Category Archives: Mathematics

Business, Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Admitting Mistakes

11 Comments

…”in a hostile environment.” Some thoughts from Judith Curry:

Ralph Keeling behaved with honesty and dignity by publicly admitting these errors and thanking Nic Lewis.

Such behavior shouldn’t be news, however; it is how all scientists should behave, always.

Imagine how the course of climate science and the public debate on climate change would be different if Michael Mann would have behaved in a similar way in response to McIntyre and McKitrick’s identification of problems with the hockey stick analysis.

I don’t think he’s capable of it.

By quickly admitting mistakes and giving credit where due, Ralph Keeling has done something unusual and laudatory in the field of climate science. If all climate scientists behaved this way, there would be no ‘hostile environment.’

I find it to be a sad state of affairs when a scientist admitting mistakes gets more kudos than the scientist actually finding the mistakes. But given the state of climate science, I guess finding mistakes seems to be a more common story than a publishing scientist actually admitting to mistakes.

Sadly, yes.

Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Fauxcahontas’s DNA

42 Comments

It shows that she’s heap big authentic.

[Update Wednesday afternoon]

Warren’s Clintonian smoke signals.

It’s worth noting that Warren brought on a lot of these tropes about Siberian Americans with her “Powwow Chow.”

[Update a few minutes later]

Actual descendant of Pocahontas to Warren: Apologize.

I suspect that the fraud will keep doubling down.

[Update a couple more minutes later]

Cherokee Nation to Elizabeth Warren: Drop dead.

Unlikely she’ll do that, either, but rarely has someone so publicly pwned themselves.

[Saturday morning]

Blackface America:

America is a wonderfully mixed-up place. You meet somebody named Qiáng MacFarland Lopez and the safe bet is that he’s an American. And many of us have had the peculiar experience of feeling a strong sense of kinship with a culture that is not our own. (That’s me in a Swiss train station.) “Multiculturalism” is an intellectual dead end, but culture is not, and there is much to be said for learning Chinese or Hebrew or Nahuatl, reading the great Spanish novels, or coming to understand Buddhism as something more than a feel-good corporate trend.

To consider oneself fixed within the bounds of one’s own specific patrimony is an intellectual poverty. But Senator Warren has not dug into Cherokee history, language, or culture. She simply used the fiction of her Cherokee identity to get something she wanted — a little political leg up on the rest of the sanctimonious white ladies. That’s cheap, vulgar, and wrong — and the Cherokee are right to be annoyed by it. And if Texas Democrats really want a Hispanic name on the ballot to put up against Senator Cruz, then they might consider — here’s a radical thought! — nominating someone of Hispanic heritage as their candidate. As for Rachel Dolezal — my best guess is that being Rachel Dolezal is its own punishment.

I don’t think the Democrats understand how sane people view all this stuff (not to mention all the gender insanity).

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

1.5 Degrees C

18 Comments

Thoughts on the latest non-news from Judith Curry:

IMO, even with erroneous attribution of extreme weather/climate events and projections using climate models that are running too hot and not fit for purpose of projecting 21st century climate change, the IPCC still has not made a strong case for this massive investment to prevent 1.5C warming.

No kidding.

Business, Culinary, Education, General Science, Health, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Nutrition “Science”

2 Comments

A fraud is exposed, but it’s a much larger problem:

Data dredging is fairly common in health research, and especially in studies involving food. It is one reason contradictory nutrition headlines seem to be the norm: One week coffee, cheese and red wine are found to be protective against heart disease and cancer, and the next week a new crop of studies pronounce that they cause it. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said that many researchers are under enormous pressure to churn out papers. One recent analysis found that thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days.

I liked this:

“P-hacking is a really serious problem,” said Dr. Ivan Oransky, a co-founder of Retraction Watch, who teaches medical journalism at New York University. “Not to be overly dramatic, but in some ways it throws into question the very statistical basis of what we’re reading as science journalists and as the public.”

You don’t say.

It goes far beyond nutrition. A lot of drug research is based on this sort of thing as well, including the statin scam.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Jerry Brown

4 Comments

…is nuts:

“We’re fighting nature with the amount of material we’re putting in the environment, and that material traps heat, and the heat fosters fires, and the fires keep burning,” he said.

The governor added that “since civilization emerged 10,000 years ago, we haven’t had this kind of heat condition, and it’s going to continue getting worse and that’s the way it is.”

“Some people don’t want to accept that, some just outright deny it,” Brown continued. “I don’t say it with any great joy here – we’re in for a very rough ride. It’s going to get expensive. It’s going to get dangerous, and we have to apply all our creativity to make the best of what is going to be an increasingly bad situation, not just for California, but for people all over America and all over the world.”

Brown said the state’s budget would also have to figure in the cost of increased fire fury in the upcoming years. “So far, this fire activity is a small part of our very large budget, but it is growing and it will continue to grow as we adapt to the changing weather,” he said.

The governor said that steps to combat global warming can still, eventually, “shift the weather back to where it historically was.”

Uh huh.

[Late-morning update]

[Noon update]

More history from Joe Bastardi.

Business, Economics, Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Alexandria O-C

11 Comments

The unserious face of an unserious moment:

Speaking to a friendly Trevor Noah, Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she does not know the difference between a one-year and a ten-year budget; confused the recent increase in defense spending with the entire annual cost of the military; implied that the population of the United States was around 800 million strong; and, having been asked to defend her coveted $15 minimum wage, launched into a rambling and inscrutable diatribe about “private equity” firms that would have been a touch too harsh as a parody on South Park. If anything, she was worse this time than she had been during her appearance on Firing Line a few days earlier, on which newly revamped show she demonstrated her obliviousness to the fact that the United States economy exploded during the 1990s, to the manner in which unemployment numbers are calculated, and to even the most obvious facets of the Israel–Palestine question about which she has assured her supporters she is so passionate.

“It’s really weird!”

It is, yes. Especially given that, before her two interviews aired, Ocasio-Cortez had taken to exhibiting that jealous penchant for credentialism that so stains the world’s wannabe socialists, and to boasting about her intellectual prowess. At the beginning of July, she tweeted with self-satisfaction — and a noticeably premature use of the word “other” — that she was “Wondering how many other House Democrats have a degree in Economics like I do?” Two days later, she upgraded that claim: “If you think the GOP is terrified of my politics now,” she threatened on Twitter, “just wait until they find out about public libraries.” Just wait, indeed! From a BA from BU to the embodiment of all human knowledge in just 48 hours! At this rate it can’t be long before she gives it all up and becomes an honorary Krassenstein Brother: “We are the way, the truth, and the light. Retweet if you love Love and hate Trump!”

And as Stephen Green notes: “Graduated fourth in her class at Boston University, which costs $72,618 annually to attend.”

She’s a poster child for the high-cost worthlessness of a modern college degree.

[Update a while later]

Are people really this stupid? Well, they’re certainly mal-educated.

[Update a few minutes later]

Millennial socialism: Stupid, evil, or both?

[Update a while later]

The media rushes to protect Alexandria O-C from her own cluelessness.

General Science, Mathematics, Philosophy, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Natural Arguments For God

12 Comments

Mark Tapscott has what he thinks are the five best ones. I find none of them particularly compelling, and the third one is very weak.

As I note in comments (the discussion has been going on for a couple weeks), science is orthogonal to the issue of whether or not God exists, and (as I argued with Hugh Hewitt years ago) the desire of believers to misuse/misunderstand the nature of science to validate their religious beliefs is indicative of a certain lack of faith. And of course, the fallacy of the blind watchmaker appears, in which I have to point out that rolexes don’t replicate with random errors to improve the breed.