Przybylski’s Star I: What’s that?

https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2017/03/15/przybylskis-star-i-whats-that/

Also here's part 2: https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2017/03/16/przybylskis-star-ii-abundance-anomalies/

And here's part 3: https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2017/03/16/przybylskis-star-iii-neutron-stars-unbinilium-and-aliens/

Recently I've been reading up on Przybylski's star, a bizarre star that seems to contain numerous transuranic radioactive elements that we don't believe should form in stars or even exist in such amounts in nature due to their fast decay rates. There have been a lot of proposals for why this might be (including aliens disposing of nuclear waste in the star), but so far there's not a strong consensus on what's going on with this star. Even if it's natural, it could teach us something truly transformational about our universe.

There's a lot of weird stuff out there in the universe, and sometimes I Iike to wonder about what it all means.

mirrored from my Pillowfort: https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/2749481

A Logical Fallacy

A fallacy I've seen a lot in assessments of food science is "if we don't know it's bad for you, it must be good for you". I think big business is very motivated for people to think like this--it's really good for their bottom line. But while I can understand having concerns about the limitations of the data available on these issues, if that's really a key criticism given then the conclusion needs to be 'we just don't know', not 'this means this opposing position is correct/more likely'. Because the research done for the opposing position has...the same limitations.

And since medical research also has the same limitations, the position would not just be 'food science isn't science and doesn't tell us anything', but also 'medical science isn't science and doesn't tell us anything'.