The greatest fallacies!

Cichlid Dad

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Advice based on what was read, heard or told often comes from somewhere. The very same way we are taught in school. People before us have experienced it and have obtained knowledge and bundled it. How would this be a fallacy?
This is why It is important to note that the info came from I've read it, or i have been told, so the readers can make a proper judgement on the advice.
 

livinlifeinBKK

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Ha, this last sentence.
This is my pet.
Rambling off a bunch of stuff and not listing your source. I know we have a couple of people on here that do that but I'm not listing any names. This is my pet hate.
Yeah I agree that it's helpful when people go through the trouble to search the research paper and include the link. On the other hand, i find it to be very rare and since the vast majority of people wouldn't even consider reading the research it's not really worth it to me personally to cite my sources unless someone asks where i got that information from.
Conversely, I've seen people who disagree with something, Google whatever they want to hear or believe and post the research link even though they haven't read a word of it which is obvious if you only take the time to read the abstract. One case in particular that comes to mind was when I mentioned that some people have reported success with treating parasites with peroxide (i have as well). One guy disagreed and went on to post a research article in an attempt to make it appear he had done research regarding the topic. I actually was curious and clicked on the link after hearing him talk about the extensive organ damage suffered by fish exposed to peroxide (he quoted a sentence of the research he left a link for). After reading a few lines... honestly the title made it pretty clear on its own that the research wasn't quite related but i continued to read. The research study was testing the antioxidant properties of taurine to combat oxidation in fish which were literally injected with peroxide using a syringe and needle. Furthermore, it wasn't even a link to the full study. It was on a thread started by someone looking for anything that might help his fish until he could get his hands on copper medications so this guy thought it was appropriate to post a research study that was incredibly irrelevant to back up a claim he obviously knew nothing about. I hope he didn't succeed in directly misleading the OP.

That's what really annoys me.
 

Lowell Lemon

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UV sterilizer is the best method to prevent and eradicate Marine Ich AKA Cryptocaryon and many other parasites in Reef Aquarium.( Just after garlic, ginger and hydrogen peroxide).
It may not be the best method but it is successful if you know how to use it. Such blanket statements are misleading. Humble Fish has developed a protocol for disease treatment using Hydrogen Peroxide. You can read about it on his site or here on R2R possibly.

I have used proper U.V. to great effect across many situations making the success repeatable. Kind of like science but not in your view. U.V. is used for water purification even at the municipal level in water treatment plants to prevent waterborne disease. But it does not work in aquariums? It does not work unless the proper system, prefiltration, and pump rate is correct. A large number of public aquariums use them to great effect. Same applies to Ozone injection.
 

brandon429

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I like to apply this standard to what I wrote about cycling:

is it possible for me to apply those rules for ten straight years here and get 100% safe predictable outcomes with not one fail? >to the degree that if my thread history is selected, and read, the entrant's evaluations reflect total positivity and thanks vs 'hey you killed my reef'

if so, proceed. if not, cease the procedure immediately.

any guesses on how it's turned out

the best snake oil filter in this hobby isn't an academic paper, a safe zone someone else wrote that we quote to make a rule or a point

the real test is what you can do in other's tanks, documented in pattern, for a long long time. what if in fact reef2reef is only ten years worth, but at nano-reef.com we search out 22 years of the same patterns? that'd make for an interesting verification hunt on quality of rules applied, in my opinion. how did the rules of updated cycling science work out on any forum they've ever been posted on?

of course there are 100 people in the woodwork who will disagree with what I wrote, but it'll never be from someone's tank I just fixed. those are on file. I also ask the same degree of documentation and work logged from my detractors...I often get scholarly paper links instead.

working with other people's reefs and not our own is the ultimate not safe zone. a person who ventures out that way is bound to identify new patterns and discoveries, because they'll get stung by public failure if a false rule is applied, and that will be logged and findable.
 
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brandon429

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it feels really uncomfortable to read postings by someone who writes rules opposite of how we were taught, it's a paradigm insult


people process that in different ways, but fail v success rate for the jobs on file matters most.


a thread on all cycles being complete by day ten, without testing:


how are the entrants responding there, dead or alive tanks, happy or sad, thank you vs my tank is dead...

what makes a claim a fallacy or a truth>
 
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Icryhard

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If you want to tell me about stuff that you learned in school and remembered it all and got it right, then I am all ears. If you want to tell me about something that you heard from a guy on reef2reef with a 10 week old tank, then they probably got it wrong. The folks on the internet who type are not the same as those that made it through the publication process or survived an educational review.

In school, you have to list your sources too.
Your reasoning is pretty off. I don't think the likes of vetteguy or Jay hemdal have 10 week old tanks. I don't think the information they provide, which can be backed up by many other sources would be iffy. Having a tank for years doesn't really make advice any more- or less valid compared to someone with a tank of 10 weeks, but I've just noticed I disagree with a lot of your points in a lot of posts and for some reason you also somehow manage to make passive aggressive remarks in basically every comment which disagrees with you.
 

brandon429

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this is why we should only accept large work threads for validity. I have no doubt a master chemist or a master aquarist at their home (many on the site) can work wonders in the confines of their home, with full control over all the variables and disclosures on outcome

we have their pics to see that work outcome, masters do really well in their own homes.

rules are best tested in application lots of 10, 50, 100 in other people's tanks and what I love about Jay's writing is that work threads are all he does all day long, for others, in the disease forum. its 100 pages of pure work threads in other's tanks.

it's not that peer reviewed papers are wrong, they just may be old science. you can't believe the degree of anger/retort/kickback/accusations of photoshop that early posts on pico reef science in 2002 received in the hobby: pure anger. the sages of the day were posting left and right research articles on coral allelopathy, mesenterial warfare, as a reason anything posted about pico reefs were fake/photoshopped/cheat plumbed into larger hidden reservoirs

because the writing references of the day hadn't set up packed gallon reefs to see how long they lived, it was a lie if someone else claimed to have one.

but guess what happens when 300K friends replicate the in-doubt claim... via work threads searchable: new science comes about from the anecdote we formerly hated. I freakin' love my reef forums they're ultimate free date stamping.
 

Spare time

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this is why we should only accept large work threads for validity. I have no doubt a master chemist or a master aquarist at their home (many on the site) can work wonders in the confines of their home, with full control over all the variables and disclosures on outcome

we have their pics to see that work outcome, masters do really well in their own homes.

rules are best tested in application lots of 10, 50, 100 in other people's tanks and what I love about Jay's writing is that work threads are all he does all day long, for others, in the disease forum. its 100 pages of pure work threads in other's tanks.

it's not that peer reviewed papers are wrong, they just may be old science. you can't believe the degree of anger/retort/kickback/accusations of photoshop that early posts on pico reef science in 2002 received in the hobby: pure anger. the sages of the day were posting left and right research articles on coral allelopathy, mesenterial warfare, as a reason anything posted about pico reefs were fake/photoshopped/cheat plumbed into larger hidden reservoirs

because the writing references of the day hadn't set up packed gallon reefs to see how long they lived, it was a lie if someone else claimed to have one.

but guess what happens when 300K friends replicate the in-doubt claim... via work threads searchable: new science comes about from the anecdote we formerly hated. I freakin' love my reef forums they're ultimate free date stamping.


I think the issue is not that published papers are wrong, but rather that aquarium enthusiast don't know how to interpret them because they are written for people who are experts in their fields. Also, papers on wild corals may not be very useful for captive corals, as captive environments are so drastically different for captive animals
 
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