"Consensus Science"

I will rarely make the case that anything I come up with is "original," at least in any absolute sense. We all take our different paths to different places, and after awhile you get used to the idea that where ever you go someone has been there before you. So I wasn't surprised to read this take on "Consensus Science" by Michael Crichton (taken from a talk he gave at the California Institute of Technology back in 2003):

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

I wish I had said that.

To Be Fair....

In my post on Lord Monckton's letter I quote a stat that, upon second thought, I think might be total BS. "Last winter’s cold snap in the UK killed 25,000."

I did some reserch on this number and found a couple of difficulties with it. For starters the number relates to 2003, not last year. But that isn't my major issue with the number. I take this from a BBC story that quotes the statistic:

A spokeswoman for Help the Aged warned that many older people would not live through the cold snap.

She said bad housing and insufficient heating aggravated circulatory diseases, which lead to strokes or heart attacks and respiratory diseases such as bronchitis or pneumonia.

The charity estimated that last winter more than 25,000 older people died from preventable causes.

"Broadly put, for each degree colder it becomes, mortality rises by one to two per cent, underlining the urgent need to prevent such needless deaths," the spokeswoman added.

The problem with such "stats" is that they are so nebulous that there is no way to say for certain if you are measuring what you claim to be measuring or not. Sure, when you have a cold snap (or a heat wave) those who are already ill will be more at risk, but how can you come up with a number that accurately describes what happened? You really can't. I think I'd rather have the number of people who died specifically from hypothermia (or heat stroke), than just take a percentage of the numbers of total deaths and claiming that is reality.

This being said, the numbers form the French heat wave are just as suspect.

Senators Rockefeller & Snowe: "Freedom of Speech Is Great...

...as long as we agree with it."

Lord Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley, has sent an open letter to Senators Rockefeller (D-WV) and Snowe (R-Maine) in response to their recent open letter telling the CEO of ExxonMobil to cease funding climate-skeptic scientists.

Lord Monckton, former policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, writes: "You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to 'senior elected and appointed government officials' who disagree with your opinion."

In what The Charleston (WV) Daily Mail has called "an intemperate attempt to squelch debate with a hint of political consequences," Senators Rockefeller and Snowe released an open letter dated October 30 to ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, insisting he end Exxon's funding of a "climate change denial campaign." The Senators labeled scientists with whom they disagree as "deniers," a term usually directed at "Holocaust deniers." Some voices on the political left have called for the arrest and prosecution of skeptical scientists. The British Foreign Secretary has said skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and must be denied access to the media.

Responds Lord Monckton, "Sceptics and those who have the courage to support them are actually helpful in getting the science right. They do not, as you improperly suggest, 'obfuscate' the issue: they assist in clarifying it by challenging weaknesses in the 'consensus' argument and they compel necessary corrections ... "

Lord Monckton's Churchillian reproof continues, "You acknowledge the effectiveness of the climate sceptics. In so doing, you pay a compliment to the courage of those free-thinking scientists who continue to research climate change independently despite the likelihood of refusal of publication in journals that have taken preconceived positions; the hate mail and vilification from ignorant environmentalists; and the threat of loss of tenure in institutions of learning which no longer make any pretence to uphold or cherish academic freedom."

Let's hear it for Lord Monckton. It is sort of sad when sitting U.S. Senators have to be taught a lesson in fundamental freedoms by the nobility of the nation we fought for our own freedoms. It amazes me that sitting Senators can engage in not so veiled campaigns of political intimidation and no one says a thing.

There are many people who think that just because what they think might happen in the future is bad, no one is allowed to gainsay them in any fashion whatsoever. Science doesn't work that way. It also doesn't work by consensus either. Just because you can get a quorum of scientists to claim "X" is the gospel truth, it doesn't follow that people shouldn't be allowed to question "X". Science is the committment to follow a method. Therefore it is NOT acceptable to dismiss someone's work on the basis that it was funded by this or that organization. That is irrelevant to the soundness of the research IN EVERY CASE. For example, the problem with the tobacco research of the 60's and 70's was the lousy scientific standards employed and NOT the fact that Phillip Morris helped pay for it.

The truth is the scientific consensus of just 18 months ago has been shown to be wrong. (From Lord Monckton's letter):

The UN will also reduce its high-end estimate of sea-level rise to 2100 from 3 feet to just 17 inches. Morner (2004), a lifelong student of sea level changes, says: “There is a total absence of any recent‘acceleration in sea level rise’ as often claimed by IPCC and related groups. … our best estimate of possible future sea-level changes is +10 +/- 10cm in a century, or, maybe, even +5 +/- 15cm.” that is a maximum of 8 inches in 100 years.

When you consider that the average rate of sea level rise for the last 15,000 years has been 7 inches a century, it turns out that the skeptics had it right 18 months ago and the "consensus" had it wrong.

That is one of the reasons you allow unpopular speech in the first place. It allows for unpopular (but right and beneficial) thoughts to win folks over in the long run. Stifiling expression for whatever reason works against societies. Did all of these people get through college without reading J.S. Mill's "On Liberty"???

Monckton's letter has a few other tidbit I found fascinating. Especially this:

An unusual heatwave in France a couple of years ago killed 3,000 old people. As is now customary, global warming was blamed, though the real cause was a naturally occurring “blocking high”. Last winter’s cold snap in the UK killed 25,000. The former event attracted many times more publicity than the latter.

Was this really not reported? I certainly hadn't heard about it and I live with about as big an anglophile there is, and watch BBC World news a couple times a week. It doesn't fit in with the espoused orthodoxy so we just pretend it didn't happen?

I'm sure that is exactly how Newton and Einstein operated.

(Thanks to Jim Rose for pointing to this.)

A Good Thing To See

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Muslim leaders here denounce conference of Holocaust deniers

Local Muslim leaders denounced on Sunday the recent international conference in Iran attended by many who deny the existence of the Holocaust.Spokeswoman Ghazala Hayat read a statement at the annual general body meeting at Daar ul Islam mosque in West County. "We, the community of the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis, denounce questioning the authenticity of the number of Jewish deaths in the Holocaust. … Unimaginable crimes were committed by the Nazis during World War II. Denying the pain endured by millions of human beings only intensifies it," she said.About 100 participants listened while she read the statement.

Erbab Majeed, principal of the Sunday school at the mosque, said the statement was necessary to distinguish between the views of Muslims here from those in other parts of the world. "They made their statement, and we're making ours," he said.

Good for them. Let's hope such statements are repeated all over the world.

Political Science Redux

The American Political Science Review has a special Centennial issue with 24 essays covering the varied developments in the discipline since the publication began in 1906. Some of you may know that I went to grad school, getting an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Illinois and another masters in political philosophy from The Catholic University of America in D.C., so it is interesting to see these types of discussions that I am generally (and thankfully) removed from. I'm still working through the essays, or I should say the dozen or so essays that peak my interest, but I see the authors have come more to praise Ceasar than to bury him. That's fine I suppose....but it might have been nice to see an essay that dealt with some of the less savory aspects of the story that is American Political Science; for example, the early advocation of eugenics and even the use of psychopharmalogical agents to "control" the masses. (There is a veiled reference to some of this in an essay by John Dryzek, "Revolutions without Enemies: Transformations in Political Science" , but the early days of the discipline are largely left in a murky light.)

More to come?

(Thanks to Daniel Drezner for pointing this APRS pub.)

Putting Your Money Where Your Idiotic Ideals Are

A few years ago the Onion (America's Finest News Source) did a story about academics blasting a white family from Iowa for lacking "diversity." It was your garden variety reductio ad absurdum joke, nicely done and to the point.

The question I have is, does it still count as a joke when people actually start going out to make a "racially diverse family" ala Angelina Jolie and Co.?

Don't get me wrong, I have good friends who have two children they adopted from the Phillipines. It was a beautiful thing to do and a better or happier family you can't imagine. However, if I heard them say something like, "Well, we already have an asian, maybe we better get a black baby next time.....hmm...or do you think it might be possible to scare up an eskimo child?" I'd think they were sounding pretty damn goofy. Not to mention it kinda treats these children as some sort of expensive accessory, like folks who have two of the same model sports cars only painted differently.....that always struck me as tacky.

Doing the same thing with children sort of creeps me out.

Housekeeping (I Do So Hate)

I've been perusing over my links to other blogs and news sites and I have seen that I am not the only one to start running silently. I was surprised to see that Left2Right , basically the David Vellman Project ("I am the academic in the sky, looking for neo-cons, I can call them names!") is looking a little green around the gills. (How is THAT for mixed metaphors! HA!) It was released with such fan fare just two years ago. Here was the ivory tower coming down from their heady heights to enlighten the great unwashed! How could they have failed??

They just couldn't get everyone to Michigan State......

Where's The Closest Re-Education Camp?

Turns out it is at Michigan State University. Really there is no way I can summarize the jaw dropping sense of horror this "program" instills in me. Go over to FIRE and read about it. And if you are planning to attend MSU any time soon don't forget your copy of The Little Red Book.

Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!

It seems that the mountain lion is reestablishing itself in my old home state of Missouri. I'm of two minds when I hear about such things. On the one hand, it is nice to see species return after so long absent. (Although, I'm not sure if the mountain lion was ever an officially designated "endangered" species as such.)

One the other side, most of us are used to the "wilds" of Missouri being pretty benign. It will take some doing to get used to sharing the state with an animal that can and has caused problems when it crosses paths with us humans. Besides, I'd hate to get eaten at my next family reunion. (Hmmm...sounds like the beginning of a dirty joke there....something to do with the Ozarks I'm sure.)

Of course Missouri is simply crawling with deer, so the mountain lions can do us all a big favor by doing a little feasting. We have the same trouble in my new home state of Wisconsin, although I've heard nothing about mountain lions here. However, Wisconsin DOES have the bearwolf (or so it is said.) That being said I think I'd rather run into this...



...as opposed to this...



Wouldn't you?

Making Things Too Easy

Well, they are updating the interface on the old Blogger system. The upshoot of it seems to be that it will be even easier to throw random thoughts down on the world wide web (as if it was a real trek through the Sahara before.) But...when you get out of the habit of doing something, little things can entice you back in. It hasn't helped that there has been a positive dearth of interesting things to talk about....or the interesting thing to talk about have already been talked about ad nausem. Elections are usually good fodder, but the '06 vote was so obviously over before it started it gets nothing but a yawn from yours truly. (In fact I called the '06 election correctly on the night of the '04 election. If you knew my wife she would verify that fact. You probably don't know her, so just take my word for it.)

On the other hand my life as a sports fan has had the thrill of victory (bless you Tony LaRussa), and the utter ignominy of wretched defeat.......(I'm a Blues fan. Sadly.) However, this wasn't meant to be a "sports blog." The occasional post on the subject will have to suffice.

I've no idea if this post marks the beginning of a more active blog or not. For me, inspiration striking is not the lead pipe cinch that the Dems were in '06.

Ambulance Chasing (Fox News Style)

The other day while watching a FNC story about (then tropical storm, now) hurricane Ernesto they showed a graphic of the "predicted storm track." However, I really dont believe it COULD have been a real hurricane forecast. Basically all they did was draw a straight line to New Orleans and call that a forecast. This is moronic on many levels. For starters, the storm was so poorly organized at that point there was little way to know where the center of circulation would develop. This matters because there could have been a difference of 80 to 100 miles in its position. As it developed it organized on a more northerly track giving it less chance of even making it into the Gulf of Mexico. Secondly, these storms move so unpredictably that while a 24-36 hour forecast might be reasonably accurate (to within 100 miles or so), anything more than that is a crap shoot. But this graphic was claiming to show us 72+ hours into the future! It was simply preposterous.

What really bothered me, however, is just how ghoulish the whole thing was. It was as if they were wishing the storm would hit New Orleans. There was no scientific, or logical or common sense reason to forecast this storm hitting New Orleans, so why do it? Because it would make a great story if it did? People down in N.O. have enough to worry about without this garbage.

Love Those Predictive Models!

Well, how have folks been enjoying the 2006 hurricane season so far? For those keeping track at home, according to the experts we should have been enjoying 15-17 named storms and 7-9 hurricanes. Hell, even in the downward revised forecast we were supposed to get 6.1 hurricanes in August alone. (For those who care about such things, as of the 23rd of August we have had zero. Next week should be a doozey!)

I can almost hear someone saying "Blimey! This whole forecasting the weather and climate is trickier than we thought."

At least they would be saying it if they had a shred of intellectual honesty.

The Definition Of Busy

People still look around on here. (Bless your little hearts.) I should let folks know that one reason I have been so quiet is that I've moved AND gotten married this summer. (Which takes it out of you I can tell you...)

Things may start to quiet down soon...and then I might just start spouting off again. (Alert the media...)

NEW REVELATIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It turns out the government's ability to look at your phone records without a court order has only been a settled point of law since 1979! (see Smith v. Maryland) In an opinion written by conservative firebrand Harry "Hang 'em High" Blackmun and joined by such dangerous reactionaries as Warren "Shoot First" Burger & John "Rights Schmights" Stevens, the court held:

(a) Application of the Fourth Amendment depends on whether the person invoking its protection can claim a "legitimate expectation of privacy" that has been invaded by government action. This inquiry normally embraces two questions: first, whether the individual has exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy; and second, whether his expectation is one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable."

(b) Petitioner in all probability entertained no actual expectation of privacy in the phone numbers he dialed, and even if he did, his expectation was not "legitimate." First, it is doubtful that telephone users in general have any expectation of privacy regarding the numbers they dial, since they typically know that they must convey phone numbers to the telephone company and that the company has facilities for recording this information and does in fact record it for various legitimate business purposes. And petitioner did not demonstrate an expectation of privacy merely by using his home phone rather than some other phone, since his conduct, although perhaps calculated to keep the contents of his conversation private, was not calculated to preserve the privacy of the number he dialed. Second, even if petitioner did harbor some subjective expectation of privacy, this expectation was not one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." When petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the phone company and "exposed" that information to its equipment in the normal course of business, he assumed the risk that the company would reveal the information to the police.

It goes without saying that it would be unreasonable to expect reporters or lawmakers to be "up on" a legal precedent that has only been on the books for 27 years.

Non-Story Of The Week

Try as I might I can see no reason to take the latest NSA story seriously. When the previous stories arose about the "warrentless eavesdropping" I could at least see two sides to the issue. I just didn't think it was all that important. Look, when one side advocates doing thing "X" and the other side pushes "Y" I really want "Y" to be something more than "X with extra paperwork." At least if you want me to think it is something vitally important.

In this case however I can't see another side that isn't downright stupid. Nobody's conversations are being listened to. Nobody's "privacy rights" are being infringed, because you don't have any privacy when it comes to what phone number you call or call you. Agents of the government (police and district attorneys for example) look at this type of information every day without the need for warrants, or probable cause, or even your permission. (Don't members of Congress ever watch "Law & Order"?) I can't even think of a way in which this type of data mining activity could be abused. Can anyone else?

Unfortunately, this is the sort of crap you have to deal with every election year. December can't come soon enough.