Science done poorly - a delightful romp 🧪

(Joey) #1

@CFLBob’s post on another topic led me down a rabbit hole, whence I came across this delightful lecture (link below). One of the more enjoyable hours I’ve spent in quite a while…

#2

Not sure it it is time well spent. He will sometimes enter the theater of the absurd. Look up his Coin Toss experiment. He also has the luxury or time.
One of his more famous quotes and pretty obvious.

“All probability is conditional on the assumptions made.”

(Joey) #3

Definitely offers a quirky perspective. I posted this under Show me the garbage to keep it all from getting too heavy.

However, as a curator of the absurd, this tendency is part of what I found enjoyable. Here’s another Briggs quote that made me smile:

“You cannot choose to believe you do not have free will.”

Solipsic fun for the whole family.

#4

He does have some decent stuff on Climate Change. My wife who is a medical doctor also has a degree in environmental science ('88 NWU) and has looked at some of his stuff. “Seems to be right on a lot of issues concerning climate change.”

(Joey) #5

Certainly thought-provoking at a minimum!

I’ve got a couple of undergraduate degrees in environmental science and forestry dating back to the 1970s. Back then it was well known that keeping forests from experiencing their regular natural burn - and building whole towns smack in their midst - was a recipe for uncontrollable conflagrations.

We even had a whole course (fire meteorology) delving in the single topic of how a large scale fire creates its own local weather system.

40+ yrs later, Californians seemed shocked by such basic facts … including “revelations” about how fires are harder to fight because they affect local weather conditions.

This all falls somewhere between amusing and sad.

We were also taught that, over time, nothing about the Earth’s climate is stable - nor is its geological state. “Climate change” is a self-referential redundancy, akin to assuming that all of our planet’s rocks have already been formed.

And of course in the 1970s we were concerned about the coming ice age. Hunker down. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

#6

Agreed. I spent a summer tree planting close to 40 years ago, and the area we planted in had done a controlled burn two years before because they were at high risk. This was primarily to clean out the dead wood and brush. They used to call it Forest Management. I cannot imagine the eco-worriers of today would approve of this procedure now. Hence, why some fires happen or become much larger than they should.

(Bob M) #7

One of the things I thought was interesting was to let ruminants and other animals graze through forests, as they tend to remove a lot of the underbrush and other kindling.

I do find the heat disconcerting. Where I live (CT, USA), it used to snow a lot during the winter. Now, it rarely snows. And we get a paper that is fun to read because they have entries from 100 years ago. Back then, they were taking huge chunks of ice out of the local ponds and lakes. Now, there is no ice.

In fact, I’ve been wanting to make my own ice rink in the winter, as we have some flat ground where that’s possible. The problem? It’s not cold enough to freeze water.

(Joey) #8

It’s clearly evident that the climate is changing. Going forward, how much can be affected by humanity (intentionally, that is) remains an open untested question.

But the notion that a changing climate is 100% bad - i.e., everyone loses and there are no winners - seems to be at the heart of Brigg’s critique as I understood it.

Stepping back, change of any kind on any scale is rarely fun. But our emotional reaction to change is what typically makes it a distressing experience far more than the change itself.

(KM) #9

Unless of course you’re a highly environment dependent non-human without a climate controlled house, in which case you’re probably screwed.

(Joey) #10

Agreed. But if you’re an oceanic algae colony or a subtropical plant somewhere above the equator, you’re winning the climate sweepstakes. :yin_yang:

(KM) #11

Maybe. We think of better in terms of “nicer” temps or more growth potential. That’s not necessarily optimal in a balanced system.

(Central Florida Bob ) #12

I got an attack of being busied yesterday (more common on Thursdays) and didn’t see that you, @SomeGuy, had linked to this. I’m not a Statistician but the broken science initiative is focused on how statistics are poorly used in many, if not all, studies. Briggs jokes all the time about how they seem to think if they end up with a “wee p value” the scientists are confident they’ve found causation, when the whole approach is questionable.

Any mechanical technician or engineer or just anyone who has thought about it will recognize that if a coin is flipped in a completely the same way, the outcome isn’t random, 50/50 heads to tails. Say it starts out the same way every time (say, heads up) and you deliver exactly the same impulse to the coin every time such that it makes exactly the same number of rotations. If you do that, you’ll get exactly the same results. It’s a machine not a random number generator. I never kept count of the number of demonstrations I’ve seen of this over the years, but his coin flipping toy isn’t the only one.

Didn’t everyone hear about “loaded dice” while growing up? It was done by putting something into the dice to make one face heavier than normal and therefore more likely to end with that face down - and the desired face up. It pushed the frequency of getting the desired face from 1 in 6 to something bigger. Roll the dice enough times and you win enough times to make it pay.

Climate change? I could do an hour on that. In the end, people decide based on feelings not data. “You cannot reason someone out of an opinion they didn’t use reasoning and facts to get to” - I forget who said that, and I’m not even sure it’s an exact quote, but I think it’s right. In a field with so much utter crap, incomplete information, and unsubstantiated allegations printed as this, it’s impossible to think through without quite a bit of study.

#13

And will continue as it has done for millions of years. If you believe the argument that humans are the main cause, then please tell me what actions you would take. China represents over 30% of all emissions, yet they have been granted a pass until 2060. India has been granted until 2070. In the meantime, they can burn anything they want.
Sadly, the same politicians who think they can change the weather still cannot figure out the homeless situation or the safe injection sites in my city.

(Joey) #14

As for whether humans are the main cause, I remain somewhat agnostic … we’re probably making a meaningful contribution given our gas emissions, but it’s impossible to know just how much, given the complexities of the Earth’s interacting systems.

As for what actions I would take? That’s easier: Seriously revisit nuclear energy. It’s time to leverage what we’ve learned through experience in conjunction with advances in technology.

No, nuclear energy isn’t perfect - there are operating risks to be managed and disposal challenges to be addressed - but it has enormous advantages over what most climate activists tout as their favored solutions.

Okay, off the soap box, but I was invited :wink:

(Alec) #15

I think there’s a whole bunch of excellent points in this lecture… I really enjoyed it. The key message that I got was: don’t trust what you are told is “science”. It is likely to be untrue.

(Robin) #16

Just because we are invited onto the soapbox, doesn’t mean we have to attend. Climate change, covid, politics, etc… steer clear.
Thanks, signed Experience.
:grin:

(Joey) #17

But Show Me The Science has a Show Me the Garbage subtopic. Seems quite on topic/category.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #18

What Briggs is saying isn’t garbage, it illustrates what garbage is. The British statistician, David Colquhoun has a series of lectures on how p-values are often a way to be wrong with confidence.

But even if an effect is quite significant in a statistical sense, it isn’t necessarily significant in a clinical sense. David Diamond pokes fun at statin research for touting impressive relative risk reductions, when the clinical effect is quite small. How big an improvement is reducing someone’s risk from 0.1% to 0.05%? That’s a 50% reduction in relative risk, which the statin manufacturers play up, but it is a minuscule clinical effect, which they conveniently don’t usually talk about.

Now a drug that reduced your risk from 70% to 35% would be something to crow about, and it, too, is a 50% relative risk reduction. Austin Bradford-Hill is supposed to have said something along the lines of “If the effect size isn’t at least 2.0, the study isn’t worth getting out of bed for.” No idea if he ever really said that, but I agree with the sentiment.

(Alec) #19

I am a statto… I work with numbers all day every day (very sad :joy::joy:). I am always amused by the point that is made around absolute vs relative risk. The general point is of course true: using relative risk makes things sound really good compared to the real patient perceived benefit. And we should be careful with that.

BUT… and this is part of the reason this is often not taken in by the medical establishment: in the perception of the doctors it DOES reduce the incidence of disease that they see by a large proportion… ie they tell 50% less people they have CVD… to the doctor this is BIG. Because they don’t see everyone who took the medicine… they just see the folks with the disease, not the folks who don’t.

So, in my view, this whole thing about absolute vs relative risk is overplayed. There often IS a benefit, and we should not dismiss it as irrelevant. But of course the potential benefits must be balanced with the costs ($$s and side effects).

I want to check something with you on this: I think that the first point about relative vs absolute risk is in the domain of RCTs, where different groups are being compared. However, my understanding of where Bradford-Hill and his effect size being at least 2 is in the realm of epidemiology (which is absolute pseudo-science). Correct?

(Joey) #20

Bingo. :+1: … and that he did it in such an enjoyable way prompted me to post that link up top.