←back to thread

Blue whale skeleton at New Bedford museum still oozing oil

(www.wpri.com)
201 points geox | 1 comments | 17 Oct 24 23:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.204s | source
Show context
sseagull ◴[19 Oct 24 16:47 UTC] No.41888878[source]▶
Chemist pet peeve:

“The oil catcher consists of a series of tubes that start at the tip of KOBO’s rostrum and funnel down into a beaker.”

That’s an Erlenmeyer flask, not a beaker. The quote gets it right in the next sentence. Just sayin’ :)

replies(2): >>41889667 #>>41895408 #
pwg ◴[19 Oct 24 18:37 UTC] No.41889667[source]▶
A prime example of thee "Gell-Mann Amnesia" effect:

https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

replies(1): >>41891584 #
1. krisoft ◴[19 Oct 24 23:20 UTC] No.41891584[source]▶
No it is not. It is merely an inaccuracy pointed out by an expert. For it to be an example of the "Gell-Mann Amnesia" effect sseagull would have to show some sign that they forgot that the wpri can make mistakes when they are reading something not within their expertise. That would be the "amnesia" part.

Plus, is it even an inaccuracy? In common parlance beaker and flask are synonyms.[1] Simply regular people talking to regular people describing some glassware are not as accurate as a chemist talking to a chemist.

1: as evidenced that thesarus.com identifying `beaker` as the strongest synonym match for `flask` https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/flask