Monday, October 31, 2011

Degradation of a bad article

Earlier this month I stumbled upon a short write up that has circulated on the web for a while. It was inaccurate to start with but somehow it is being copied and altered slightly becoming even worse.

Shortly after the initial stereology discussion on the Feldberg, Prof. Elias sent a tiny statement on the trial to the biography Science. Soon thereafter, he received an heated reply from researchers in academia, supervision agencies, and in isolation attention at institutions around the world. They contacted Prof. Elias for data about the next stereology meeting. What Elias suspected had been correct — scientists opposite extended disciplines compulsory right away approaches is to analyses of 3-D objects formed on their look on 2-D sections.


This is from the following link (purposely altered to prevent a link to the site in question).
http://boatsforhelp . com/boat-help/the-history-of-modern-stereology/

The original write up was just plain wrong.

In 1637, Bonaventura Cavalieri, a tyro of Galileo Galilei in Florence during the high Italian Renaissance, showed that the meant volume of a race of non-classically made objects could be estimated fairly from the total of areas on the cut surfaces of the objects (right). The Cavalieri Principle provides the basement is to volume determination of biological structures from their areas on hankie sections.

Cavalieri did not deal with estimations. The principle dealt with showing that 2 objects had the same volume.

[quote]In 1777, Count George Leclerc Buffon presented the Needle Problem to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, France. The Needle Problem reserve the luck theory for stream approaches to guess the aspect area and length of biological objects in an unprejudiced (accurate) manner.[/quote]
Buffon was a nickname. The year was 1733 and he did not show the needle problem to the RAS. The needle problem can be used to derive methods for the estimation of length, but it does not lead to area estimations.

[quote]In 1847, the French mining operative and geologist, Auguste Delesse, demonstrated that the approaching worth is to volume of an intent varies in directly suit to the celebrated area on a pointless division cut by the object. The Delesse Principle provides the basement for precise and effective determination of intent and regions volumes by indicate counting.[/quote]
Delesse's method leads to volume fractions. He was not interested in volumes. Furthermore, the technique he developed was too cumbersome to use. It was neglected after Delesse himself used it for a short while.

Hopefully, such poorly constructed copies of the original incorrect article are not copied more and more about the internet.