Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors

2016 Media 17 Comments

Finally, a little backbone.

The Republican National Committee has pulled out of a planned Feb. 26 debate with NBC News after widespread criticism of this week’s CNBC debate from both the party and campaigns.
But some say the RNC’s action may be too late to satisfy candidates who were upset with the questions asked by CNBC moderators on Wednesday night.
“We are suspending the partnership with NBC News for the Republican primary debate at the University of Houston on February 26, 2016,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus wrote in a letter to NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack.
“CNBC network is one of your media properties, and its handling of the debate was conducted in bad faith,” Priebus wrote.

Bomb Bomb Bomb

You Might Be A Liberal 29 Comments

Bombardier;

As Bloomberg reports, Bombardier Inc. will get a Quebec government rescue of as much as $1.3 billion as the struggling planemaker prepares to pump in even more cash into the tardy, over-budget CSeries jetliner.

How quaint. They say “Quebec government rescue” as if Quebec pays its own bills.


Macleans has a sunnier take.
Morning update!

What Would We Do Without Peer Review?

Science 13 Comments

Trust the experts;

Twenty-five years after it was first published, one of the world’s top medical journals is retracting a study by a once-renowned Canadian researcher after an internal university report surfaced, revealing the paper is the result of scientific fraud.
In an editorial, the BMJ sharply rebukes Memorial University for covering up what it knew about problems with the researcher’s work for years.
The paper, published in the BMJ in 1989 by Dr. Ranjit Chandra, then based at Memorial University in St. John’s, is being pulled as a result of mounting evidence that he falsified information, fabricated study participants and had no raw data to back up the claims made by his research into the rate of eczema among babies who were either breast or formula fed.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science 6 Comments

Unexpected Honey Study Shows Woes of Nutrition Research

Almost everything we “know” is based on small, flawed studies. The conclusions that can be drawn from them are limited, but often oversold by researchers and the news media. This is true not only of the newer work that we see, but also the older research that forms the basis for much of what we already believe to be true. I’m not ignoring blockbuster studies because I don’t agree with their findings; I’m usually just underwhelmed by what I can meaningfully conclude from them.

h/t meatriarch (who may have a hidden agenda in passing this along)

The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science No Comments

Lucas Bergkamp (via Judith Curry);

In short, consensus is not necessarily irrelevant, but consensus needs to be understood to determine how much weight it should be given, and how it compares to other scientific opinions. Unthinkingly rubberstamping consensus science is not a good practice. In a court room, a claim that there is scientific consensus raises several questions. First, what is the basis for the claim that there is consensus? In other words, how do we know there is consensus at all, and how strong is the evidence supporting the consensus? Second, what is the nature and extent of the scientific consensus? This examination covers issues such as precisely on which findings and facts is there consensus and why, and on which findings and facts is there disagreement and why. Third, how was the consensus produced, i.e. in what kind of environment? Of course, consensus that is based not on persuasive argument, but on silencing dissent by inappropriate means, is not worth anything. Likewise, if an area of science is politicized, consensus may not signal the state of the science, but political dominance.

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