No limit on stupid

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Acorn
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Post by Acorn » Wed Jun 07, 2017 6:45 am

Our desire for a proposition's truth has no effect on its actual truth, but very significantly determines our approach to evaluating its truth.

mccabemi
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Post by mccabemi » Wed Jun 07, 2017 8:30 am


dorp
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Post by dorp » Wed Jun 07, 2017 9:27 am

stan wrote:The stats are bungled. p values are crap. And no one can predict the future.
At Saturday's game, a very chattery FGCU fan to my right kept saying "You can do it" to the Eagles' hitters. After the result of the at-bat, I proposed that she was spouting off fake news and the data set did not support her assertion that many of their players could in fact get a hit.

Dr. Bliss
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Post by Dr. Bliss » Thu Jun 08, 2017 1:17 pm

"There ain't no sanity clause!" Chico Marx

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stan
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Post by stan » Fri Jun 09, 2017 3:02 pm

slowcat95 wrote:
stan wrote:
Read the climategate emails to get a real good sense of just how pathetic science has become.

Read Tetlock's work. Or Future Babble written about it by a NY Times science reporter. Read John Ioannidis stuff. Most papers are flawed. The stats are bungled. p values are crap. And no one can predict the future.
In my experience, science isn't pathetic. It's difficult, and the best research rarely gets seen publicly. But that doesn't mean science is pathetic. Indeed, the vast majority of science is good, but the vast majority of science isn't what the public The public sees the flamboyant pieces, and those are usually crap. As scientists, we need to do a better job of disseminating our work and making sure its relevant. But we can't help it when bad eggs shamelessly promote bad work (and when the media jumps on it).

You are generalizing from a crappy subset.
If no one ever replicates, how do we know? That's the point. There is zero quality control. None. And no, peer review is not quality control.

There's also no accountability. Quality always suffers in the absence of accountability.

For the most relevant example regarding quality control, let's examine the most famous science study of our generation -- Mann's hockey stick. Not interested in getting to a war about global warming, let's just stay focused on the issue of quality control in science.

We now know that no one ever checked his work. He botched his data. Used data that he knew was inappropriate, used data upside down. We know that rather than use a standard, commercially available stats package to do his PCA, he wrote his own fortran program and gooned it. Badly. And we know that he completely screwed up his verification stats as well.

And yet, the scientific establishment the world over endorsed his study, represented it as the best science on the subject, and relied on it to make demands on governments. Lots and lots of scientists put their own reputations on the line and committed negligent, even reckless, misrepresentation.

This is not how quality is done. This is just reckless and stupid.

But it does give us a good idea how the govt food science scandal could unfold over decades. And how the GRIDs fraud went down. And the govt 2d hand smoke fraud. And how scientists for the govt got caught planting evidence in the forest.

For an example of just how egregiously bad science can be, get a gander of a study that the govt has relied on in various federal court cases - Charles Monnett's polar bear study. One day, out of 15 years of flying the coast, he saw four dead polar bears in the water below. He guessed they drowned. Doesn't know for sure cause he didn't examine them. Might have been shot.
Who knows. [Drowned polar bears are pretty rare. They've been monitored swimming over 400 miles of open ocean. They don't drown even when they swim out to a piece of ice to play and get their picture taken.] There was a storm a few days earlier. And he'd read a science article speculating that global warming would make storms more intense in the future. So -- the fact that one time in 15 years some polar bears were observed from a plane and seemed to have died and a storm happened a few days earlier proves scientifically that global warming is wiping out polar bears. The federal govt has used his study to prove that in court on repeated occasions.

If scientists actually cared about quality, they would be an uproar over stupid crap like this. Instead, we got 'em lined up at the trough to feed.
"Then they started making 3s. A lot of 3s. We're talking more 3s than a bad dating site."

i77cat
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Post by i77cat » Fri Jun 09, 2017 4:33 pm

"Here’s what is the elephant in the room. Travis had a bag before. Now everyone has a bag. The Travis Ford recruiting prowess was greatly exaggerated."---SLU fan explaining how NIL took away Ford's recruiting edge

slowcat95
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Post by slowcat95 » Sun Jun 11, 2017 6:42 pm

stan wrote:
If scientists actually cared about quality, they would be an uproar over stupid crap like this. Instead, we got 'em lined up at the trough to feed.
I'm a scientist. I care about quality. Your generalizations are stupid. And summer is just too damn long around here.
she/hers

MLC67
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Post by MLC67 » Mon Jun 12, 2017 7:51 am

Tennis anyone? or golf or even, heaven forbid - soccer?

Off off season starts after to-nite; math anyone :?:
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for men of good will to do nothing. Eddie Burke

Esse Quam Videri

i77cat
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Post by i77cat » Mon Jun 12, 2017 6:41 pm

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/1961 ... -cavaliers

Not really stupid, I guess. But you have to have a ton of extra cash to spend it on those two tickets.
"Here’s what is the elephant in the room. Travis had a bag before. Now everyone has a bag. The Travis Ford recruiting prowess was greatly exaggerated."---SLU fan explaining how NIL took away Ford's recruiting edge

cat44
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Post by cat44 » Mon Jun 12, 2017 9:22 pm

i77cat wrote:http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/1961 ... -cavaliers

Not really stupid, I guess. But you have to have a ton of extra cash to spend it on those two tickets.
No, that really is stupid.

71cat
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Post by 71cat » Mon Jun 12, 2017 10:34 pm

someone with a Davidson #30 jersey is sitting right behind the scorers table.
"That little sucker can shoot, man!"
Driesell, C. "Lefty" (1931-)

wildforthecats
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Post by wildforthecats » Mon Jun 12, 2017 10:38 pm

71cat wrote:someone with a Davidson #30 jersey is sitting right behind the scorers table.
He's always there.

i77cat
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Post by i77cat » Mon Jun 12, 2017 10:43 pm

And we still don't know who he is, right?
"Here’s what is the elephant in the room. Travis had a bag before. Now everyone has a bag. The Travis Ford recruiting prowess was greatly exaggerated."---SLU fan explaining how NIL took away Ford's recruiting edge

MikeMaloy15
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Post by MikeMaloy15 » Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:18 am

Does it matter? He's making an appearance for us. He's our mascot.

Waitress
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Post by Waitress » Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:41 am

A couple of years ago, I proposed here that Davidson buy a pair of Oracle courtside season tickets, to be doled out as they chose, with the stipulation that the recipients wear Davidson shirts.

But I take no credit for the guy wearing the Steph DU jersey.

Thanks, anonymous dude, for repping and rocking the D.
The earth is round. Two plus two equals four.

~Tip well.

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