Policy Statement
Lifted from Paul Krugman
Eli's general view of science and science policy is that there are no saints and no geniuses; place too much faith in anyone, and you’re bound to be let down. But there are villains, and they need to be fought.
Posts
10 comments:
The hard part, of course, is figuring out who is and isn't a villain, a chore made all the more difficult when one realizes some people are only part-time villains, or villains in only some arenas.
I just had to inform you of this one; http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-nuralagus-rex-giant-extinct-rabbit.html
imho heisenbergii or diracii would have made a better name for the species.
This little mouse often gets lost in the body of a published paper. Eli has lost little mouse in the title.
But, if I reads it a couple of times, a degree of understanding follows. Sometimes things don't seem right, and then others hack the paper to pieces. Sometimes things don't seem right, but it was my understanding that was wrong.
There are counter intuitive results, but good science studies the data and in the end finds out why things do not happen as expected. Established positions are not discarded lightly, but are eventually discarded if shown to be wrong.
Rats, jyyh got there first. But I think Nuralagus Rex is a good menacing name for scaring the bad guys with.
Yes, there are villains who need to be fought; and there are good people who need to be supported; and defended if necessary.
Nuralugus Rex, aka Big Bunny.
Berkeley temperature study is now officially BEST-gate:
http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/20/berkeley-temperature-study-results-global-warming/
Villainy in the shape of Muller and Curry. Now exposed.
Also read this:
http://www.polluterwatch.com/blog/advice-kochs-pr-team
ianash, what do you mean? This is an anti-gate. Perhaps Muller is a 'villain' in some other sense, but here he walked the straight and narrow. Any other result could only have been obtained fraudulently, so it's good news that he didn't.
Let's see the final paper first. I watched Muller give a five minute talk on "hide the decline" which Pielke Jr. liked a lot.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/03/hide-decline-in-5-minutes.html
Ergo, my jury's out for now, thanks. The test will be how the results are portrayed by each party in which there are often plenty of ways to flavour the takeaway.
My opinion is that if 50% to 60% agree that global warming is happening then the scientists are doing well. Oh look...
On the politics of climate change, 69% of Democrats agree that global warming is occurring, compared to just 41% of Republicans. Independents come in around 56% and oddly, 54% of the Kochtopus funded Tea Party believes in global warming."
http://www.desmogblog.com/big-differences-public-opinion-climate-change-canada-and-us
Stop beating yourselves up. 33% of Americans think the sun goes around the earth.
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/army-of-darkness-33-of-americans-think-the-sun-goes-around-the-earth/
That's probably a good measure of the percentage you can never expect to accept the science, which roughly tallies with...
"...Jon Krosnick, a professor at Stanford University, said the only group affected by cold weather in terms of belief about climate change is the 30 percent of the population who distrust scientists."
Coincidence? I suspect not.
J Bowers,
My wife points out that the survey you cite says that 33% of Americans do not believe that the Earth goes around the Sun *once a year*, which is different to thinking that the Sun goes around the Earth.
She finds it scarier that 49% of Americans think that only genetically modified tomatoes contain genes, whereas ordinary ones do not.
Post a Comment