Mailvox: No True Scientist?

A hard scientist casts a skeptical eye on those outside her discipline:

You’ll find this quite interesting. It’s in line with your assertions about corruption in the sciences. However, you’re making an error to apply charges of significant corruption and professional laziness to all of science. Perhaps you are in possession of evidence of which I’m not aware*, but based on what I know you’re committing the same error as atheists when they make blanket assertions about atheists vs. religious people. As you have pointed out many times, there are important distinctions within these groups. Likewise, there are important distinctions within the sciences. No field of science is free of flaws, but I have good evidence that corruption is significantly lower in physics and its sub-fields, and that research proceeds as well as can be expected for any human endeavor. I strongly suspect the increase in retractions noted by Nature traces the increased and alarming politicization of some specific fields, namely biology, medicine (including psychiatry/psychology), and climate science.

It’s important to draw a distinction between the different sciences, because developments in physics and even chemistry actually demonstrate that these fields are relatively healthy. Several discoveries in this year alone show that physicists are quite willing to abandon cherished ideas (after only a modest degree of initial resistance) in the face of new data. Also, look at the Nobel prizes announced for physics and chemistry. Both were for experiments that overturned accepted ideas, and in both cases it was only a few years to go from discovery to implementation. That’s unprecedented in other sciences.

There is no question that physics has been the gold standard of science since Isaac Newton. And I’m under no illusion that all science is created equally or that fraud pervades all of it to an equal degree. It hasn’t escaped me, after all, that Daniel Dennett and others have attempted to justify their belief in the predictions of biologists by appealing to the accuracy of predictions by physicists, which is about as sensible as claiming that one should believe psychics due to the accuracy of predictions by economists.

And the response of the physics community to the news of the superluminal neutrinos has been encouraging to those who are accustomed to witnessing very different behavior from scientists in other, softer fields. Moderate skepticism and an expectation that the experiment will be independently replicated before the existing theories are considered to be overturned is entirely reasonable and very different than the way biologists and climatologists have regarded theoretical upheavals in their scientific fields.

The division between hard science and soft science is perhaps better described as the difference between actual science and non-science designed to look like the real thing.

A Libertarian on the Wall Street protests

From the Market Ticker:

You know what the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is?

It is all the things that were in the original Tea Party, but were steadily ignored as the TP became a Republican booster club.

The Tea Party is a contradiction. They want a balanced budget, but they also want the US military to intervene everywhere. Obamacare is a dirty word, but don’t dare touch social security or medicare. Individual rights are important too, but don’t push it too far. After all, republicans came up with today’s policies.

The most intriguing thing about these protests is the instinctive reaction of horror from the conservative media who still confuse corrupt big government corporatism for free market capitalism. If the Tea Party hadn’t already revealed itself to be little more than a joke, they’d be protesting side by side with the left-wing hipsters.

Both Republicans and Democrats are the problem. And that’s understandably something few Republicans or Democrats want to admit.

Herman Cain: banker’s whore or bankster?

It has been interesting to see how feeble a defense those who support Magic Negro Part II: The Republican have been able to make on his behalf. When faced with the fact that he was not only a corrupt Federal Reserve executive, but is still defending the Federal Reserve, the giant zombie banks, and Wall Street despite the economic depression they caused, their only – and I do mean ONLY – response is to cry raciss.

This demonstrates that Herman Cain has little more to offer as a presidential candidate but his race. But, in the immortal words of the French castle guard, the American people already got one, you see. The grand Republican dream of finally being able to accuse Democrats of racism is based on an erroneous assumption that Democrats care about such things; it would appear that Republicans have learned nothing from Clinton presidential scandal when it was learned that feminists didn’t mind being legitimately accused of supporting sexism.

Democrats are the modern equivalent of the medieval religious heretics who demonstrated their moral ascension beyond good and evil by their ability to indulge in the latter without harming their immortal soul. Thus, while others are tainted by the mere accusation of sexiss or raciss, actual acts of what would otherwise be considered sexism or racism on the part of a Democrat only proves his ideological saintliness.

As we’ve seen already with regards to Rick Perry, Cain is more than willing to cry raciss himself. But that’s almost irrelevant. The real question is whether Cain is a banker’s whore or a bankster proper. While his Federal Reserve history suggests the latter, his astonishing remarks about the central bank and apparent ignorance about the U.S. financial system strongly indicate that his role at the Federal Reserve was little more than affirmative action PR. So, I conclude that Cain is merely a banker’s whore like McCain and Obama rather than a genuine bankster like Bernanke.

Dancing around the D-word

1. “The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage has fallen below 4 percent for the first time in history. For the lucky few with good jobs and stable finances, it’s a rare opportunity to save potentially thousands of dollars each year. For most people, it’s a tease and a reminder of how weak their own financial situation is.”

2. “The American dream of homeownership has felt its biggest drop since the Great Depression, according to new 2010 census figures released Thursday. The analysis by the Census Bureau found the homeownership rate fell to 65.1 percent last year. While that level remains the second highest decennial rate, analysts say the U.S. may never return to its mid-decade housing boom peak in which nearly 70 percent of occupied households were owned by their residents.”

3. “Sir Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to put £75billion of newly created money into the economy in a desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession. Economists said the Bank’s decision to resume its quantitative easing [QE], or asset purchase programme, showed it was increasingly fearful for the economy, and predicted more such moves ahead. Sir Mervyn said the Bank had been driven by growing signs of a global economic disaster. “This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever. We’re having to deal with very unusual circumstances, but to act calmly to this and to do the right thing.””

Of course, more quantitative easing isn’t the right thing to do if the desire is to see the global economy return to real economic growth in the shortest possible period of time. Expanding the money supply, however one wants to label it, is the precisely wrong thing thing to do and is an action driven by the banking industry’s allegiance to a false economic model because the correct action will significantly increase the likelihood of widespread bank failure. But if one simply goes back to basic economic theory 101, it’s not hard to see why neither Bank of England’s current action nor the Federal Reserve’s previous actions can possibly work. Since it is the price of money, the Law of Supply and Demand dictates that historically low interest rates mean there is either (a) insufficient demand for money or (b) an excess supply of money.

How, one wonders, can increasing the supply of money be expected to either (a) increase the insufficient demand for money or (b) reduce the excess supply of it?

Both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England would do much better to reduce the money supply, raise interest rates to 20 percent, and make it profitable to save and loan money again. The reason they don’t is that thanks to the Wall Street Casino, many banks are now net borrowers rather than creditors; remember that the financial institutions owe 27 percent of all U.S. debt. That is why there is simply no way out of the financial crisis without shutting down the banks.

Ever more 1984

The USA is moving closer to Soviet-style ritual denunciations. I don’t know about you, but I am rather looking forward to the emotional catharsis of a good Two-Minute Hate.

The House voted to set aside a privileged resolution aimed at condemning the stone on Perry’s ranch offered earlier in the day by an impassioned Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL).

Earlier in the day, Jackson read his resolution on the floor. It called on the House to:

“Condemn Texas Governor Rick Perry for using a secluded West Texas hunting camp as a place to host lawmakers, friends and supporters on hunting trips at a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance called ‘N*****head.'”

So, Congress has no problem with pharmaceutical corruption, handing two of every three Texas jobs to immigrants, and blowing millions, if not billions, on educating illegal aliens, but using land on which sits a politically incorrect rock, that’s legitimate national business demanding Congressional attention.

Wall Street’s house negro

I warned you from that start that Herman Cain was as stupid as he is corrupt:

“I don’t have the facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama Administration,” Cain told the Wall Street Journal. “Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed.”

It’s true, Herman Cain doesn’t have any facts. He also doesn’t have much of a brain. Remember, this is the guy who claimed the Federal Reserve doesn’t need to be audited because it performs so many internal audits on itself. The cluelessness, the sheer effrontery, of defending Wall Street and the big banks by pointing to the lack of success of the very people who are being robbed of TRILLIONS in order to prevent Wall Street and the big banks from experiencing the consequences of their egregious failures is simply staggering.

Herman Cain is a corrupt and stupid man who is wholly owned by the banksters. Republicans who support him are either delusional or foolish; the only reason they are enthusiastic about this Wall Street banker’s whore is because they desperately want to prove how post-racial they are. If Cain somehow manages to win the nomination and the election, he will be a bigger and more spectacular disaster than Obama. Although it would certainly be amusing to guess the Vegas line on the over/under of ex-Goldmanites in a Cain cabinet. I’d say three.

What Cain has completely omitted to mention is that the primary failed policy of the Obama administration is its policy of doing whatever Wall Street and the big banks demand of it. And that slavish submission to Wall Street is exactly the policy that would be the guiding policy of any future Cain administration.

50 Ann Coulter quotes

The Right Wing News compiles them. My personal favorites:

44) The common wisdom holds that “both parties” have to appeal to the extremes during the primary and then move to the center for the general election. To the contrary, both parties run for office as conservatives. Once they have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes double-cross the voters. Democrats always do.

35) This is liberalism’s real strength. It is no longer susceptible to reductio ad absurdium arguments. Before you can come up with a comical take on their worldview, some college professor has already written an article advancing the idea.

24) Liberals use the word science exactly as they use the word constitutional. Both words are nothing more or less than a general statement of liberal approval, having nothing to do with either science or the Constitution.

3) Words mean nothing to liberals. They say whatever will help advance their cause at the moment, switch talking points in a heartbeat, and then act indignant if anyone uses the exact same argument they were using five minutes ago.

Steve Jobs is dead

It seems appropriate somehow, that he should die as his creation stands towering over the cratered ashes of the tech boom. It feels like a metaphor of sorts, but what precisely, I cannot say. As for me, I loved my Apple II and I loathed his lovely technofascistic vision.

“Such as it is”

Bernanke circles around the truth:

Europe has a debt crisis. America has a jobs crisis. Corporate profits could be in trouble. World financial markets are in turmoil. And no one seems prepared to ride to the rescue. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke bluntly warned Congress on Tuesday of what most of America has sensed for some time: The economic recovery, such as it is, “is close to faltering.”

“Such as it is.” For those of you who aren’t fluent in Fedspeak, allow me to translate:

There is no recovery. There never was any recovery and all of my talk of green shoots and economic growth was a failed attempt to raise those all-important animals spirits while I flooded the banks with money. But the happy talk isn’t working and is actually becoming counter-productive as the gulf between it and observable reality continues to widen, so I’m going to dial it back a bit in order to retain some semblance of credibility. God help us all, because I am totally out of ammo.

And this was an interesting admission: “I think people are quite unhappy with the state of the economy and what’s happening. They blame, with some justification, the problems in the financial sector for getting us into this mess. And they’re dissatisfied with the policy response here in Washington. And at some level, I can’t blame them.”

Yes, the massive borrowing that took the financial sector from 0.85% of the total U.S. debt to 32.66% in 2008 might just have a little to do with the current problem. But no, Helicopter, people aren’t protesting Wall Street because of 9% unemployment and slow growth, they’re protesting because they know Wall Street gambled big, lost heavily, and then robbed them and went back into the casino.

A mistaken assumption

I’ve noticed that some people are operating under the mistaken impression that I have to answer anyone’s questions. Let me make it perfectly clear for everyone. I don’t have to do anything. And, as I have already made clear in Rule 14, even if I do choose to answer a question or two, I’m not inclined to devote inordinate effort in explaining anything to the egregiously slow, the willfully or terminally stupid, or to permit any visitor here to assume a prosecutorial role. In fact, the more one attempts the latter, the less likely it is that I will even read one’s comments. Substantive criticism is not only fine, it is welcome. Acting officious or posturing as if you have any authority whatsoever is not.

Rule 14: It is my intention to give individual commenters up to three opportunities per post to criticize what I have posted there. Since I do not have any interest whatsoever in wasting time on futile attempts to explain things to the willfully obtuse, the intellectually underpowered, or the disingenuous, I will cease to engage with a commenter after he has committed three demonstrable errors of fact or logic in that comment thread. While I will identify those errors, I am not inclined to be drawn into tangential discussions of them. Attempts to claim that my refusal to further engage with a commenter whose arguments have repeatedly been demonstrated to be flawed are the result of cowardice or an inability to respond are false and will be deleted.

What some tend to forget is that thousands of people come here to learn what I have to think. They don’t come here to learn what random critic A or emotionally deranged person B have to say. So, I get a lot of questions directed at me, both in the comments and in my email. I ignore the majority of them because I simply can’t answer them all and when I do answer them, I answer most of them in a terse manner. For example, I presently have 27 emails saved because I would like to answer them but haven’t found the time to do so yet.

On the other hand, the commenter to whom I direct a question has usually already asked me several questions that were answered. He doesn’t have hundreds of people asking him questions and he has no one holding him to account. Furthermore, he does not have an eight-year history of reliably backing up his claims with evidence. And finally, as we have learned, there is a type of critic that is the shoot-and-run variety that is totally unwilling to stand by his own words.

Notice, for example, that whereas I answered R.S. Bakker’s ridiculous question that I initially believed to be rhetorical, the moment I started asking him questions central to his assertions, he dropped the subject and fell silent despite having implied that my failure to immediately answer his questions was meaningful. I shall leave it to the readers to decide what his failure to answer my direct questions means by his own metric.

So, that is why the unbalanced treatment of a) requiring commenters to answer direct challenges to their claims and b) ignoring questions directed at me is not only justified, but necessary. The fact that people can ask me questions about my posts is a privilege, not a right, as is commenting here at all. And the fact that I have answered a question, or two, or three neither means that I have agreed to a debate nor accepted a commenter’s status as some sort of special prosecutor.

And once you’ve shown that you’re clueless, I’m simply not going to pay much attention to what you write. There are too many other people who actually have something intelligent or interesting to say. This isn’t a public school, where the teacher has to devote all her attention to the retards and behaviorally challenged to the detriment of the rest of the classroom.

And on a tangential note, many of you need to stop using the term “logical fallacy” until you learn your logical fallacies. It is readily apparent that many of you do not know what is and what is not a logical fallacy. So, unless you can identify the specific logical fallacy that has been committed, I recommend avoiding use of the term. A logical error is not synonymous with a logical fallacy. Wikipedia has a list of logical fallacies here.