This is sort of a disaster, particularly in the context of the student-loan mess.
Here's the horrifying key table from the paper Siddhartha Roy co-authored on perverse incentives in academia. #AAASmtg pic.twitter.com/sdrUlPmXs7
— Mike 48% Tⓐylor (@MikeTaylor) February 18, 2017
They can be some of the most destructive institutions in American life, but Democrats want to maintain the status quo.
@jimgeraghty Democrats always get enraged when Republicans threaten to emancipate their slaves.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 20, 2017
I’m glad Obama’s gone. I’m less thrilled that we have Trump. As others have noted, it was a pretty protectionist inaugural address.
But I’m happy with his picks, and I think that Gelernter would be a good pick for science adviser. And here’s one more reason Trump won.
A Yale professor who is a pioneer in parallel computing is anti-intellectual because he doesn't like Obama, guyshttps://t.co/tRvPN9mede
— Robert Mariani (@robert_mariani) January 19, 2017
[Update a couple minutes later]
And yes, Trump should defund the National Endowment for the Arts.
To me, it's not about saving money, because it's a trivial amount. It's about ending federal involvement in things it shouldn't be doing. https://t.co/Jctm6RwGvD
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 19, 2017
This is a frightening story. It’s why I try to avoid hospitals at all costs.
I asked Dr. G, who is now his personal cardiologist, if we needed to do anything to prevent his potassium from going so low again. He said, “If he stays off that drug, he will be fine.” To think that he went through all this because his GP gave him a drug to prevent heart attacks!! What a crazy world we live in.
…The blood pressure medication Dean had taken for 20 years was hydrochlorothiazide. It is the most commonly prescribed medication for blood pressure, not because it is safe or effective, but because it is the one insurance companies choose to pay for!
The dietary and general medical ignorance on display, and the rules, are almost criminal. And I’m sure this is the kind of treatment that my father got when he died of his second heart attack, in 1979. And I consider my high blood pressure (with which I’ve been living otherwise healthily for many decades) to be less risk than most of the prescribed “treatments.”
…has resigned her tenured faculty position:
A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.
How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide (I have worked through these issues with a number of skeptical young scientists).
Despite the fact that she was protected by tenure, I suspect that she will be able to speak out even more effectively now.
[Update Thursday morning (London]
Thoughts from Mark Steyn.
Saturday-morning update]
Tucker Carlson interviews her.
[Bumped]
It’s not so glorious.
I suspect history will judge harshly. And of course, in doing so, it will be racist.
That question is actually surprisingly easy to answer: They did. After all, 80 percent of McDowell’s population, including my grandparents, cleared out of the county to seek opportunities elsewhere during the last half-century.
But as the mines mechanized and closed down, why didn’t the rest go, too? Reed, Whitt, and Slagle all more or less agree that many folks in McDowell are being bribed by government handouts to stay put and to stay poor. Drug use is the result of the demoralization that follows.
In a Fall 2014 National Affairs article called “Moving to Work,” R Street Institute analysts Eli Lehrer and Lori Sanders asked, “What is keeping the poor from moving their families to new places to take advantage of better opportunities?” They argue that “the answer lies primarily in the structure of poverty-relief programs.” In other words, the government is paying people to be poor.
Yes.
A fascinating interview. I agree with him that the PhD system needs an overhaul. Seeking one has ruined many lives.
I’m glad that these people don’t seem to have the slightest understanding of how sex works; at least it means they won’t procreate.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I agree with the comment over there that it’s annoying to have non-Christmas songs like this (and Over The River And Through The Woods, which I think is a Thanksgiving song) being substituted for actual ones, that actually talk about, you know, Christ and stuff.
Scott Adams explains why he accepts it, even though it’s probably wrong:
when it comes to pattern recognition, I see the climate science skeptics within the scientific community as being similar to Shy Trump Supporters. The fact that a majority of scientists agree with climate science either means the evidence is one-sided or the social/economic pressures are high. And as we can plainly see, the cost of disagreeing with climate science is unreasonably high if you are a scientist.
While it is true that a scientist can become famous and make a big difference by bucking conventional wisdom and proving a new theory, anything short of total certainty would make that a suicide mission. And climate science doesn’t provide the option of total certainty.
To put it another way, it would be easy for a physicist to buck the majority by showing that her math worked. Math is math. But if your science depends on human judgement to decide which measurements to include and which ones to “tune,” you don’t have that option. Being a rebel theoretical physicist is relatively easy if your numbers add up. But being a rebel climate scientist is just plain stupid. So don’t expect to see many of the latter. Scientists can often be wrong, but rarely are they stupid.
…I accept the consensus of climate science experts when they say that climate science is real and accurate. But I do that to protect my reputation and my income. I have no way to evaluate the work of scientists.
If you ask me how scared I am of climate changes ruining the planet, I have to say it is near the bottom of my worries. If science is right, and the danger is real, we’ll find ways to scrub the atmosphere as needed. We always find ways to avoid slow-moving dangers. And if the risk of climate change isn’t real, I will say I knew it all along because climate science matches all of the criteria for a mass hallucination by experts.
It does indeed.
[Late-evening update]
The Scott Adams post was via Judith Curry, who has related links from other “heretics” (i.e., they “believe” in AGW, but aren’t hysterical about it) Roger Pielke and Matt Ridley:
The truly astonishing thing about all this is how little climate heretics – such as myself, Roger Pielke, and Matt Ridley – actually diverge from the consensus science position: RP Jr. hews strictly to the IPCC consensus; Matt Ridley is on the lukewarm side of the IPCC consensus, and I have stated that the uncertainties are too large to justify high confidence in the consensus statements.
RP Jr and Matt Ridley provide appalling examples of the personal and arguably unethical attacks from other scientists, journalists, elected politicians and others with government appointments.
Scott Adams provides some genuine (and as always, humorous) insights into the psychology behind the dynamics of the climate debate.
As to the question: to be or not to be a climate heretic?
I’m planning a climate heretic blog post shortly after the first of the year. After seeing RP Jr’s title, perhaps I will title it ‘Happy Heretic’ (stay tuned). Here’s to hoping that the Age of Trump will herald the demise of climate change dogma and acceptance of a broader range of perspectives on climate science and our policy options .
I’ll personally be looking forward to it.