Tag: science

Words are magic

A minor dialogue on Twitter cracked me up today. To put it in context, some scientists and science fetishists on Twitter were in an uproar over my assertion that SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEW was not only unreliable, but was nothing more than glorified proofreading. They argued that SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEW was all about replicating experiments and testing conclusions, not merely reading over the material in order to make sure the author wasn’t smoking crack.

One guy even demanded to know if I knew what “peer” meant. Because, you know, that totally changes the process.

Finally, I asked a scientist how many peer reviews he had done. Between 10 and 30 was the answer. Fair enough. Then I asked him how many experiments he had replicated as part of those SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEWS.

None. Or to put in scientific mathematical terms, zero. Also known as “the null set”.

And what did he actually do in scientifically peer-reviewing these papers? Well, he read them and occasionally made some suggestions for improving them.

[INSERT FACE PALM OF YOUR CHOICE HERE]

That is why I am strongly considering changing my title from Lead Editor of Castalia House to Lead Scientific Peer Reviewer. Because then, you see, we won’t merely be publishing fiction, we’ll be publishing PEER REVIEWED SCIENCE.

UPDATE: This was Real Live Scientist with More than TEN Proofreads Peer Reviews David Whitcombe’s response to finding out that scientists with considerably more experience agreed with me.

David Whitcombe ‏@hauxton
Ooh
You wrote a blog.
Still misunderstanding peer review.
Over your head in guess
 
David Whitcombe ‏@hauxton
Laughable Dunning Kruger

Thereby supporting my hypothesis that SJWs always double down.

Psychologist, heal thyself

This is why therapy is reliably doomed to failure:

Confessions of a depressed psychologist: I’m in a darker place than my patients.

I am sitting opposite my sixth patient of the day. She is describing a terrible incident in her childhood when she was abused, sexually and physically, by both of her parents. I am nodding, listening and hoping I appear as if I appear normal. Inside, however, I feel anything but.

My head is thick – as if I’m thinking through porridge. I find myself tuning out and switching to autopilot. I put it down to tiredness – I haven’t slept well recently; last night I managed just two hours – but after the session I’m disappointed in myself. I’m worried that I might have let down my patient and I feel a bit of  a failure, but I tell no one.

One week later, I am in my car, driving across a bridge. Everything should be wonderful – my partner has a new job, my career as a psychologist in the NHS is going well, plus it’s almost Christmas, the second with our young child, and we’re readying ourselves for a move to London.

Yet, my mind is thick again. My only lucid thought is, “What if I turned the steering wheel and drove into the bridge support? What if I stuck my foot on the pedal and went straight off the edge? Wouldn’t that be so much easier?”

I grip the steering wheel and force myself to think, instead, of my partner and child. They are the two people who get me home safely.

It is the sort of anecdote I have heard from clients time and time again. I became a psychologist because I have a natural nurturing tendency – I never dreamt I would be the vulnerable one. But 10 years ago I found myself suffering from an extremely severe episode of depression that lasted three months, left me unable to work for six weeks and, at my very lowest, saw me contemplating suicide.

Would you go to a plumber whose toilet is overflowing? Would you hire a computer programmer who didn’t know how to use a computer? Then why would you ever talk to one of these nutjobs in order to fix whatever mental issues you might be having? In addition to the 46 percent of psychologists who the NHS reports as being depressed, “out of 800 psychologists sampled, 29 per cent reported suicidal ideation and 4 per cent reported attempting suicide.”

There is very little scientific evidence of the benefits of psychology. I read one recent study which showed that neurotic individuals actually stabilize on their own at a higher rate than those who seek therapy. This is no surprise, as the foundations of psychology are literally fiction. One might as reasonably base one’s economics on Isaac Asimov novels.

How many people do you know that have gone into therapy and never exited it? Those who advocate therapy are rather like fat people testifying to the efficacy of diet plans on which they never lose any weight.

Women, science, and sex

The SJWs in science are setting up their favorite damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario for male scientists. If you don’t bring young women along with you on your trips, you’re a damnable sexist. And if you do, you’re a sexual predator.

On a cold evening last March, as researchers descended upon St. Louis, Missouri, for the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA), a dramatic scene unfolded at the rooftop bar of the St. Louis Hilton at the Ballpark, the conference hotel. From here, attendees had spectacular views of the city, including Busch Stadium and the Gateway Arch, but many were riveted by an animated discussion at one table.

Loudly, and apparently without caring who heard her, a research assistant at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City charged that her boss—noted paleoanthropologist Brian Richmond, the museum’s curator of human origins—had “sexually assaulted” her in his hotel room after a meeting the previous September in Florence, Italy. (She requested that her name not appear in this story to protect her privacy.) Over the next several days, as the 1700 conference attendees presented and discussed the latest research, word of the allegations raced through the meeting.

Richmond, who was also at the meeting, has vigorously denied the accusations in a statement to Science and in email responses. (He declined to be interviewed in person or by telephone.) The encounter in the hotel room, he wrote, was “consensual and reciprocal,” adding that “I never sexually assaulted anyone.”

Although the most recent high-profile cases of sexual harassment in science have arisen in astronomy and biology, many researchers say paleoanthropology also has been rife with sexual misconduct for decades. Fieldwork, often in remote places, can throw senior male faculty and young female students together in situations where the rules about appropriate behavior can be stretched to the breaking point. Senior women report years of unwanted sexual attention in the field, at meetings, and on campus. A widely cited anonymous survey of anthropologists and other field scientists, called the SAFE study and published in July 2014 in PLOS ONE, reported that 64% of the 666 respondents had experienced some sort of sexual harassment, from comments to physical contact, while doing fieldwork.

Even a few years ago, the research assistant might not even have aired her complaint, as few women—or men—felt emboldened to speak out about harassment. Of the 139 respondents in the SAFE study who said they experienced unwanted physical contact, only 37 had reported it. Those who remained silent may have feared retaliation. Senior paleoanthropologists control access to field sites and fossils, write letters of recommendation, and might end up as reviewers on papers or grant proposals. “The potential for [senior scientists] to make a phone call and kill a career-making paper feels very real,” says Leslea Hlusko, a paleontologist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley.

It will be interesting to learn if the female scientists entering the field will be sufficient to make up for the male scientists they drive from it. The history of social justice convergence indicates that not only will they fail to make up for it, but that all actual scientific activity will cease once a critical mass is reached.

It’s rather remarkable that the Richmond situation is being portrayed as him sexually assaulting her when she was in his hotel room. I suspect that the charge of sexual assault are nothing more than her trying to cover for the fact that she was more or less cheating on her husband. They were out drinking with their colleagues, all of whom would have known that she went back to his room with him.

Remember, it’s much better to be deemed a sexist than a sexual assailant. Don’t mentor women in person, don’t go out of your way to help them, don’t befriend them (particularly if you find them attractive), and don’t go out to dinner with them alone. If you can’t avoid it due to work, insist on lunch. Definitely don’t go out for drinks or to a club. Don’t hug or kiss them, and don’t let them touch you except to shake your hand. Don’t ever give the SJWs an opening to take you down.

The SJWs would love nothing better than to try to do to me what they’ve done to everyone from Jian Gomeshi to James Frenkel. They can’t, because I never give them even the slightest molehill out of which to make a mountain.

The cure for school shootings

It’s interesting to see how the media has repeatedly attempted to nonsensically blame guns for school shootings while ignoring the fact that most of the shooters have been mentally unstable and on antidepressants. But the truth usually comes out eventually, and in this case, it’s ugly:

Antidepressants can raise the risk of suicide, the biggest ever review has found, as pharmaceutical companies were accused of failing to report side-effects and even deaths linked to the drugs.

An analysis of 70 trials of the most common antidepressants – involving more than 18,000 people – found they doubled the risk of suicide and aggressive behaviour in under 18s. Although a similarly stark link was not seen in adults, the authors said misreporting of trial data could have led to a ‘serious under-estimation of the harms.’

For years families have claimed that antidepressant medication drove their loved ones to commit suicide, but have been continually dismissed by medical companies and doctors who claimed a link was unproven.

The review – the biggest oif its kind into the effects of the drugs – was carried out by the Nordic Cochrane Centre and analysed by University College London (UCL) who today endorse the findings in an editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

After comparing clinical trial information to actual patient reports the scientists found pharmaceutical companies had regularly misclassified deaths and suicidal events in people taking anti-depressants to “favour their products”.

“It is absolutely horrendous that they have such disregard for human lives.” Professor Peter Gotzsche, Nordic Cochrane Centre

Yes, it is. And to think that some people think that we should defer to scientists and allow them to run society as they think it should be ordered when they are observably some of the most coldly self-serving people on the planet.

Needless to say, this isn’t the only “unproven link” that will be proven one day, or the only one that will show the average grant-chasing scientist to be less trustworthy than your average used car salesman. I mean, look at this!

So far this month there have been at least 35 inquests with deaths linked to antidepressants. Last year there were more than 450. “I can say, hand on heart, that I don’t remember reading a report of an inquest where a suicide verdict was applied to a child who had never been on any psychiatric medication,” he said.

An r/K theory of war

The Anonymous Conservative predicts the coming fusion of K-strategists:

In the early stage of a K-shift, while threat and harshness are still avoidable and deniable, there will be a period where splintering will occur among the right. As a result, some rightward individuals will cling to aspects of r which give them comfort, while trying to maneuver politically and for social reasons in directions other than the K-strategy, as the Cuckservatives of the US do. Other groups with amygdalae only partly trained to react to a single deviation from one aspect of the K-strategy will focus on one aspect of K, from family values and social conservatism, to nationalism, to demands for freedom from government oppression, each to the exclusion of the rest of the K-strategy. They may attempt to compromise, or reduce conflict stimuli on other aspects of K as a strategic move, driven by their amygdala’s obsessed focus.

As the apocalypse goes down, there will be a reversal of the splintering, leading the right to fuse, but this will only occur as violence and threat become undeniable and a necessity that must be addressed. If real violence and threat were actually present in everyone’s world now, the similar aspects of right-leaning ideologues would unite them as allies against the threat, overwhelming their amygdalae’s present drive to avoid conflict. It would be something which would be actively driven by a cognitive desire of the amygdala to alleviate more thoroughly the massive anxiety produced by the threat. As they say, there is nothing like common enemies.

If Muslims were going to start killing people in greater numbers to the point everyone felt vulnerable, PEGIDA would tightly and proudly ally with the other groups, to amplify their power and increase the ability of their mind to alleviate the angst produced by the threat. If rightward ideologues were conducting violent acts against enemies on a regular basis, and you were either with them or against them, this would also consolidate the K-strategists. Threat avoidance is a great rabbit motivator – far greater than morals.

That level of threat just has not arisen yet, but it will.

We’re already starting to see some of this, as even Cuckservative Central has largely stopped virtue-signaling the Left and attacking the nationalists, and is beginning to start paying more attention to the threat being posed by the anti-nationalist traitors and the invaders.

You’ll know the fusion is complete when the leading Alt Right figures start being given the sort of mainstream platforms from which their predecessors were expelled. Of course, the situation will probably have to be pretty dire by then.

Science SJWs always lie

Orac Knows is always looking for a chance to take a shot at me because I spank him every time he tries to attack  my vaccine skepticism or whatever. He’s a typical scientist, educated, but not very smart, and totally unable to grasp the fact that his science degree doesn’t make him a match for an opponent with a significant advantage in intelligence.

He tried to leap on the fact that, according to him, the study cited by the New York Times in the story I linked to yesterday was flawed, and thereby claim that I don’t know what I am talking about.

There was just one little problem with that. I never read the study. I never pretended to read the study. I neither linked to nor cited the study.

From @oracknows: Quoth Vox Day: Antivaxers are more educated. Quoth the study Vox cites: Not exactly…

Vox Day @voxday 
You’re dishonest, Orac. More educated does not mean more intelligent. Look at us. You have more education. I’m smarter.

Orac ‏@oracknows
Of course, it amuses me that someone who is so “smart” didn’t seem to understand what the study he touts actually says. 🙂

Vox Day @voxday
You prove my point. I never read any study. I merely linked to the New York Times. You’re not amused, you’re dishonest.

Orac ‏@oracknows
In other words, to borrow a phrase from @WilliamShatner, I’m laughing at the superior intellect.

Vox Day @voxday 
My intellect is observably superior to yours. And you’re not laughing. You’re posturing.

Orac ‏@oracknows
Nope. I’m mocking you for being so lazy and anxious to believe the NYT version that you didn’t bother to check!

Vox Day @voxday
Why would I check it? I don’t check most news sources I link. The only
person leaping at anything is you. Why attack me, not NYT?

Vox Day ‏@voxday
And you also claimed I cited the study. I didn’t. You even knew I didn’t. You lied. See, YOU, I would check. Because you lie.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Proof @oracknows lied:

1. “Quoth the study Vox cites”
2. “it’s obvious that he just read the news…but didn’t actually look up the paper”

Notice how as soon as he’s busted on his two bait-and-switches – he tries to substitute “more intelligent” for “more educated” and “Vox is stupid because he got it wrong” for “I think the New York Times got it wrong”, he tries to back up and say that he’s just mocking me for excessive credulity in citing the New York Times.

You know, the leading American liberal news standard. Someone had better alert Wikipedia! The New York Times is no longer a reliable source!

This is like me claiming someone doesn’t understand economics because they cited GDP or inflation figures reported in the Wall Street Journal. It’s just ludicrously dishonest. But then, Orac isn’t actually interested in correcting the science or he would have focused on the New York Times and not me. He’s just another SJW with such short-term time preferences that he’s willing to throw his own reputation as well as the reputation of a liberal newspaper and a science reporter under the bus just to take an ill-advised shot at me.

The funny thing is that Spacebunny can land a killshot 100x more effective than all the SJWs desperately flailing about, and she can do it with considerably less effort.

UberFacts @UberFacts
A study found that astronauts had more difficulty doing things that required spacial reasoning and motor skills after 6 months in space.

Space Bunny ‏@Spacebunnyday
@voxday would come back a vegetable…..

Reliable in what regard?

Jonathan Haidt considers whether an entirely biased social science is capable of reliability:

Truth is a process, not just an end-state. The Righteous Mind was about the obstacles to that process — confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, tribalism, and the worship of sacred values. Given the many ways that our moral psychology warps our reasoning, it’s a wonder we’ve gotten as far as we have, as a species. That’s what’s so brilliant about science: it is a way of putting people together so that they challenge each other and cancel out each others’ confirmation biases and tribal commitments. The truth emerges from the interaction of flawed individuals.

But something alarming has happened to the academy since the 1990s: it has been transformed from an institution that leans to the left, which is not a big problem, into an institution that is entirely on the left, which is a very big problem.

Nowadays there are NO conservatives or libertarians in most academic departments in the humanities and social sciences. The academy has been so focused on attaining diversity by race and gender (which are valuable) that it has created a hostile climate for people who think differently. The American Academy has become a politically orthodox and quasi-religious institution. When everyone shares the same politics and prejudices, the disconfirmation process breaks down. Political orthodoxy is particularly dangerous for the social sciences, which grapple with so many controversial topics (such as race, racism, gender, poverty, immigration, politics, and climate science). America needs innovative and trustworthy research on all these topics, but can a social science that lacks viewpoint diversity produce reliable findings?

Based on the evidence, the answer is yes, as a social science that lacks viewpoint diversity produces findings that are reliably insane. At this point, the term “social science” has become an oxymoron akin to “military intelligence” or “new Star Wars movie”.

You’re not stupid, you’re just… inefficient

It should be fun to watch all the blank-slatists doing 180s from claiming that intelligence has absolutely no genetic foundation to claiming that everyone can be maximally intelligent regardless of their genes thanks to SCIENCE, which, as we are reliably informed, they f*%*#(! love:

Genes which make people intelligent have been discovered and scientists believe they could be manipulated to boost brain power.

Researchers have believed for some time that intellect is inherited with studies suggesting that up to 75 per cent of IQ is genetic, and the rest down to environmental factors such as schooling and friendship groups.

But until now, nobody has been able to pin-point exactly which genes are responsible for better memory, attention, processing speed or reasoning skills.

Now Imperial College London has found that two networks of genes determine whether people are intelligent or not-so-bright.

They liken the gene network to a football team. When all the players are in the right positions, the brain appears to function optimally, leading to clarity of thought and what we think of as quickness or cleverness.

However when the genes are mutated or in the wrong order, it can lead to dullness of thinking, or even serious cognitive impairments.

Scientists believe that there must be a ‘master switch’ regulating the networks and if they could find it, they could ‘switch on’ intelligence for everyone.

There must be? Or is it merely that they desperately want there to be one? Regardless, that is my new favorite insult that will reliably go over the target’s head: it appears your cognitive network is remarkably inefficient.

This actually makes sense, though, as one of the chief differences I notice between the highly intelligent and the moderately intelligent is speed of processing. As Ender once described a young mathematical genius of our acquaintance, some take the slow, winding path to the mountain peak, some climb straight up, and then there are those few who can simply fire up their jet pack and fly right to the top.

Fortunately, he apologized

Was said of no public figure in the last decade:

Dr. Marcy was mentioned only a few weeks ago as a potential Nobel Prize honoree. But he also left a trail of complaints and rumors about inappropriate behavior over the years.

This summer, in response to a formal complaint by four former students, the University of California concluded that Dr. Marcy had violated its policies on sexual harassment. The violations, spanning 2001 to 2010, included groping students, kissing them and touching or massaging them inside their clothes.

Dr. Marcy was informed that another harassment violation would leave him subject to immediate suspension or dismissal — a decision that was not widely known until BuzzFeed News reported it last week.

On the eve of the report’s release, Dr. Marcy posted an apology on his website, disagreeing with some aspects of the harassment complaints but saying he took responsibility. “It is difficult to express how painful it is for me to realize that I was a source of distress for any of my women colleagues, however unintentional,” he said.

But his apology and the university’s response were widely seen as not enough and lacking in sensitivity to the victims of his actions, some of whom have since left astronomy. The Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy declined his request that the apology be published in its newsletter, according to the Women in Astronomy blog.

Houston, we have convergence! Anyhow, just in case it’s not clear, an apology is not going to save you.

“This should put sexual harassers on notice: No one is too big to fail,”
Joan Schmelz, a former chairwoman of the American Astronomical
Society’s Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy, said on
Wednesday.

Nothing, NOTHING, is more important than preventing insufficiently attractive men from touching women. Not science. And certainly not astronomy!

Surprise! The models were off

As anyone who has been paying attention knew, the AGW/CC models were incorrect:

A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science.

He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly. He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.

It turns out the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has over-estimated future global warming by as much as 10 times, he says.

“Yes, CO2 has an effect, but it’s about a fifth or tenth of what the IPCC says it is. CO2 is not driving the climate; it caused less than 20 per cent of the global warming in the last few decades”.

Dr Evans says his discovery “ought to change the world”.

“But the political obstacles are massive,” he said.

His discovery explains why none of the climate models used by the IPCC reflect the evidence of recorded temperatures. The models have failed to predict the pause in global warming which has been going on for 18 years and counting.

“The model architecture was wrong,” he says. “Carbon dioxide causes only minor warming. The climate is largely driven by factors outside our control.”

The fact that the models were wrong has been totally freaking obvious for years because they completely failed as predictive models. That is supposed to be the sign to throw them out, or at the very least, try to fix them. But since “the science is settled”, tens of thousands of credulous buffoons who blindly accept any pig-in-a-poke that is marketed as “science” are still insisting that if you don’t take these inept and incorrect models seriously, you are an uneducated climaphobic Nazi denialist.

Or, as I prefer to pronounce it, “science-literate”.