oh, come now! You are being silly in an almost abusive manner.
See, the difference is that insurance companies never accepted the efficacy of laetrile as a cancer cure-all, but they put a lot of stock in the ability of lightning rods to prevent damage to properties they protect. Scientists look for what’s testable. Insurance companies look for what’s been tested and demonstrated to work, hang HOW it works. If buildings without lightning rods had not been shown to suffer more lightning damage than buildings with them, saving the insurance companies from having to pay if they didn’t work this debate would’ve ended 150 years ago. Always remember that insurance companies are not charities but businesses out to make a profit and if something doesn’t prevent that they will drop it like a hot potato. Lightning rods SEEM to work and have a long history of having worked and actuarial scientists are the hardest-nosed mathematicians you are likely to encounter because for them this isn’t an ivory-tower game played for Nobels and tenure. To get back to old Ben, it’s all about the Benjamins.
And we are not talking about witchcraft here but something that was founded on a sound hypothesis: bleeding off a charge to ground will prevent a really big built-up charge from damaging the building below the rod. Franklin may not have had all the details, inventing that part of electronics as he went along, but this is the same principle behind a circuit with a capacitor and one without. Energy is stored in the capacitor, in this case the atmosphere because air is a fine dielectric, then is suddenly released to continue through the circuit on its way to ground when the capacitor can hold no more, while a plain wire allows through the energy to dribble through unimpeded, more or less. (Last waffling thrown in to bypass any remarks from EEs that a plain wire has some impedance. I’ve dealt with those guys before, y’know. 
That’s fine to say about a lot of things, but like using salicylic acid to treat headaches, sometimes the old remedies really do work.
Would that be because, by your limited definition, once a conspiracy theory has been proven it is no longer a conspiracy theory? Wouldn’t a better term be “conspiracy hypothesis?”
No, I’m pointing up the fallacy of a certain brand of thinking in an absurd manner to get your attention.
What’s disturbing is your seeming acceptance of the idea that if enough people believe something and give testimonials to that effect, science is unnecessary and can be relegated to “an ivory-tower game played for Nobels and tenure”.
This is a foolproof recipe for being fooled badly by something that looks plausible and has a bunch of anecdotal evidence in its favor, whatever the subject.
If you examine that statement for awhile, you’ll identify a contradiction.
Have fun. 
Good lord, how long have you known me? Have I EVER accepted ANYTHING as being probably valid without it having a solid “it’s likely to be possible because of this:” explanation?
I’m (mildly, but I’ll get over it in about 45 minutes) hurt.
Yeah, and I’ve had this banana in my ear for years to keep alligators away. It’s always worked, there are no alligators to be found 'round here (except this one but nobody’s perfect, and Anderson’s quite a ways north of here).
So my question here is: Where is the trigger? At what point does “socially accepted but scientifically unproven” get studied in the depth that it deserves? Why haven’t lightning rods triggered this reaction (with some exception given to CalMeacham’s posted book on the subject, but is such a limited study enough?) at some point in the last 250 years? Do non-conforming anicdotes carry enough weight to start the process or are they simply passed off as minor exceptions to the rule?
As to conspiracy theories, there are quite a few out there - some wackier than others - but isn’t saying “All conspiracy theroies are false” akin to saying “All unproven theories are false”?
As to this I present:
The Tobacco Industry:
Conspiracy claim - The tobacco industry meddled with and adjusted the nicotine levels in cigarettes to make them more addictive.
Revealed - The tobacco industry did experiment with and adjust the nicotine levels in cigarettes, in the form of sheet or reconstituted tobacco, but still claims that such meddling was to improve the quality of the product not the addictivness (adding the nicotine back in that was lost to the paper producing process). Cite.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to compair Big Tobacco to the Lightning Rod industry, just pointing out that there can be conspiricies that exist. Things that are known “inside” that may be contradictory to what is accepted to the general public and not released.
What I’m wondering is “Where ARE the nonconforming anecdotes?”
But only if you wash it down with dihydrogen monoxide.
The necessary part that would make this a conspiracy theory is missing. The government never put forth an official declaration that the tobacco industry was entirely innocent. On the contrary, the government prosecuted the industry for its knowing falsehoods.
Again, there are many conspiracies. But they don’t turn into conspiracy theories until after people start saying the real “truth” in the face of official denials.
I understand the desire to label every event that somebody didn’t want you to know a “conspiracy” and every exposure of the facts to be a vindication of your beliefs that… well, I’ve never been sure of how to coherently express these beliefs except for “so there!”
That’s what all believers in conspiracy theories fall back on. The CIA did LSD experiments on people in the 1950s! Yes, they did. Did anybody run around screaming that the government was hiding the truth about these experiments from us? No. A conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory. But after they were exposed, some people were able to say, “see, the CIA did things! That proves everything else I’ve ever said about the CIA.” Enron manipulated electric prices in California! Yes, they did. This was obvious to everyone in the field, although the fraudulent parts weren’t exposed until later. Did people run around screaming that the government was hiding the truth from us? No. A conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory. But after they were exposed, some people were able to say, “see, a corporation screwed us. That proves everything else I’ve ever said about evil corporations!”
As long as you can’t (or don’t or won’t) properly define a conspiracy theory, you get the freedom to claim that anything you see that was meant to be a secret was part of a conspiracy and any exposure to be proof that your notions about the world are correct. This is confirmation bias at its finest.
Take a step back, define what elements a conspiracy theory has to have to be properly dubbed one, and then compare reality to your definition. That’s the scientific way. Unfortunately, it yields zero satisfaction because no conspiracy theories are left standing. No wonder people back away from doing so. What’s the fun in denying conspiracy theories? Why, that would be like denying dousing, or feng shui, or aliens, or whatever your favorite bit of mysticism is. That’s what They want to you to think.
I’m with They on this one. Conspiracy theories can’t be anything that proves your case. Either they have an exact definition that makes them analyzable or else they’re sloppy thinking at best, and paranoid delusions at worst.
We do here, too. This was in Virginia, though. It didn’t make any sense to me, either.
IIRC, he said, “Who are you going to believe: me or your lying eyes?”
Both of you are wrong.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004020.html
Wasn’t “Ben and Me” also the title of a creepy movie starring a young Michael Jackson and a mouse?
No. There were two horror movies, one called “Willard” and one called “Ben”. Michael Jackson sang the theme song for the second, but did not act in it (he was still a kid at the time).
It would be hard to actually do a proper scientific study for lightning rods. It is one thing to use people who are already ill and perform a double blind experiment on the efficacy of a new medicine that meets ethical qualifications for human testing. A scientific approach to testing lightning rods might not meet ethical criteria. To test lightning rods, real world structures would need for experimental control groups, which would mean using existing structures of like construction or building structures to code from scratch solely for the purpose of experimentation.
Building from scratch would be exceedingly costly, and I would imagine waiting for lightning to strike would require a long time commitment. This option is not really economically feasible.
Using structures of like construction is not exactly ethically feasible. For example, if you were to use a cookie-cutter housing community, you would have to blindly withhold lightning protection from the control group., which according to the current consensus is putting them at risk. This would endanger lives and property, as well as place liability upon the researchers (which they would not likely accept). Trying to do this anywhere would also bring upon the wrath of insurers (as mentioned earlier), as every existing structure has some sort of value.
This predicament then leads those who develop safety standards to the next best option after scientific study, which would be historical evidence. It is not a conclusion that those with analytical minds enjoy arriving at, but one might call it a necessary evil.
Also, if you wanted to know, NFPA is not actually a governmental agency (sorry to all those claiming government conspiracy), rather it is a non-profit, private organization. It develops standards on its own, which jurisdictions then vote to pass as law. As touched upon before, each NFPA standard is developed by a technical committee composed of varied interested parties. However these parties represent more than manufactures, but also include Users, Installer/Maintainer, Labor, Applied Research/Testing Laboratory, Enforcing Authority, Insurance, Consumer, and Special Expert (see http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/PDF/classifications.pdf for more detailed descriptions). Specialists from all sides of the protection issue are represented during the writing of the codes, including scientists and researchers. Also if you read the codes, including NFPA 780 Standard for the Installation of Lightning Protection Systems, there are listings of technical references used in making the publications. The technical committees are composed to prevent people with vested interests from using the code to their own advantage, such as stopping a manufacturer from requiring unnecessary equipment by having consumer and user representatives on the committee.
So in the end, while lightning rods might not be proven to prevent damage due to lightning, they are a general consensus solution that the majority of people see as economical and reasonably safe.
(As an end note, I am not a member of NFPA, but I do use their codes all of the time as part of my job. I will be joining soon, however, and I plan to become a member of a technical committee as a special expert. NFPA does have its fair share of problems, which I hope I don’t exacerbate.)
But we could still do it in Detroit right? Or what about somewhere in France?
The first floor’s ceiling is the second floor’s floor?