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30 Things Science Hasn’t Proven Yet But Folks In This Online Group Have A Hunch Are True Anyway
Our world is a peculiar place – and there are a ton of questions, both simple and not-so-simple, that remain to be unanswered.
When did time begin? How do you know you’re not crazy and just hallucinating your whole life? Did you arrive at this point in your life because you wanted it or because you were destined to be here?
There are a million and one things that can keep you up at night – however, we evolve, and the stuff that was unknown a couple of years ago is now being studied broadly.
That said, our society never stands still, and although there are some things we might never know the answers to, many have their own suspicions that they are absolutely sure of:
“Scientists of Reddit, what's something you suspect is true in your field of study, but you don't have enough evidence to prove it yet?” – this online user turned to one of Reddit’s most informative and thought-provoking communities, asking professionals to share the things they suspect are true but can't prove just yet. The post has managed to receive 8.7K upvotes and 3.4K comments containing some gripping ideas.
More info: Reddit
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#1
Neurodiversities are an expression of social evolution and by trying to get neurodivergent people to be "normal" we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
If someone is interested, I can explain further, but I think I came into the post way too late.
Millions years ago, organisms went from unicellular to multicellular by having cells join and work together spliting tasks. Eventually the system was so complex that today's human's neurons, for example, can't feed themselves. They have to depend on other cells to help them do basic tasks. Your body is so complex that if some cells stop doing their work, the whole system collapses and you die.
So, if you look at society now, we work like this. Some people farm food, others transmit information, others work as society's immune system, and that have allowed us to grow and turn more complex. Basically, evolve. Society is now working as a multicellular organism because we have split tasks.
Now, neurodiverse people are notorious for not being able to do some very basic things, but they excel at others. Forcing them to act "normal" and do tasks they can't and someone else could do for them is wasting their specific potential. Hawkings wasn't neurodiverse, but I like to use his disability as an example: thanks to all the people that worked hard to keep him alive and allowed him the technology to communicate, we got to benefit from his incredible mind. If we had judged him as a burden to society because he couldn't tie his own shoes, we would have lost all his knowledge.
By forcing neurodiverse or disable people to perform normality (mask) instead of giving them help to thrieve as they are, society is wasting their potential and slowing our social evolution. Diversity is a necessity for our evolution.
My Full Name Is Way Too Long 2 years ago
Yes this!!! And I mean, we don't even have to look at the illness Hawkings had (although it is a perfect example!), but what about kids/grown-ups with add? They are such incredible people with such an incredible intelligent and creative mindset. Yet we require them to conform to a certain way of 'normal' because they can't focus and that's not benificial for soxiety is it. It hurts me to the bone that these people don't get two seconds of attention to see how they could improve the world and our general way of living.
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#2
I agree with Gordon Burghardt that pretty much 99% of all animals are sentient, and our testing for sentience is wrong.
Deborah Harris 2 years ago
I agree that all Animals, Birds, beasts have souls, no one can convince me otherwise ..I have seen too much to disbelieve it
#4
Treating students more like adults/people will cause them to begin to develop into adults more quickly.
A lot of teachers that I've worked with/talked to treat students like a subclass of humans who are expected to give respect but not receive it. I treat my students like collegues and I end up getting a lot more output and learning from them.
I have collegues who shame them when they don't do what they think is right. When my students act like stupid kids I tell them, "Of course you did that. You're kids. Kids act like stupid kids." and usually after those conversations they start to act more like adults. I think it's because instead of shaming their behavior, I justify their behavior as a maturity and show them that if they grow in maturity they'll be more deserving of the benefits of maturity.
#5
Antibiotic resistant organisms are going to be a massive problem in the coming decades
#6
I’m not sure if this really fits but, intergenerational trauma.
We know that physical and psychological stress in one generation (whether it be war, rape, genocide, alcoholism, drug use, growing up in the system, I could go on forever) can “pass on” to the next generation. But, we don’t really know how. Heritable epigenomic changes has been the first proposal.
But no one has done this *specific* research. My supervisor demonstrated a change in mitochondrial DNA copy number, resulting in epigenomic changes in regions of the genome associated with disease. Epigenomic changes mean that the expression of the underlying genes can be altered. This can result in disease.
Usually as a result of intergenerational trauma, people suffer more health repurcussions, and no one could really explain why. I want to explain why on the genetic level. I think I’m on the right path and I’m excited!
Ines Olabarria-Smith 2 years ago
Love this! I’ve read about epigenetics and find them súper interesting. Hope you can’t teach us more about it.
#8
There probably is a food addiction, specifically towards food rich in sugars and fats, but it's still incredibly difficult to prove it, decipher the specific mechanisms, decipher it from eating disorders and establish if it's an addiction to food, an addiction to eating
#9
As a former math and physics major, I took meticulous notes of my son’s epileptic seizures. At one point, I added barometric readings and current weather data to standard information of date, seizure type, and seizure length in seconds. I’m convinced that low pressure weather systems increased the frequency and intensity of his epileptic seizures. During a trip to North Carolina, the area had an unusually high, stable high pressure system. He didn’t have any seizures during our time there.
My theory is that high or low pressure weather systems microscopically change the flow of fluids in the brain or other neurologically sensitive areas of the body such as the micro biome of the gut.
Chucky Cheezburger 2 years ago
Well, I know when the pressure changes, I'm more liable to get a migraine, and for me, they can be triggered by flashing light. I dunno if epilepsy and migraines are related in any way but it makes sense to me.
#10
Microbiologist — our only hope in being able to fight of total antibiotic resistance is to develop bacteriophages (viruses that eat/destroy bacteria) that we can use and prescribe in place of existing antibiotics
Katie Busch 2 years ago
Phages ONLY prey on VERY SPECIFIC bacteria. So an e. coli phage will only go after e. coli. They are so specific that a really effective phage treatment is actually a "cocktail" of many, looking for one that will target the strain of bacteria you are infected with. So, by the same token, we can omit ones that would target your gut and other flora. Antibiotics are broad-spectrum, so they can impact your gut biome. Because phages are viruses and therefore able to quickly mutate/evolve, if your bacterial infection is resistant to an initial cocktail then a specific phage can be grown in the lab for you. Phages are harmless to anything that is not bacteria, although some people may have an allergic reaction because their immune system misidentifies them, just as some people are allergic to harmless things like pollen and cat dander. It's old now but check out the documentary "The Virus that Cures" if you want to learn more!
#11
Gut bacteria has evolved to influence our behaviour, either directly or indirectly, to crave foods that benefit it. That's why it's hard to "come off" certain foods.
Anecdotally, it's hard to give up high sugar, high fat foods, yet if you go for long enough without them, your desire for them drops massively. I believe it's because the gut flora that likes that food dies off and no longer influences your behaviour.
It's very, very hard to prove, but it seems self evident that if bacteria even had the slightest opportunity to evolve a means to do this, it would almost be a certainty.
Natasja de Jong 2 years ago
There have been studies about the effect on inmates who are given good/healthy food it affects their behaviour in a positive way. People became less aggressive than with the unhealthy and processed food they have been eating before.
#12
Environmental Geologist - That’s there’s a huge amount of environmental contamination (soil, water, air) in residential areas, and rapid development is only making the problem worse. Most people in populated areas are likely very very close to known sites with dangerous contamination, and the number of unknown sites dwarfs what’s been addressed.
On top of that in the USA low income housing projects don’t need to meet as stringent environmental regulations, so a site that fails for normal residential use might still qualify for low income housing.
#13
That the language we speak (our native language) affects us from our culture to how we perceive the world to how we make decisions and process information and to possibly bring one of or the factor that allows us to have and enjoy this higher level of consciousness. It even effected how our bodies form (larynx shaped differently than in other primates, while it makes us more susceptible to choking, it allows us to make the complex sounds needed in languages). However, there haven’t been many studies on these topics, because, for example, the topic of the origin of language (and other scientific language topics on how it has affected us) was banned by the leading scientific institutions in the 1600s and 1700s, and was considered taboo because, for example, the topic of the origin and evolution of language was used in arguments on how the Earth was older than the Bible made it out to be. It was considered taboo for a long time, and as late as the 1970s these topics were just not to be discussed or researched. It was only in the 2000s that the first major studies started to be carried out, and today, because of this, it is still a relatively unexplored area, though this is starting to change.
#14
Cell biologist: we spend way too much money on cancer research and not enough on basic research and have for decades.
Despite that it's finally working and the wave of immuno oncology drugs that are in clinical testing now will significantly reduce deaths from cancer.
We could have had this 30 years ago if we had spent a ton on basic research and not convinced ourselves we were about to beat cancer in the 70's.
We might be fooling ourselves again, I've not been working on cancer directly for too long. Previously though it seemed like everyone was convinced we were about to cure cancer then it fizzled. This time it seems like few people expect cancer to be cured despite real breakthroughs.
#15
The oceans are incredibly, catastrophically, incomprehensibly f****d. We’ve been using the oceans at a high level for centuries, and our awareness of the impact on the oceans has come far too late. We just don’t have enough data from before industrialization to understand what we’ve done.
edit: a clarification: the total biomass in the oceans is decreased significantly. Its like if we had been hunting every animal in every forest for 1000 years instead of ranching cows and stuff, started doing so industrially 100 years ago, and started worrying about the impact 50 years ago.
$cagsy 2 years ago
I've had this sort of suspicion for a while now. There are various environmental events taking place that science says 'is probably this' or 'it might be that' and everyone jumps on the bandwagon. But the bottom line is that our reliable data does not go anywhere near far enough back to draw any useful conclusions. To be clear, I'm not dismissing any theories, I'm saying there are probably many more things that are contributing to the death of our planet than we realise. This post is a good example of that, I reckon.
#17
[The Crespi-Badcock Hypothesis] that autism and schizophrenia are exactly opposite neurological divergences, which develop epigenetically in the womb in response to entirely opposite environmental stressors — a world of excess and a world of scarcity, respectively — and therefore are never comorbid in the same individual.
My extrapolation of Crespi-Badcock is that autism spectrum disorder is really a first world problem in the truest sense. It is rapidly increasing in the developed world, but not the developing world, because compared to the environment in which humans evolved, today's first world embryos receive a stream of resources and conditions indicating it will want for nothing. If the developing human does not anticipate needing the usually large amount of brain resources devoted to reading other people in order to survive, this frees up these resources for understanding systems. Essentially, a person on the autism spectrum is a person whose developing brain received the consistent message that they can make it on their own without relying on many other people, and that their brainpower is better devoted to understanding lots of different and new systems to great detail, so that they *can* make it on their own without relying on many other people.
Schizophrenia, meanwhile, is largely a disease of the developing world, and of urban slums worldwide. The brain that's able to become schizophrenic, meanwhile, receives a consistent message during development that it's entering a world of great scarcity and insecurity, and being attuned to other people and their needs and what they communicate will be absolutely indispensable to their survival. The kickstarting event for the first psychotic break is usually some sort of forceful rejection or other form of psychologically traumatic social interaction, in the late teens or early 20s for men, and 30s for women.
Autistic patients miss messages from other people that are indeed there. Schizophrenic patients see messages from other people that aren't actually there. Hyposensitivity and hypersensitivity to social cues, respectively.
Source: I am an independent general practice physician with a strong interest in psychiatry / behavioral health, who is himself on the autism spectrum, and attracts largely patients who are on the autism spectrum.
Laugh or not 2 years ago
"they *can* make it on their own without relying on many other people', excuse me, independent general practice physician, but are all of your patients on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum? Have you ever worked with someone on the other end : non-verbal, non-communicating, get a crisis for any number of triggers? They need a lot of people to barely make it. On the other end, have you ever worked with patients with schizophrenia ? Your opinion on them is condescending and more based on social standing than medical evidence.
#18
That chronic fatigue syndrome is caused by a bacterial phage which attacks the mitochondria
Powerful Katrinka 2 years ago
That's the reason why they replaced the name "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" with "myalgic encephalomyelitis." It's both more accurate and precise l, but also less likely to be dismissed by doctors & insurance companies. ME has a lot in common with Long Covid.
#19
There’s gotta be a way to make pavement more frost resistant. Civil engineering background. I always thought it was the subsoil since they check the density of the rest of the layers that make up the pavement. I live in pothole infested State.
Kady LaHaie 2 years ago
There is. There has been for 20 years. (MI resident here.) They developed a pavement that lasts 10 Michigan winters instead of the average of 2 winters. It cost 2 times more and no one would pay for it.
#20
As an early career ecologist I suspect that the results of many experiments in my field would not stand up to replication. There's a huge bias toward "positive results" - those which support your hypothesis - and you are extremely disincentivized from research that is not seen as novel. This is doubly true for those of us without tenure yet, because we need to be seen as at the cutting edge of our field to get a job in the first place.
Meta-analyses help separate the signal from the noise a bit, but I suspect there's still a field-wide confirmation bias
#21
Melanism exists in mountain lions. I was driving and looked down a dirt road & saw a black animal run across it briefly. It was deer sized, black like a black bear, and had a long tail. Too big to be a dog. There is no recorded instance of melanistic mountain lions but I want to start looking for them.
#22
COVID deaths are higher than most estimates, due to shortening of lives by only a month or so in some people.
While I do have a doctorate in applied physics, this comes from one of my other jobs, taking funerals. During a lockdown event, my group sees demand go up by about a factor of three vs normal background demand. That is expected. What is unexpected is that it falls to about 50% of background after lockdown, implying that about a quarter of the excess deaths were people who would have died within the next month. As I understand it, the year on year comparison usually used to estimated excess deaths from COVID is unlikely to show this short term impact, hence I think that overall COVID death rates are probably underestimated by about a quarter.
A few specifics:
* This is in the UK
* Peak demand was about 40 funerals per month in our group. n is not great for physicists, but not out of place for small medical studies
* I can’t just ask what people died of. Most families don’t know it was COVID, but the 3x rise in funerals clearly shows most of them were due to COVID.
ItsJess 2 years ago
I think many more people have or have had Covid than we've counted, especially now that there are at-home tests and people aren't self-reporting. If my mother (who lives with us) caught Covid and recovered, yet experienced long lasting symptoms that exacerbated her emphysema, her cause of death would probably be put down as "emphysema", not an active infection of covid (I believe). I think there are many deaths and infections caused by it that are under-counted.
#23
We know that 25% of us were exposed to alcohol and sometimes other substances in the womb. I think 25% have some lasting effects similar to what you would see in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder but not severe enough to be diagnosed. It’s called shadow disorder: too mild to be diagnosed but still some symptoms. I think a lot of people with either ADHD, trouble regulating emotions, sleep problems or heart/GI problems and with prenatal alcohol exposure may actually be experiencing FASD-like shadow symptoms.
Ozacoter 2 years ago
I always wondered how much it affects the kid if the parents drink and smoke before getting pregnant. A womans eggs do not renew so it is possible that her drinking and smoking affects her eggs forever so even if she quits smoking while pregnant it might have an effect. Same with men, the sperm renews every 3 months or so so i wonder if the father drinks during those months if there is any effect.
#24
Digital communities have replicated the authority, structure, and meaning-making functions of religious communities without their physicality.
#25
Chemist here. If scientists got paid more and management types knew how to plan work more efficiently, we'd cure f*****g everything. But we aren't paid enough and mgmt doesn't care as long as they get paid to sit around. So bench scientists just fart around finishing projects here and there, sometimes making a mad dash at the last possible minute to get data for a deadline, but mostly just surfing the web and drinking coffee.
NsG 2 years ago
In a not entirely unconnected thought, if we paid MP's a stupid amount higher salary (with massive oversight to prevent them having a second job/income while serving), and gave them a specific second home village (gated community with protection), there'd be no stupid expenses scandals and it would be much harder for corrupt lobbyists to have a say in running the country. For £70k - £120k a year it's no f*cking wonder our MPs are screwing the country in favour of whichever rich b*stard wants their pet project to go through.
#26
Women can smell and taste sour milk much sooner than men. Can’t explain it but I know it’s true.
Deborah Harris 2 years ago
Well I just googled..' can women smell sour milk? ' and it came up with an alarming totally different search lol
#27
Software engineer.
The belief that all teams should be run the same way at a company. I waste alot of time in meetings every day. Daily "standups", "retros" etc. It's the classic round peg, square hole. A team of 3 doesn't need to manage things the way a team of 20 does.
People that have done software for 20 years don't need hand holding and retros. And they talk to new employees daily so we don't wait for retros. We also didcuss what needs to be done as needed. Not every day at 10 am.
We need to prove this all in studies and write a book that discusses how to properly manage teams.
We don't need ro map stories to classes/methods. When s**t breaks we don't look at stories (or requirements) to figure out where the code likely is. This made sense when you wrote code in notepad. Modern ides make this a total waste of time. Prove this by studying how experienced people solve bugs.
#28
Astronomer here! You don’t literally have infinite density (or mass) inside a black hole- I don’t think anyone really thinks that. Instead you have the laws of general relativity no longer work when you get a black hole where mass is compressed into such a tiny area. The devil is in the details though and no one knows how this alternative might work.
#29
No necessarily a field of science (I guess technically it is), but I worked in drug/ alcohol treatment for a few years and it was widely accepted that anyone and everyone could get clean and sober from drugs and alcohol. However, I have never seen anyone get clean off fentanyl after using for many years. By some it is believed that once you have carved that behavior in your brain for long enough, and with strong enough substance it is over for you. Typically fentanyl, as it is so strong on the brain and kids are using it so young, that they are not really giving themselves a chance at life (which can be as early as elementary school).
Along those lines once you cross the line of dependence on drugs there is no going back. Once an addict always an addict. You cant prove it but i believe this to be so.
Michele Wintzloff 2 years ago
My impression is that people can get clean and sober, but they are still an addict. If you're an alcoholic that has been sober regardless of time, you're still an alcoholic,. The difference is you choose to live sober. I know many post addiction people who will say the same. They can never, ever take/use/drink again because they could go straight back to where they were. They recognise this behaviour and actively suppress the desire to do it.
#30
The semi-classical theory of gravitation, put forth by Moller and Rosenfeld in 1960s and further refined by physicists since then, is an incorrect theory of quantum gravitation. It's seductive because it marries Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity (which we know is true for the large) with quantum mechanics (which we know is true for the small) in a very natural, intuitive way.
To be fair, nobody believes it (I think), but so far, nobody has been able to rule it out, either.
What do you think ?
Sky Render 2 years ago
I have a theory that genetic mosaicism and chimerism are actually way more common than we think! Short of being able to sample every cell's DNA, we would have no effective way to spot most instances of it short of really obvious stuff like patches of skin that are different colors, heterochromia, etc. That said, in most people it would effectively be invisible as the alterations would not necessarily have such blatant tells (ie. only a few internal organs affected, the skin color between the two genetic lines is identical, etc.).
Kristin Ingersoll 2 years ago
HA! I was about to direct you to this verrrrry interesting conversation I just read on another post... And then I realized it was YOUR post! LOL!! Fascinating stuff!
Load More Replies...
Patti Vance 2 years ago
i have a crazy idea that for all the diseases that we are faced with there are cures available in the natural world or, once found in the natural world, can be synthesized. there is so much that has not been discovered in the ocean and/or the rain forests.
Sky Render 2 years ago
I have a theory that genetic mosaicism and chimerism are actually way more common than we think! Short of being able to sample every cell's DNA, we would have no effective way to spot most instances of it short of really obvious stuff like patches of skin that are different colors, heterochromia, etc. That said, in most people it would effectively be invisible as the alterations would not necessarily have such blatant tells (ie. only a few internal organs affected, the skin color between the two genetic lines is identical, etc.).
Kristin Ingersoll 2 years ago
HA! I was about to direct you to this verrrrry interesting conversation I just read on another post... And then I realized it was YOUR post! LOL!! Fascinating stuff!
Load More Replies... Patti Vance 2 years ago
i have a crazy idea that for all the diseases that we are faced with there are cures available in the natural world or, once found in the natural world, can be synthesized. there is so much that has not been discovered in the ocean and/or the rain forests.
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