Why it’s “almost useless and misleading.”
No, actually, it’s worse than useless.
Category Archives: Science And Society
Race And Science
“Stop trying to get me fired for things I didn’t say and don’t believe“:
I thought that writing 5,000 words about what I think genes influence and don’t, how much variation is likely attributable to genetics, and discussing the predictive powers and limitations of IQ would be sufficient to prevent people from deliberately misreading my post as an endorsement of race science. Sadly, that is not the case, and so of course Twitter is accusing me of believing literally the opposite of what the very first lines of the first post said.
The vast majority of (violent) protestors against Charles Murray, who insanely believe he’s a “white nationalist,” have never read a word he’s written. I personally have no opinion about average IQ of various “races,” but I think the notion that something heritable won’t have an effect on a population is the kind of nutty thing that only a leftist could believe. I understand why some are uncomfortable with studying it, but I’ve never understood why the fact that a member of a group that has a certain characteristic must be treated as a member of that group, rather than as an individual. But since leftists hate treating people as individuals, believing only in the collective, I guess that would explain it.
Mimicking An Early Impact In Earth’s Atmosphere
…results in the creation of all four DNA bases. This seems much more significant than Miller-Urey.
Vitamin D
Should we be supplementing, or not?
As is often the case, the science is iffy. I’m taking 5000 IU of D3 daily (or at least when I remember to take anything). No idea if it’s helping, but I don’t generally spend a lot of time in the sun. In fact, I have a solar-powered watch whose battery occasionally runs down because I spend so much time in my office. So it seems likely that I’m somewhat deficient.
Raised By Monkeys
This is sad. She’ll probably never learn to speak. It’s something that has to be learned at a very early age.
The Seratonin Transporter Gene And Depression
Time to throw in the towel on the theory. Like climate, genetics remains a lot more complicated than we’d like to think.
Enceladus
Is it the most likely place to look for life in the solar system? I know that Carolyn Porco thinks so. Or at least that it’s a better prospect than Europa. Plus, we haven’t been warned to attempt no landings there.
It’s obviously a lot harder mission than Europa, but it seems like going to Europa to look for life instead of Enceladus is like the guy who went to a different block to look for his lost car keys because the light was better there.
EPA
John Stossell says “Enough Protection Already.”
The amount of mendacity from the Left about Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” is more staggering than usual. It’s almost as bad as the health-care lies.
Science On The Hill
The hearing has started, with Judith Curry, Roger Pielke, John Christy, and Michael Mann.
[Update about 10:32 EDT]
Mann uses the BS 97% number, and complains that he’s the only one on the panel “in the mainstream.”
[Update early afternoon]
Here is Judith Curry’s written testimony.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here is all the written testimony. I’ll refrain from comment.
[Update a while later]
Here’s the story from Seth Borenstein:
At first Mann said he didn’t call Curry a denier. But in his written not oral testimony he called Curry “a climate science denier.” Mann said there’s a difference between denying climate change and “denying established science” on how much humans cause climate change, which he said Curry did.
But there’s this:
Former Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry, who often clashes with mainstream science…
I don’t think she ever clashes with science, but I’m not sure what the hell “mainstream” is in this context.
[Monday-afternoon update]
The warm mongers’ five worst moments of that hearing.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Another point of view from an eyewitness:
The big obstacle: managing bodies of the NAS, formerly respected academic societies, and foreign national academies adopted statements that either outright support or do not contradict climatist pseudo-science. This is an important fact. Of course, there are two causes for that: internal corruption that has been happening over decades and pressure from the Obama administration and its counterparts in other Western countries. Democrat Congresspersons might congratulate themselves for their contribution to shutting up opposition views. But it is hard to convince Republicans that this happened in front of their eyes and under the watch of many of them.
The problem with the academia extends beyond the climate debate. My thoughts are that sometimes things are too broken for repair, and can be only replaced. A replacement should be built before the old thing is discarded.
Lawmakers should be aware that they might need to rebuild American scientific enterprise and academia almost from scratch: create new universities and national labs, extricate competent departments, teams, and individuals from the corrupt institutions, and let them to grow organically in the atmosphere free from the interference from the Leftist and hostile foreign bodies. This is where the federal research and education budgets should go, rather than on continuing support of morally, intellectually, and soon financially bankrupt institutions.
The small obstacle, limited to this panel, was a problematic panel of witnesses. From the outside, it seemed to consist of three skeptics and one “consensus scientist.” In fact, it consisted of Michael Mann, two lukewarmers, and respected Dr. John Christy who, nevertheless, shook hands with Michael Mann in front of my eyes. Thus, the climate alarmism was represented by its most extreme representative, while opposition to climate alarmism was hardly represented at all.
It’s long, but read the whole thing.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Saving Climate Science From Itself
This was a useful recommendation to come out of Wednesday’s hearing. We use red teams for proposals; why not for science, especially considering that fewer than one percent of published papers actually follow the scientific method?