Tag: science

Proving the opposite

A professor of mathematics complains that unlike the fortunate Chinese, America does not enjoy the benefit of being ruled by scientists:

For complex historical reasons, Americans have long privately dismissed scientists and mathematicians as impractical and elitist, even while publicly paying lip service to them. One reason is that an abstract, scientific approach to problems and issues often leads to conclusions that are at odds with religious and cultural beliefs and scientists are sometimes tone-deaf to the social environment in which they state their conclusions. A more politically sensitive approach to problems and issues, on the other hand, often leads to positions that simply don’t jibe with the facts, no matter how delicately phrased….

Dinosaurs cavorting with humans, climate scientists cooking up the global warming “hoax,” the health establishment using vaccines to bring about socialism – it’s hard to imagine mainstream leaders in other advanced economies not laughing at such claims.

I always enjoy the left-liberal arguments which revolve around the idea that because someone, somewhere, might be laughing at an idea, it must not be true. And, of course, given that there is no global warming and climate scientists did cook up one of the most colossal scams in human history, the professor manages to explain more cogently than he imagined why Americans, for all their flaws, still aren’t dumb enough to vote for scientists.

The problem isn’t so much that “an abstract, scientific approach to problems and issues often leads to conclusions that are at odds with religious and cultural beliefs”, it is that ideology hidden under a veneer of an abstract, scientific approach to problems and issues often leads to conclusions that are at odds with readily observable reality.

Americans don’t refuse to vote for scientists because they think scientists threaten their beliefs, Americans refuse to vote for them because they conclude, on the basis of considerable evidence, scientists are foolish and stupid.

There is still no global warming

I hope the readers here will never, ever forget how the AGW/CC story has played out, especially the next time that the usual suspects start babbling about another “scientific consensus”.

The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less then previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.

I hope you will also remember this the next time that critics complain that I think I am smarter and more likely to be correct about a scientific matter than the scientists who actually specialize in the subject. How can I possibly assert that I am correct when all the experts say otherwise? Because, as has been chronicled in some detail, I was the last time. And the time before that. And the time before that….

What people often tend to forget is that scientists are people. And while one may not have the wherewithal to examine the actual scientific experiments or assess the relevant facts, one always has the ability to observe the behavior of the individuals citing them as evidence. There are a plethora of indications that an individual is not telling the straightforward truth, be it in person or in print. An ability to read those signs is all that is required to recognize when scientists are attempting to skate on their perceived authority rather than on any actual science, in which case one can always safely conclude that their claims are false. Observing the behavioral patterns was how I was able to correctly conclude that Man is not causing global warming because there is no global warming.

Scientists spend an awful lot of time being stunned because they are some of the most naive, credulous, and easily manipulated beings on the planet. That’s why they tend to inordinately fall for every nonsensical philosophical and political ideology that crosses their paths. The average reader of The National Enquirer probably has a better and more-developed sense of skepticism than the average scientist.

UPDATE – Even some of the former champions of global warming are now turning against the fake science.

One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”

Mailvox: questions for a conference

RR asks if anyone has any suggestions for questions he might ask at an evolution speech:

I was wondering if you and the ilk could help me come up with some questions to ask a speaker at an upcoming speech entitled “Evolution, Education, and Intelligent Design“?

I thought the following would generate a certain amount of brain-twisting and possible red-face and sputtering:

1. Could you tell me the practical advantages in scientific experiments that knowledge of evolutionary theory brings that would not be available to someone holding to some theory of intelligent design or young-earth creationism?

2. What predictability advantage comes from a thorough adherence to evolution rather than intelligent design theory?

These are good questions. As anyone who follows science knows, biology tends to follow one of two tracks, either the “do something useful with genetics” track or “keep attempting to prove TENS track”. There is very little, if any, connection between the two, and in fact, one could make an excellent case for the fact that wasting resources in attempts to prove TENS through “consistent with” results has been a much greater hindrance to advancing genetic science than the sum total of anti-scientific political efforts of the last fifty years.

And since the subject directly concerns education, another pair of useful questions might be these:

3. Since most biological science does not utilize evolutionary theory and because only a very small percentage of students will go on to study biology in college, why should any high school students be forced to study either the theory of evolution by natural selection or the intelligent design hypothesis?

4. A significant and increasing percentage of high school students are unable to read or do math at an age-appropriate level. What is the benefit of teaching evolutionary theory or intelligent design to a student who cannot read or do the necessary math that is required to understand even the most basic scientific concepts.

Anyone else have ideas?

The deathwatch begins

Never let it be said that we are anti-science here. Let the record reflect that we have observed, we have hypothesized, and now we shall test the Curie-Hultgreen syndrome’s performance as a predictive model:

It is not a region known for its promotion of equal rights for women. However, a 28-year-old woman from Dubai has struck a blow for her Arabic sisters after becoming a train driver for the city’s Metro system. Not only is Mariam Al Safar the first female in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to get behind the controls of a train – she is also the first in the Middle East.

A pioneer! A female pioneer! I daresay I am more genuinely excited than the most hardened feminist about this. Needless to say, I shall be keeping an eye out for the eventual reappearance of Ms Al Safar’s name in the news.

No global warming since 1997

As I have been repeatedly saying from the start, global warming has never been anything but another scientific hoax and an excuse to push global government:

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Everything about the scientific consensus has been wrong, right down to their basic foundational assumption that CO2 levels produced higher temperatures. They don’t, and moreover, the conceptual model behind the theory has always been false.

This underlines one of my previous assertions. Science can only be trusted at the point when it becomes engineering. Which, of course, is another way of saying that science per se is not intrinsically reliable.

Mailvox: dating site science

AA asks about a new study purporting to demonstrate that religion only benefits people where it is a free rider:

What do you think about the newly released study that claims that religious beliefs only make people happier due to cultural factors? According to the new study of almost 200,000 people in 11 European countries, people who are religious have higher self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than the non-religious only in countries where belief in religion is common . In more secular societies, the religious and the non-religious are equally well-off.

“The results suggest that religiosity, albeit a potent force, confers benefits by riding on cultural values,” study researcher Jochen Gebauer of Humboldt University in Berlin and colleagues wrote online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

Do you think this study indicates the truth or is there any other valid reasons why religion creates better lifestyles for people in need of purpose?

My initial assumption is that this study is the usual propagandistic garbage put out by pseudoscientists who are dishonestly attempting to bolster their preconceived opinion with a false sheen of science. No doubt it is the sort of quasi-scientific study that purports to “prove” that all conservatives are racist, low IQ child molesters and therefore all decent human beings have no choice but to vote for Nancy Pelosi.

[Stops to read the referenced article about the study.]

Bingo. Here is the money quote:

“Gebauer and colleagues wanted to know if larger cultural forces contribute to the well-being of spiritual sorts. They turned to eDarling, the European version of dating websites like eHarmony or Match.com. Users of eDarling answer a question in their profiles about how important religion is to them; while setting up their profiles, they also complete psychological surveys asking them how “calm,” “cheerful” and “content” they feel, among other measures of happiness, life satisfaction and self-esteem.”

No doubt in their next study, Gebauer and his colleagues will report the astonishing news that contra all the media reports, there is no epidemic of obesity in America as only two percent of the women on eHarmony report themselves to be “overweight”. Not only is the ridicuous study entirely based on a notoriously unreliable form of self-reporting – it’s a DATING SITE, for crying out loud – but it contradicts many studies based upon more concrete metrics for measuring psychological health, such as alcoholism, suicide rates, and prescriptions for drugs used to treat depression.

Here, for example, is a study that uses the objective measure of hypertension as a metric and directly contradicts the conclusions of the eDarling-based study.

“With the help of a large Norwegian longitudinal health study called HUNT, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) were able to find a clear relationship between time spent in church and lower blood pressure in both women and men.

“We found that the more often HUNT participants went to church, the lower their blood pressure, even when we controlled for a number of other possible explanatory factors,” says Torgeir Sørensen, a PhD candidate from the School of Theology and Religious Psychology Centre at Sykehuset Innlandet (Inland Hospital). “This is the first study of its kind in Scandinavia. Previous research from the United States has shown that there is a possible link between people who attend church and blood pressure.”

In fact, if we are to take dating site science seriously, we can conclude that there are other, more important factors in making people happy. For example, OKCupid relies on the same sort of self-reporting “science” and concludes that women’s self-confidence increases with weight and age.

“Curvy women pass skinny ones in self-confidence at age 29 and never look back. They also consistently have the highest sex drive among the groups.”

So there is the scientific utopia of which so many secularists dream. Obese and godless old women rutting confidently, and often, with each other. Oh sweet Sappho! Do you understand the significance of this? Do you realize what this means? There is now a scientific basis for Lesbian Dorito Night!

Mailvox: science and free will

CG asks about the implications of time delay in decision-making:

I have read a number of scientific papers asserting that free will doesn’t exist. The Libet experiment, where a person pushes a button, but the brain registers the signal 7 seconds before the time the person made the choice, is one of the more well-known studies. What do you make of these scientific assertions that free will doesn’t exist? You didn’t really address it in The Irrational Atheist or on your own blog.

No, I didn’t bother, because the sort of experiments cited are not evidence that free will doesn’t exist. In fact, any scientific assertion that free will does not exist on the basis of these experiments does nothing more than demonstrate that scientists receive insufficient training in basic logic.

To make this argument, they are assuming that free will relies solely upon “the person” and not “the brain”. Or to put it more precisely, that “the person” is the conscious aspect of the mind and “the brain” is the unconscious. But the unconscious part of the mind is a part of the same mind as the conscious one! Relying on this false distinction is akin to insisting that because I reacted reflexively to movement out of the corner of my eye before I realized it, I did not move.

But clearly I did move. And I decided to move. I merely did not consciously decide to move. The observable fact of the matter is that we make unconscious decisions every single day, and they are an important aspect of our free will. To demonstrate that free will does not exist, it would be necessary to demonstrate that all humans exhibit the same unconscious reactions to the same stimuli; any variance in the reactions would indicate that humans are agents possessing the ability to make choices even if they are not consciously aware of the choices they are making.

The core mistake they are making here is to assume that everything unconscious is therefore determinate. That is an observably false equivalence.

There is nothing even remotely remarkable about this experiment. Having been a 100m sprinter, I’ve always been perfectly aware that the body moves before the conscious mind realizes it. I was usually in the middle of my second stride out of the blocks before I realized I was already running. In most of my races, I never even consciously heard the gun.

And every martial artist knows that if you’re thinking about your next strike or block, you will be too slow. By the time you consciously see the window and decide “it’s open, therefore I should attack it”, it’s already too late. The fundamental goal of martial arts training is to train your body and free your mind so that you enter a state where you are making the correct decisions without thinking about them. This is the state that most athletes recognize as being “in the zone”.

WND column

Quis procuratiet ipsos scientodes?

A few years ago, when I published “The Irrational Atheist,” one of the most controversial statements I made was that Sam Harris’ Extinction Equation, which postulates that the combination of increasingly deadly technologies with religion meant that the human race was at risk of eliminating itself, was an indictment of science, not religion. Religion, after all, has been around for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years, during which time the human race has prospered and multiplied.

Science, on the other hand, only dates back to the 17th century. And as I pointed out in the book, during that time it has produced, either directly or indirectly, the only serious threats to the existence of the human race that man has known since, depending upon your perspective, he was either being hunted by saber-toothed tigers or being drowned to near-extinction during Noah’s flood.

The Obama administration is anti-science!

I rather look forward to seeing how completely the science blogs are going to attempt to ignore this aspect of what is actually a very legitimate philosophical question about the extent to which science should be suppressed:

The US government has asked the scientific journals Nature and Science to censor data on a laboratory-made version of bird flu that could spread more easily to humans, fearing it could be used as a potential weapon.

The US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity asked the two journals to publish redacted versions of studies by two research groups that created forms of the H5N1 avian flu that could easily jump between ferrets – typically considered a sign the virus could spread quickly among humans.

Of course, it should also be interesting to see the contortions that Sam Harris and other science fetishists will perform in an attempt to blame the dangers of science on religion. I not only don’t have a problem with the idea of suppressing science, I think it is entirely obvious that science is going to be increasingly suppressed by governments around the world and that suppression will prove politically popular.

The ironic thing is that scientific progressives have managed to place themselves completely on the wrong side of history while simultaneously believing they are history’s vanguard.

A scientific saint is exposed

English atheists like Stephen Fry and Richard Dawkins like little better than to portray saints of the Catholic Church as being frauds. Which makes it rather satisfying indeed to see that one of the secular saints of the High Church of Atheist Science has been exposed as an unapologetic fraud:

In a surprising justification for duping millions of viewers, the TV star argued that owning up to splicing archive film with real Arctic scenes during the programme would have spoiled the mood. His blunt remarks came as more footage from the series was exposed as a sham.

Speaking after our exclusive story yesterday revealed shots of a polar bear and her newborn cubs were staged in a zoo using fake snow, Sir David, 85, said: “The question is, during the middle of this scene when you are trying to paint what it is like in the middle of winter at the pole, to say ‘Oh, by the way, this was filmed in a zoo’.

“It ruins the atmosphere, and destroys the pleasure of the viewers and destroys the atmosphere you are trying to create.

Ah, I see. “Ruining the atmosphere” is apparently a legitimate basis for deceiving people under the agnostic ethic. Remember that when you’re dealing with an agnostic in the future. If afterwards, she happens to complain that you were not truthful about [insert inconvenient truth here], you can simply explain that you were entirely justified in the deceit because telling him the truth would have ruined the atmosphere and destroyed her pleasure.

It’s rather amazing that the man could have reached 85 years of age without understanding the difference between “documentary” and “dramatic re-enactment”. And it is certainly informative to note that “This type of filming is standard practice across the industry when creating natural history programmes.”

Now, I haven’t had much interest in natural history documentaries – or rather, fakumentaries – since Marlin Perkins stopped ordering poor Jim to molest crocodiles in the river. But this confirms what I have always assumed, which is that they are little more than movies primarily designed for entertainment under the guise of being educational.