It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what?<\blockquote>
Stephen Fry, actor and comedian
Category: Skepticism
Does This Enhance Your Calm?*
First read this. Also, read the linked letter.
Finished? Are you incensed yet?
I’m not going to scream about how the NSA could have prevented 9/11. As callous as it might sound, mistakes happen. Here are the unforgivable mistakes that the post and the letter illuminate:
1. NSA leadership preferred covering up their mistakes rather than trying to fix the process that led to the mistakes being made.
2. Sacrifice a working system and the Fourth Amendment to buy fancy, high cost, non-working toys from contractors.
3. Engage in bulk data hauls that drown the NSA in data and make it less likely that real threats can be detected.
I don’t know what can be done to fix the NSA. Moreover, I don’t think that there is any interest inside the Beltway to reform it. What it does show is exactly where the priorities of the leadership lie.
H/t Unc
*Title from Demolition Man, which I should go watch again
Multivitamins Don’t Help
According to three new studies, multivitamins don’t work against heart disease, cancer, early death, or declining cognitive ability. This just adds to the evidence that multivitamins do little more than give you expensive pee.
“Enough is enough,” declares an editorial accompanying the studies in Annals of Internal Medicine. “Stop wasting money on vitamin and mineral supplements.”
Why? Because most people get enough vitamins through the foods that they eat.
Better nutrition and vitamin-fortified foods have made these problems pretty much history.
Now when public health officials talk about vitamin deficiencies and health, they’re talking about specific populations and specific vitamins. Young women tend to be low on iodine, which is key for brain development in a fetus, according to a 2012 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And Mexican-American women and young children are more likely to be iron deficient. But even in that group, we’re talking about 11 percent of the children, and 13 percent of the women.
So, unless your doctor (doctor, not woo-practitioner) prescribes a vitamin for a specific deficiency, quit wasting your money.
Friday Quote – 11/1/13
It is difficult to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
H.L. Mencken, satirist
Honestly, I think this is the biggest issue arguing with progressives and statists. They project what they would do, or are afraid they would do, with increased liberty, and assume we will do them and must be prevented from doing so through the force of government.
H/t reader David
Problems in the Current State of Science
Science, when conducted rigorously, is the best means for humans to explore and explain our reality. The key word being rigorously. Without that, our understanding of reality is skewed because it’s based on false facts. So, when I see something like this, I get concerned. The Economist published a lengthy article detailing critical problems in the current state of science. I would heartily recommend that you RTWT.
Various factors contribute to the problem. Statistical mistakes are widespread. The peer reviewers who evaluate papers before journals commit to publishing them are much worse at spotting mistakes than they or others appreciate. Professional pressure, competition and ambition push scientists to publish more quickly than would be wise. A career structure which lays great stress on publishing copious papers exacerbates all these problems. “There is no cost to getting things wrong,†says Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who has taken an interest in his discipline’s persistent errors. “The cost is not getting them published.â€
Two of the biggest issues that faces science is the current process of peer review as well as the undesirability of doing replication experiments. Currently, peer review is rife with errors that provide gaps for bad papers to be published.
…in a classic 1998 study Fiona Godlee, editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal, sent an article containing eight deliberate mistakes in study design, analysis and interpretation to more than 200 of the BMJ’s regular reviewers. Not one picked out all the mistakes. On average, they reported fewer than two; some did not spot any.
Replication, which is supposed to be the main corrective or confirmatory agent in the scientific method is disdained.
Journals, thirsty for novelty, show little interest in it; though minimum-threshold journals could change this, they have yet to do so in a big way. Most academic researchers would rather spend time on work that is more likely to enhance their careers. This is especially true of junior researchers, who are aware that overzealous replication can be seen as an implicit challenge to authority. Often, only people with an axe to grind pursue replications with vigour—a state of affairs which makes people wary of having their work replicated.
To me, this is definitely where voluntary associations could come into play. I would love to see something like United Laboratories be established for the express purpose of replicating and validating experiments. Or multiple organizations that can give experiments a “stamp of approval.” I don’t know if this is possible in the current environment, but I would rather a non-profit of some type take this on rather than wait for one of the myriad of government agencies that would be chomping at the bit for a chance to regulate science.
Stop Advocating and Tell Us the Science
In my opinion, the biggest reason that the populace (particularly the American populace) doesn’t believe in climate change is the demands on policy made by many climatologists. It doesn’t help that many of those who are sounding the death drums can only think of government intervention as the only means to alleviate the changes.
I believe advocacy by climate scientists has damaged trust in the science. We risk our credibility, our reputation for objectivity, if we are not absolutely neutral. At the very least, it leaves us open to criticism. I find much climate scepticism is driven by a belief that environmental activism has influenced how scientists gather and interpret evidence. So I’ve found my hardline approach successful in taking the politics and therefore – pun intended – the heat out of climate science discussions.
Science should strive to tell us what is going on in the natural world and help to develop new technologies. Climatologists telling me that only a carbon tax will save the world from destruction looks like a fool because (s)he obviously doesn’t understand how market economies work or that the best way to a clean environment is through prosperity.
H/t Uncle
Friday Quote – Hippocrates
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they don’t understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.
Hippocrates, father of western medicine
Presently, we understand that epilepsy is a not a single disease but a group of related neurological disorders. Why? Because medical researchers used the tools of science. They didn’t just relegate the disease to the unknowable workings of the dieties they worshipped at the time.
As science pushes further to explain our reality, the provinces of deific power shrink.
Does this mean religion and science are incompatible? I know that there are plenty of good scientists that are also religious and have no problem reconciling their beliefs with what they know of the physical world. For myself, science has shown that, at the very least, there is no good, solid evidence for the presence of a deity or dieties that control this universe. Can I say there is no god? No, but the evidence says it is at the least unlikely.
Superstition is Where You Find It
Peter Grant wrote a guest column on Sarah Hoyt’s blog about beliefs and superstitions. Really, read the whole thing.
After demonstrating magical thinking by educated Africans, Grant turns it around to us:
Most First World people of my acquaintance – in Africa, Europe and the USA – regard primitive superstitions as arrant nonsense, without any basis in ‘scientific reality’. I take malicious delight in pointing out to them that they live in societies and cultures where:
– the daily horoscope is essential reading for many people;
– homeopathy is accepted by millions as a valid form of medical treatment, despite it being categorically and incontrovertibly ridiculous from any normative scientific perspective; and
– people pointlessly and repeatedly sound their vehicles’ horns in traffic jams, apparently in the belief that by doing so they’ll somehow magically make the vehicles around them start moving again.
So much for scientific reality . . .
BTW, pick up Grant’s books, Take the Star Road and Ride the Rising Tide. Bery good SF.
And It’s on Fox!
The trailer for the new Cosmos series was released at Comic-Con. Behold the glory!
With Neil DeGrasse Tyson!
I may disagree with the man’s politics, but he can talk science like few can.
Friday Quote – Ron Bailey
Liberty is not advanced by misinformation and pseudoscience.
Ron Bailey, Reason science correspondent, in this article.
Normally, I understand that daytime TV is rife with pseudoscience. The Dr. Oz Show alone can usually produce enough bullshit to fertilize a field. Still, there is something highly disturbing about Jenny McCarthy joining “The View.”
It gives her a larger audience that will consider her “legitimate” because she’s now a talking head. This is a celebrity with a death toll to her name because of her current anti-vax ramblings.
BTW, make sure your kid gets jabbed, and on schedule.