How False Information Becomes "Fact"
The gist of the problem is a basic application of Bayes’ rule: If true positives are rare and false positives are not uncommon, most published positives will be false positives. If in addition most published studies are positive, a high fraction of the published literature will be false.
http://retractionwatch.com/2016/10/05...
http://retractionwatch.com/2016/10/05...
It amuses me how, in the face of data confirming no appreciable rise in planetary temperature in nearly 20 years, the climate change fanatics continue to espouse climatery "armageddon." The fact that the polar ice hasn't disappeared (and in fact seems to be returning to levels well above the low of 2012) doesn't seem to faze them.
What the author doesn't address is that good data can be meaningless if other factors aren't taken into account. Coffee drinkers were told they were doomed to heart disease for decades, until a diligent researcher realized the studies correlating coffee drinking with heart disorders did not include information of patient weight, smoking, alcohol abuse, or drug use. The data was good, but irrelevant due to exclusion.
The population studied can be inappropriate. The famous "food pyramid" that was thrust upon us for decades that espoused the righteousness of carbohydrates and the evil of fat is one such example. What is not well known is that the intent of the study leading to the pyramid was to correlate the eating habits with extremely healthy people, under the assumption that their health was largely an effect of their eating habits. Since the study was about healthy people, the researchers used Olympic athletes as their example. The problem with that is that those athletes' metabolisms operate at a very high rate, so that their caloric resting needs are far greater than a normal person doing strenuous exercise. Since carbohydrates provide more readily available energy, conditioned athletes incorporate a significant carbohydrate intake, which in a normal person, becomes an energy reserve of fat. Good study, good data, wrong population.
Because if you can't prove there is a "problem" you can't plunder the economy with carbon taxes and mitigation funding that doesn't solve the problem but is "a step in the right direction" (i.e. worthless).
1. This is the hottest it's ever been in recorded history. I am aware of the age of Viking exploration when Greenland could grow crops. Clearly this isn't true.
2. The science is settled -- the science is never settled. Proper science requires skepticism
3. Calling people who disbelieved "deniers" -- clearly triggering Godwin's law.
I then started looking more closely.
Similarly, whether APG is arguable or not, the thesis of the article remains important. We have a tendency to publish positive results. We get rewarded for positive results. "We tried this and it failed" does not get much support, but could nonetheless be the more important finding.
On the other hand, I look to the necessary fact that truths have multiple proofs and validations. Look at the sheer volume of proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. So, too, with APG and the Green Revolution (both meanings).
When railroads first were built, farmers claimed that the smoke and noise were destructive. The courts disagreed. That thinking was applied to all pollution. Both Cincinnati and Pittsburgh have city museums that tell of "darkness at noon" from all the coal burning at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Men in offices took a clean shirt to work because their outer wear would be black from coal ash. People in poor areas (valleys) suffered from lung diseases such as asthma, while the wealthy on hilltops were loathe to go into the urban metropolis.
But libertarian property theory says that you do not have a right to destroy your neighbor's values (or your neighbor) with your pollution. Clean up your act: don't make it someone else's negative externality.
Myself, I see a lot of value in global warming. English wine was known during the medieval warming when the glacier we still call "Greenland" was settled. But the fact seems, indeed, to be a fact, value it as you please.
If science just gave us the answer the largest and most well-funded groups desired, we would not expect it to have discovered that burning stuff, which drives most economic activity, is damaging the environment. It's encouraging that science is able to find answers that almost everyone wishes were not true.
The authors of this article mentions facts that people wish weren't true (human activities are affecting the climate in costly ways, vaccines do not cause autism, and smoking increases risk of cancer) and says they have nothing to do with the process they're describing in which positive "noise" gets published more often than negative "noise".
I just find this absurd. We have to go on the evidence we have. I suspect because burning fuel powers the global economy that pressure from that might cause scientists to understate the risks of AGW, but I cannot rely on my guessing (i.e. making $hit up) based on politics. I have to go on the evidence we actually have.
I think I do not understand what you're saying. I thought you were saying we cannot trust climate science because the people funding it have a desired answer and an agenda.
My claim is that most scientific questions have an answer that people funding the study want to be true. If we cannot trust any scientific inquiry where people have their foibles, agendas, and desired outcomes, then we cannot trust any science, which I loosely state as "we can't know anything."
(1) Verify, then trust.
(2) I think your claim that “most scientific questions have an answer that people funding the study want to be true” is incorrect. Broad areas of scientific research are non-commercial and non-political, such as fundamental physics and astronomy. Much commercial scientific research centers on developing new products and improving existing products. The incentives are huge for such research to be accurate and unbiased.
(3) I did not say “we cannot trust climate science because the people funding it have a desired answer and an agenda.” I do say that we cannot trust certain climate scientists without extensive verification of their work, because they are funded by power-hungry governments with their thumbs on the scales, and because some of them seem to think that cheating and suppressing undesired findings are acceptable components of the scientific method.
The incentive is to say the new products safe and effective. So if scientific institutions were corrupt, I'd wonder if big pharma is suppressing the benefits of homeopathy, if they're hiding the risks of vaccination to sell vaccines, if Monsanto is paying scientists to say GMOs are safe. (I don't suspect any of those things. I accept the mainstream scientific answers until new evidence appears.)
The thing that I don't get about the corrupt science claim with regard to AGW is wouldn't the bias run the other way? The whole world economy runs on energy. We get most of it from burning fuel from the ground, i.e. CxHy + O2 --> CO2 + H2O + energy. It will be costly to switch to alternatives and to deal with the affects of climate change. From the powerful monied interests to anyone who likes having cheap products from around the world, nearly everyone wishes burning hydrocarbons had no ill effects on the environment. If scientific institutions suppress the truth, wouldn't they suppress AGW?
http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/10/05...
Global Warming alarmism is a perfect vehicle to increase government control over every person on the planet.
CBJ: You can’t lump government-funded science in with the rest of it and call them “scientific institutions”.
CG: Right, but my question why don't independently funded researchers get results that completely overturn climatology? Only a few people benefit from AGW, but it's a cost to everyone else. If there were a conspiracy, you'd think they'd expose it.
To me this sounds like all conspiracy theories: the conspirators take on great powers, whatever powers are needed for their role in the supposed conspiracy.
"Here’s an example, courtesy of a climate change expert (oops, I mean a Hollywood star) "
What Hollywood stars think is unrelated and not important to me.
"Global Warming alarmism is a perfect vehicle to increase government control over every person on the planet."
I used to think was absurd until I read the first few chapters of Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything, which makes this case. It's rare I can't get through a book. I scanned ahead and saw more of the same, so I gave up. There are definitely people eager to take political advantage of every problem or crisis.
I’m as allergic to conspiracy theories as you are, but this is not a conspiracy, it’s totally out in the open. Obama and his minions, such as the Hollywood star I mentioned above, are out to publicly discredit and marginalize anyone who dares to challenge what they refer to as “settled science”. The opinions of Hollywood stars may be unimportant to us, but they become important when such stars ally themselves with politicians to shape public opinion on scientific matters.
And there’s no question that Obama has “great powers,” as will his successor.
Science should not be confused with knowing things. Science is a process that allows us to challenge what we think we know and, if we find flaws, evaluate new theories.
Yes, exactly. That's a strength of science. We actually want to find anomalies that change our understanding.
I have a little graphic description of the scientific method up at my desk. I love it because when you look at it you can clearly see that we don't follow it anymore.
I'm sure that the IRS investigates organizations and companies that speaks contrary to the Prez's political correctness. There is also lobbyists and PAC's that coddle to the Fed propaganda to spread their on anti-Democratic Republic ideas. As in Atlas Shrugged, moochers one & all! My fear is that if Hillary(heaven forbid) gets elected Pseudo-Intellectualism will rule the day.
* https://youtu.be/QNAPeEDujwE
Truth is that which corresponds to reality. In the university and in certain workplaces, Reality Be Damned!
I also have a website (http://csiflint2011.blogspot.com/) that I built for middle school science teachers based on a talk that I gave at a "Super Science Friday" at the University of Michigan (Flint). I told the kids that if they like science and want to go into criminal investigation, they should consider careers with offices of research integrity at universities or with the federal government.
I would have put that figure as being high. However, I'll defer to your superior knowledge, even though it depresses me. That means that there are 70 million criminals out there in the USA. Of course, white collar crime unless it is Madoff sized, is usually quite glossed over. Hopefully, the murderers and rapists are a fraction of that 20%.
Makes me sick to type that even as an example of a lie.
In this world?
Me dino likes to keep my thinking simple.
False information becomes "fact" when you say and write it enough times.
If you have power, you reward those who agree and punish those who do not.
Just ask O the Great and Powerful.
Adolf Hitler is dead, you see . . .
"Generally, people rated authors as experts when the views coincided with their own. Kahan and his team created three authors and their books. All three had the same high level of academic standing. (Doctorates from major schools.) In every case, two different, opposing views were written for each author and randomly shown to subjects. The topics were gun control, nuclear power plants, and global warming.
In short, we tend to agree with and thereby validate experts who agree with us. When presented with facts opposed to our commitments, we denigrate the status of the provider." (from my blog) The original paper from Dan M. Kahan, Hank Jenkins-Smith, and Donald Braman of Yale Law School is archived here:
http://www.motherjones.com/files/kaha...
I googled "bias for surprising negative events" and found hours of reading.
Hindsight bias
http://faculty.usfsp.edu/pezzo/docume...
Self-serving beliefs
http://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/mcg...
Negativity Bias
http://www.wisebrain.org/media/Papers...
and much, much more...
It's unfortunate that they had to add the disclaimer toward the end that their theory should not be construed as saying we don't know anything. I first learned about it in college in the 90s. I considered it part of post-modernism, but I'm not sure that's right. They said look how biases influenced the observations in craniometry. They said it shows how science just reflects the values of the practitioners. I came to reject this completely. We know the racist conclusions of craniometry are wrong because of science, not because we learned not to be racist and physical differences between the races could fuel racism. Knowing that human observation and memory are unreliable can be incorporated into science. That's why we do blinded tests.
This same way of thinking is alive in Michael Pollan's book. He says first science told us macro nutrients were all the body needed, and then they discovered micronutrients. They can't just pick one answer and stick to it.
I have only a casual understanding of philosophy, but this post-modernism, solipsism, we-don't-know-anything, just-pick-a-desirable-conclusion-and-stick-to-it, or whatever its correct name may be seems completely contrary to the ideas in the Rand books I've read.
So, too, in electronics, we still use Benjamin Franklin's notion of positive charge, though we mean the absence of negative charges. It is just a way to conceptualize, and thereby design a device and solve a problem. Even thinking of "charges" as little balls with minus signs is not "right" when maybe you should be thinking of fields. But the word "field" is an analogy...
A hippopotamus is not really a horse. But they are both real and we know quite a lot about them both that we did not when each was first seen.
"After many decades of promoting aspirin, the FDA now says that if you have not experienced a heart problem, you should not be taking a daily aspirin—even if you have a family history of heart disease. This represents a significant departure from FDA's prior position on aspirin for the prevention of heart attacks.
On its website, the FDA now says:
"FDA has concluded that the data do not support the use of aspirin as a preventive medication by people who have not had a heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular problems, a use that is called 'primary prevention.' In such people, the benefit has not been established but risks — such as dangerous bleeding into the brain or stomach — are still present."
Their announcement was prompted by Bayer's request to change its aspirin label to indicate it can help prevent heart attacks in healthy individuals. Aspirin generated $1.27 billion in sales for Bayer last year, and from Bayer's request, it appears they want everyone to be taking their drug.
But the FDA says "not so fast"—and rightly so. Evidence in support of using aspirin preventatively has gone from weak to weaker to nonexistent. This is why I've been advising against it for more than a decade. It looks as though aspirin, even "low-dose aspirin" (LDA), may do far more harm than good." -- from several websites including this one: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/art...
which includes a table of seven studies showing no correlation between aspirin and heart attacks. (Some suggest worse outcomes for heart patients.)
https://theconversation.com/one-reaso...