• theneverfox@pawb.social
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    2 days ago

    See? Now that’s reasonable. If the article was about that, it’d be respectable

    But instead, it was about quantum brain imaging. It took two science enthusiasts doing adversarial research to get to what the team was actually doing, which is cancelling out the impact of Earth’s magnetic field so opm-meg can be used outside

    Do you still think this is good for public engagement?

    • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Yea I kinda still do.

      Communicating to the public about science advances is about using marketing techniques, not education techniques. It’s business stuff, not science stuff. We have journal articles for the real science. It’s unfortunate, but it’s just the reality with anti-intellectual attitudes running so rampant, where real science makes most people tune out.

      Btw, the quantum refers to how the tiny magnetic field is actually detected. The laser shines into some helium, and the helium is set to all have one specific quantum spin. This allows the strength of the field to be consistently measured based on how much the laser gets deflected. Without the ability to manipulate quantum spin, this technology would be unavailable. (I did some more reading on it yesterday. lol) So it is actually pretty quantum stuff apparently.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        2 days ago

        But the article doesn’t even explain how they’re advancing the technology - it makes it sound like they invented it for this purpose, and mentions nothing about using it outside. How does that help them?

        Also, the link I sent you all the way at the beginning describes how the process works… Yes, it’s quantum in that it takes advantage of things happening at the quantum scale. Like polarized lenses

        The article I sent you, which l picked because it actually described how the technology works, doesn’t use the word quantum once. It uses the word laser a lot… Which is probably why it’s named optically pumped magnometers

        I still think the fact that it took this long and this much further reading for us to understand what the team is actually doing makes it terrible science communication

        • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          OP’s article (which seems like a press release) says several times that they’re trying to make the device portable. I don’t know what is so hard to understand about that.

          Regardless of what your article said, I explained to you the quantum aspects. They are being technically accurate in how they describe the device and what they are attempting to do.

          I think you and I arguing is just you being intransigent and mistaken on the original article’s claims. For better or for worse, I am also a very stubborn person, so here we are.