The Sound Of Settled Science

6 Replies to “The Sound Of Settled Science”

1. “We must assume they were published with peer review, analysis techniques and samples sizes that were (and are?) standard for the field. ”
   NEVER,EVER,EVER, assume ANYTHING when it comes to “scientists” going for grant(taxpayers) monies! Without a doubt,and NO assumption,it can only be confirmation bias after that many false positives get published as fact. Conceive the theory,then jiggle data,or ignore (also known as cherry picking),to get the desired result.
   But at least they admitted they were wrong.

2. Remember, “science” doesn’t “tell” us anything. Data cannot “speak for itself.”
   Science is merely a process of interpretation, and a flawed one at that.
   Rather, “scientists” do the talking, i.e., science is interpreted by people with their own subjective biases, limited knowledge base, multiple flaws and, of course, ambitions.
   To treat scientists as anything other than ordinary, flawed people is to elevate them to the level of demigods. It makes a mockery of our great Western liberal democratic tradition.

3. I’m impressed that they had the stones to admit that they couldn’t replicate their results. As TFA states, this is how science progresses.
   Now, if we could get those scientists to talk to the climate change charlatans.

4. The theory of AGW suffers from unlimited Probabilities….
   The AGW Imbeciles, in group think, develop the unlimited probabilities. It’s all about the magic of Math.
   We just need to conger-up Anti-Imbeciles, in group think, and the theory will cease to exist..

5. When I was in University the data from lab experiments was almost always fudged if it didn’t turn out as expected. Rather than report the data, then hypothesize why it did not match the theory, lazy students would fudge the numbers and make it match so they could finish writing the report and go home.
   Granted, these weren’t ground-breaking experiments, but the time saved amounted to maybe 10-15 minutes. I can’t imagine how much fudging must be going on when there’s millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars on the line.

6. The most unusual part of this saga is that the scientists involved actually admitted that they had false positive results! As Kate noted, this never happens in climate “science”.
   One of the things which pisses me off to no end is the association of genes with drug effects when the genes in question are unlikely to be significant. Yes, there is considerable heterogeneity in drug effects and amphetamine is an especially interesting drug for psychiatric experimentation. Bipolars are far more likely to report euphoria with amphetamine than euthymic controls who either are just wide awake or irritable. An observation that’s robust enough that I use it as part of my diagnostic algorithm, but I haven’t the slightest ideas what individual genes and neurotransmitter receptors are involved given the genetic heterogeneity of people.
   I suspect that any such study, unless it involves hundreds of thousands of people, is likely to be a total waste of time. What we’ve found out with genetic knockout mice is that when an organism loses one gene, there’s usually a host of other genes that will take over it’s function. Being able to knock out a single gene in a mouse and then breed generations of mice without that gene is an amazing development. Nature’s had a long time to make animals anti-fragile and functioning with missing bits is just what one would expect in an antifragile system. Of course, the non-uniformity of humans on a genetic level is very annoying for viruses, bacteria, parasites and drug companies who all want a one size fits all solution. (as well as researchers who naively assume that all that differs among people is single gene polymorphisms and that there’s no interactions between the gene they’re interested in and all of the other genetic polymorphisms that we carry).