| | | Hi sense; Re: "That is completely untrue."; Nope. I'm in science. I should know. Bias is used by researchers to adjust their experimental results almost universally. Sorry to have to bring you this news, but that's the way it's done.
Part of the problem with global warming is that the public believes the same crap you do, that scientists are perfect. No, they're not. Most of the time their biases are in the correct direction (for example, they notice that their experiment is putting out results incompatible with previous experiments so they conclude there's a problem, then they search out and find the problem and correct it) but biases they are. It's part and parcel of the scientific process. Sorry to have to tell you this. If you want to read more about it, try Collins' book on gravitational waves:
amazon.com
The process of bias in science begins when scientists take undergraduate lab classes. Suppose the class is measuring the acceleration of gravity. We all know it's about 9.81 m/sec^2. So the intelligent students know that when their experiment gives 9.45 m/sec^2 they made a mistake. They redo the experiment and get a better grade than the idiot student who reports that the acceleration of gravity is something new. These lab classes teach the student that it's better to fake the data then to get a wrong result. Sorry to have to report this to you, but there it is. I've tried to fight against it by arranging for labs where the students cannot know the right answer beforehand, but the way most labs are taught, they teach students to fake data.
Re: "So, bias is a problem... and they're not using tools to prevent bias and fraud."
Yep. And it's not just global warming. The problem is pervasive in the softer sciences. It's only in a few of the big money experiments that people take efforts to combat bias. Avoiding bias is rather rare. And some of the global warming research is doing better. Especially the big money stuff run by geologists.
Re: ". and thus a history of a tendency of those conducting them to "make things up" to enable fraud in trading stocks";
It's very difficult to distinguish between fraud and stupidity. But there are definitely cases of geologists making up data. The first thing they tell you when you study mining engineering is that the definition of a mine is "a hole in the ground owned by a liar".
Look I've written thousands of posts against global warming mostly on the "Politics of Energy" thread. I'm not making excuses for them. I'm explaining them from the point of view of truth. I work with some of these people. I deal with them on a person to person basis regularly. I know what they do. The vast majority of their crap is error, not fraud. (By the way, their understanding of statistics is pathetic but again that's error not fraud.)
The average government employee is rather liberal and liberals tend to believe in global warming. So which study are they going to fund, one that shows there's a problem or one that shows there's not? To fund the experiments with which they agree does not require fraud. It requires only that they believe that the prior "science" is correct, and that the research that goes against it is in error. So naturally they fund the research that supports what they believe is correct.
It's not just global warming where this happens. It's universal human behavior. It's very difficult to get funding for *any* research that goes against the beliefs of the field. Everyone knows this. So they don't even send those funding requests in. Instead, they rewrite them to comply with the beliefs of the people who make the decisions. Now is *that* deliberate fraud? When a disbeliever in global warming pretends to believe it in order to get funded?
What I'm telling you is not some secret. It's well known in other branches of "science" and has been widely discussed (in the same media that tells us that the science of global warming is virgin-mary perfect, LOL). For example:
How Science Goes Wrong
The Economist,
Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis (see article). A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of published research cannot be replicated. Even that may be optimistic. Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are bunk. In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties.
economist.com
Of course The Economist believes in global warming alarmism.
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Landis, PLOS Medicine, 2005
There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.
plosmedicine.org
-- Carl |
|
