“Mathiness” is a term coined by economist Paul Romer, who characterized it as a style that “lets academic politics masquerade as science.” […]
Mathiness is the academic’s truthiness. Math makes research seem serious and science-like. For many consumers of research, math creates a barrier of technical sophistication that prevents the evaluation of truth-claims. When that happens, mathiness provides an aura of authority that says, “trust us, not them.”
In my UCLA talk, I opened by sharing that more than thirty years ago NASA called me up and asked me to retract my Master’s thesis, which was a comprehensive policy evaluation of the Space Shuttle program.
I always called it “scientism”.
The politicians and scientists classed it as pseudo science that physical mathematics of recorded time, distance measurements and velocity measurements which is how our orbit is able to be accurately measured as it’s different every single time and not true cycles that current people have trapped scientists/experts in their own box.
Pandora’s Box of knowledge being ignored and chastised… follow the narrative as our science sucks currently of global warming scams.
Pi sucks to try and use in mathematics as it’s open ended and adding motion distorts it’s use more and more.
“I thought initially […] he might be calling to congratulate me for the good policy work.”
Hahaha…
“The results of the study conclusively show that while not statistically significant they are nonetheless clinically important.”
“I knew what the correct answer is so I introduced an algorithm to reduce every tenth data point by 10% and then I got the correct answer in my analysis.”
“I realize the p=0.15 is not significant so I just doubled all the data points and then ran it again and it hit significance.”
I wish I was kidding but I have encountered those in my own academic career.
” … Another lesson: doing good policy research is possible, and it is also possible to tell the difference between that and mathiness ….”
Yup. There’s nothing like a good sense of smell.
“Yup. There’s nothing like a good sense of smell.”
Soo, BULL science is what you say!!!!
in the case of Mann-Made Global Warming, the evidence was reduced until 1 tree in Siberia provided unimpeachable evidence of the effect that mankind was having on the environment…
never mind how many other trees might be found in siberia
i think mann lost his lawsuit but never paid up . he couldnt prove a thing
Never has, never will; and never punished for a history of lies.
Yes, he lost one against Dr. Tim Ball, but the one against Mark Steyn is in it second decade without resolution.
Remember: the process IS the punishment.
And they completely ignore the archeological tree ring based climate / weather data used to date wooden artifacts and archaeological sites going back 8,000 years for Europe West of the Urals, China, the MidEast, India, and parts of Africa.
Also ignored are the Roman and Medieval warm.periods, the Little Ice Age of the 1600s, and the variable output of the Sun.
l sometimes suggested to folks post Apollo NASA could have developed a launch system that put the crew in a small vehicle with very elaborate redundant safety features just to get into orbit and rendezvous with the payload vehicle. which was launched separately with the heavy duty vehicles but with at least one part of the rocket goes into space with the payload and it is the only single use component.
emphasis being much more efficient to pack all most of the ‘safety net’ into the crew vehicle.
afaic the ISS $ should have been put into a swarm of utilitarian exploration satellites that poke here and there around the solar system, and when interesting stuff comes up the much more sophisticated vehicles like Mars explorer follow to thoroughly investigate.
instead we get the usual macho bragging rights amusement park ride in low orbit.
The value-for-money of the space shuttle launch is even worse when one takes into account that it is simply a modified plane on a rocket that flies to a remote landing site when out of sight of the viewers on the ground, and then takes off again shortly before it is later required to “return from space”.
That said, there are definitely costs to maintain and film the various activities at NASA’s giant swimming pool for the various “space walks”.
NASA – a division of Hollywood, where B grade actors find steady employment.
Math rules you!
End of story.