46 Replies to “Lies, Damned Lies And”

  2. Statistics cited in media are no different from when they refer to “experts” IMO. Sure, they might hit on a true expert every so often, but most of the time it’s someone who relishes their “expert” status and will do all kinds of things to wear it (earned or not). The double egg yolk thing is an interesting microcosm of the phenomena. Personally, I’ve gotten a handful of double yolks recently on “Large” sized eggs. It was unusual. My first thought wasn’t the probability. No, the first thing into my head was that some corporate chicken farm was shooting up their chickens with productivity drugs and steroids. I’m probably right about that.

    This same technique is, in fact, purposeful and injected into politics. Suicide rates on Transgenders…% of gay individuals; temperature raise due to climate change; systemic racism; crime in general. All these topics are dependent upon accuracy without the input of perceptions (or worse, ideological perceptions).

    I used to take people at their word when they were considered an “expert” in a particular field. Nowadays, they have to earn it.

  3. Professional statisticians are well aware of these problems. They know full well, for example, that many statistical analyses depend on events being “independent and identically distributed” (known as “iid”) and that in real life this is often violated. Or that assuming a normal distribution is dangerous if the distribution is in reality “fat tailed” (that is, far more erratic than a normal distribution allows).

    Egregious errors occur when people try to apply statistics with only a little knowledge, or when they are highly motivated to arrive at a particular solution. This is why much-aligned peer review is useful. Other statisticians viewing your paper with a critical eye can find such problems before they reach press.

    1. This is why much-aligned peer review is useful.

      I agree. Why, I used several sheets of peer review just this morning, in the bathroom. Something about Globull Warmening, as I recall…

      1. Have you ever participated in peer review? If not, you might want to listen to people who actually have. It’s likely not what you think it is.

        1. Yes I have. One of the reviewers sent the paper back asking for additional data that was already there. (It was published and made it to the cover of the Journal)

          1. That’s why they usually allow an Authors’ Response. So you can point out to the editors that the reviewers are drinking again.

        2. Have you ever participated in peer review?

          Nope. I don’t need to have been a peer reviewer to know that it’s largely pal review these days. I have read hundreds of published papers that obviously were never peer reviewed properly, or were peer reviewed by sycophants who were completely on board w/ the crap in the paper or were never peer reviewed, period.

          1. It’s possible that the papers were not peer reviewed. If the duration between submission and acceptance was less than three months then yeah, the peer review process was likely perfunctory. Possibly just an editor who read it over and said “Yeah, that’s printable.”

            Many modern journals only pretend to do peer review, and the papers are not better for it.

        3. And thus the Marmot undermines his stance. See also my other comment on peer review, which I have observed over 200 times in another life that I am happily free from.

          3. Anything involving humans will be imperfect.

            The expectation of perfection is the foundation of much criticism, init? “If the medical profession is so good, how come we had the Thalidomide crisis 60 years ago?” “If capitalism is so wonderful, how come we have poor people?” And so on.

      2. I’m sitting in the smallest room in my house. In front of me I’m reading your missive. Very soon it will be behind me.

    2. “This is why much-aligned peer review is useful.”

      USED TO BE useful. Until smug left-wingers like you ruined it.

      ” Other statisticians viewing your paper with a critical eye can find such problems before they reach press.”

      When those ‘other statisticians’ are your good buddies, problems will rarely be found.

      Show me some actual investigations and prosecutions of the perpetrators of ‘pal review’ and I might start believing in peer review again.

      1. Not left wing, sunshine. Having views you disagree with does not make one progressive.

        Much peer review these days is double blind. The reviewers don’t know who the authors are, and vice versa. This mostly knocks the wind out of “pal review”. Occasionally a reviewer can guess the identity of some of the authors, but editors are not going to put an inordinate amount of weight on a single review if it seems unfair.

        It’s trendy to criticize peer review, but most people have never done it, don’t know how it works in practice, or even what it’s trying to achieve.

        1. Much like your censorious Marxist fellow-travellers have infiltrated gaming, open source software and much of academia, they have take over the peer-review process, and your role is simply to try to convince folk that that hasn’t happened.
          That’s why everybody hates you.

          1. Not everybody hates me. My dog seems fond of me, although he may be faking it because I feed him regularly.

            But I’m not like you. I don’t post opinions because I want to be admired by my buddies on some blog site. I call them as I see them, and if that offends others. well I’m not going to be intimidated by a bunch of keyboard warriors with cheeto addictions.

            And unlike you, I don’t hate people for having a different opinion than me.

            So you go live your life trying to shoehorn reality into your partisan views. Tell me how it works out.

        2. I have observed many peer reviews and there is bias, “pals”, woke criteria, and approval of questionable proposals.
          That is not a blanket statement, but it is how it works in practice far too often.

          1. As an editor, I’ve run across the odd curmudgeon reviewer. They’re not difficult to identify. I usually advise the authors to disregard the review, and then I don’t use that reviewer again. I also assign a poor rating to the review, which signals to other editors to avoid them.

            So there are occassional problems, as in any human endeavour. But so far as a wall of gate keepers enforcing predefined tenets, no I don’t see it. I would actually welcome a contentious paper. Most are pretty straightforward.

          2. I certainly wouldn’t put up with a curmudgeonly reviewer. I don’t even think it’s ethical to mudgeon curs. We have a lot of dog experts here, maybe they can weigh in on this?

        3. Okay. Some peer review would have bias based on the subject and not the author. A group doing peer review may yea or nay simply because it goes with or against the “consensus” or narrative. It may be the most unbiased and fair review but the audience stays skeptical all because of past shenanigans (and its own bias).

          1. Except that peer review isn’t done in groups. Editors generally go out of their way to find diverse individuals with no known connection to each other. As an example, I won’t pick reviewers for a paper from the same university or company, and try not to pick reviewers from the same country (not always possible).
            ,

          2. And by the way, reviewers only give opinions. It’s the editors who say “yea” or “nay”. And in the journal I edit for, rejecting a paper requires the approval of three different editors, including the editor in chief.

            The most common reason for rejection is not because of a contentious opinion, but because the material has already been published elsewhere, or the subject matter does not match the journal’s, or there are clear signs that the authors have not been entirely honest (they get to convince us otherwise).

          3. Killer, that’s well and good but you are defending the peer review process that you do and presumably others that you know well.

            How can you possibly issue a blanket statement that peer review in general is above board when there are a gazillion of medical and scientific papers issued all over the world on a gazillion subjects that you have no clue about.

          4. “How can you possibly issue a blanket statement that peer review in general is above board when there are a gazillion of medical and scientific papers issued all over the world on a gazillion subjects that you have no clue about.”

            I can’t but neither can you guys.

            At least I have experience in it, and know that many of the critics of peer review don’t understand how it works or what it attempts to do. “Pal review” was undoubedtly a problem in some fields, but as double-blind reviewing has become common, and as research has become increasingly global, and as the number of journals has proliferated, gate keeping by a small coterie of researchers must be an impossible task.

          5. “I can’t but neither can you guys.”

            Yes, I can in four words: the climate crisis scam. Just one example.

        4. The reviewers don’t know who the authors are…

          It doesn’t matter. If the peer reviewer is getting paid elsewhere to push, say, the Globull Warmening lie, then he/she/it is unlikely to be unbiased upon reviewing a paper on the causes of Globull Warmening.

          Pal review doesn’t necessarily just mean the reviewer knows the author (although it could). They could also be kindred spirits in promulgating the same lie.

          1. Yup.
            As I noted above, Pal review and biased criteria obscure the game.
            Also, grad students promulgate the same lies even if they can’t remember their Prof’s name on the peer review they are paid to review.
            Audit the Tri Councils in Canada.
            I have seen this shite.

    3. “Egregious errors occur when people try to apply statistics with only a little knowledge, or when they are highly motivated to arrive at a particular solution. ”
      -Vax-rat shoots himself in the foot, but is too dumb to notice.

      1. According to vax-rat:
        1. Trying to get an audience for a conspiracy theory =”highly motivated to arrive at a particular solution. ”
        2. Being paid billions+ by gov’ts = “not highly motivated to arrive at a particular solution. ”
        The man is nothing but an establishment shill, yet another reason why everybody hates you.

          1. I don’t have to imagine it. I see you do it all the time. Never happens to me, I invested in knotless gitch and it really paid off.

  4. Son of a 20,000 chicken farmer here – one out of every 1000 eggs sounds about right. If you collected eggs as many times as I have… after school and all points in between It wasn’t difficult to tell which ones had the double yolk. I squirrelled them away for mom who made sure I had them on my plate the next morning. Another egg anomaly was an egg without a typical hard white shell but rather a dry thick skin like membrane. Those were reserved for pelting my brother with. Good times. I attribute all that to my Montreal Expos invitation…doubt it.

    Reminded me of a documentary I once watched some time ago where a man was brought to trial for murdering his wife, the charge of course was that he pushed she fell down the stairs…and as it turns out, met the same fate as his first wife. Statisticians were brought in to explain to the jury that it was statistically impossible two wives would meet the same demise.
    Innocent.

    1. Whoa!? An egg farmer who got a sniff from The Majors!? Yeah … the scene of a young Roy Hobbs just flashed into my brain … of a late afternoon, sun-setting backlit “Natural” striking out “The Whammer” at the County Fair …

      https://youtu.be/qdtCFKVtSls?si=ypmJP3mmE2U2KolB

      I’m amazed by the unique and diverse people Kate has collected here on SDA

      1. LOL…you’re too kind Kenji. I assure you it wasn’t all that. Tony McKegney wrecked me on a three and one pitch and the rest is history, he went on to play hockey… I went on to carpentry. End of story.

        1. I’m still impressed. And now even more so with your carpentry career.

          My current best friend is a GC/Carpenter who is working on some local jobs with me. He has an utterly unreal backstory … raised by hippies and drugs … Carlos Santana upstairs getting busy with his mom … tons of Bay Area musicians flowing in and out of his flop house of a home. Had a sister murdered by her druggie boyfriend. He was functionally illiterate at age 30.

          Then he completely turned his life around, yes … turned to Christ, became a minister along with building lots of homes as a framer, then started his own framing business. He is a tremendous human being … and is a fairly kick ass blues guitar player.

          You just never know the backstory of every single person you meet. I never cease to be amazed. And I love your egg farmer backstory. How unique is that!? I’d love to hear your take on the bird flu that is causing egg farmers in Petaluma to destroy entire flocks … and now it’s spreading across the nation. Not. Good.

  5. “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”

    Hmm … that sounds SO familiar to me. Where have I heard that before? Hmmmmm … ? Ohhhhh yeahhhhhh … it was Peter Strozk

    ”Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could smell the Trump support … “

    Speaking of far-leftist statistical probabilities

  6. OT

    Federal Fiberal leadership debates.

    en Froggy – Feb. 24. Montreal, QC
    in Queens English – Feb. 25. Montreal, QC

    Liberals and Quebec. Most of the time, all the time.

    YOU CAN”T HATE THEM ENOUGH.

    1. The debate will take place in “Canada.” That’s where “Canada” and the Laurentian elite reside.

      I’m amazed at how many “Canadians” can’t see this rubbed in their faces and yet, sentimentally believe, this elite group gives a sh!t about anything other than keeping the status quo of looting their “countrymen,” to preserve their business stake in their Canadian “unity.”

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