Month: December 2009

Aynsley Kellow on Climategate

Seth Roberts9 Comments

Anysley Kellow is a professor of political science at the University of Tasmania. In an interview five years ago, he said, about global warming, “we’ve got a much broader range of choice to respond to a problem that is much more uncertain than certain people who are pushing the issue would have us believe.”

As in a protection racket, the people trying to scare you benefit from you being scared:

I did a study of electricity planning, including here in Tasmania, the good old Hydro Electric Commission in the old days—and the logic was much the same; they would produce forecasts of [hard-to-meet] future demand which were then taken as immutable, and then they would try and justify particular policy responses to those. In the case here it was with hydro dam construction.

I learned about Professor Kellow’s work from a comment about status-trading among scientists. I wrote to him to ask what work of his was being referred to. He replied:

I think the reference is just to my 2007 book (Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science), where I write about the shrinking size of groups which possess expertise, the effect of the communications revolution in establishing close networks of cooperation, and the effect of this on quality-assurance processes like peer review. The prevailing paradigm then becomes a ’club good’ from the defense of which all members benefit (in status, grant success and career advancement).

The problem is exacerbated by some of the circumstances revealed by Climategate: not just pressure on editors, and influence in being IPCC lead authors, but peer review in climate journals where submitting authors nominate reviewers, the identity of authors is known to those approached to referee papers, and so on. I am so accustomed to double-blind peer review that I found it hard to believe that this was a common practice.
When we add this to the lack of disclosure of raw data and code, we have serious reliability problems underlying science upon which we are basing very costly policy. We know in social science research the potential for subjective factors to obtrude into data manipulation even when researchers do not consciously mean for this to happen, so we often see data preparation and analysis performed by independent teams, and emphasise transparency, disclosure of methods, double-blind peer review, and so on.

That’s a good point about single-blind peer review. I agree, it should all be double-blind, no exceptions. In psychology authors don’t know the name of reviewers but reviewers know the names of authors. You can request double-blind review but then your paper enters the review process with a “paranoid” label attached.

Kellow interviewed about Climategate.

Associative Memory Studied by Self-Experimentation

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Joel Voss, a postdoc at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, studied himself to measure the capacity of associative memory:

No previous experiments on humans have investigated the capacity of associative memory. I describe the first relevant data, which I obtained by systematically probing my own capacity during 58,560 memory trials for picture—response associations (approximately 1 year of testing). Estimated capacity was on the order of several thousand associations.

A few thousand is the number of characters a well-educated Chinese person knows.

Three Chinese Jokes

Seth Roberts2 Comments

QUESTION: When the green bean jumped off a tall building, what did it become?

ANSWER: Red bean.

QUESTION: When the banana jumped off a tall building, what did it become?

ANSWER: Eggplant.

QUESTIONER: For Spring Festival, a farmer wanted to kill a donkey or a pig. Which did he choose?

LISTENER: I don’t know. The pig?

QUESTIONER: Congratulations, the donkey agrees with you.

What I’ve Learned From Climategate (So Far)

Seth Roberts11 Comments

Google “Climategate” you get 31 million hits. “Obama” returns 40 million. Yet mainstream media, such as the New York Times, have said little about it. The New Yorker has said nothing about it. Given so much interest, that will change.

Some of my prior beliefs — that empirical support for the view that man has caused global warming is weaker than we’re told, that bloggers are a powerful force for truth — are stronger. But here are a few things I didn’t think of until now:

1. The truth leaks out before it gushes out. Laurie David’s children’s book — its egregious mistake, her blithe dismissal of that mistake — is an example of the truth leaking out. In the Ranjit Chandra case, little facts implied he was a fraud long before this became utterly clear. An example is the claim in one of his papers (published in The Lancet!) that everyone asked agreed to be in his experiment.

2. Teaching is even better done via scandals than via stories. The number of hits for Climategate is an indication of how much people are learning from it. As I blogged earlier, they’re learning a lot about science. A mere story about science would never attract so much attention. I should think more about how to use scandals to teach stuff. When Nassim Taleb is scathing about this or that, he has the right idea. Spy was the perfect example. It taught me a lot about New York City.

3. Jane Jacobs was wrong. Or at least missed something very important. In Dark Age Ahead, her last book, she pointed to a number of disturbing signs. One was the rise of crappy science. She was quite right about that — as scientists have become more professional they have become more status-oriented and less truth-oriented. She didn’t foresee that the Internet would be an enormously powerful corrective force, as is happening now. Climategate is a (relatively) small example of even bigger force: the rise of the power of sophisticated amateurs/hobbyists. Who, unlike professionals, with jobs and status to protect, have complete freedom. The first big example was printed non-fiction books, as I blogged earlier (which are written with great freedom, usually); but now the Internet provides another great outlet, much faster, cheaper, and more accessible than books, for independent thought.

Philip Greenspun on Universities

Seth Roberts9 Comments

This essay by Philip Greenspun, about the trouble with American college education, is most notable for its description of a class lecture by Robert Schiller at Yale:

  • 0-4:30: name of course, name of professor, names of TAs, pictures of TAs [all stuff that could easily have been on a handout or Web site]
  • 4:30-5:15: bragging about how many important people on Wall Street took his course, bragging about how great the course is even for people who aren’t going on to Wall Street
  • 5:15-6:20: talking about how every human endeavor involves finance, e.g., if you’re a poet it will help you get published to know how finance works [my haiku: AIG bankrupt; your taxes gone to Greenwich; no one hears your screams]
  • 6:20-7: talking about an unrelated course, Econ 251, and who taught it in previous years [big excitement at a university: some guy other than the usual lecturer taught it because Kahuna #1 was on leave]
  • 7-10: history of why two intro finance courses exist, glorious biography of teacher of the other course, [after several minutes, we learn that the other course has a bit more math]
  • 10-11:30: show of hands for who is interested in organic chemistry, discussion of how Robert Shiller is reading about this because he has such broad intellectual interests [implicit comparison to finance wizards, though Shiller is not able to cite an example of how organic chemists managed to bankrupt their shareholders and wreck the world economy]
  • 11:30-15:00: writes authors of textbook on blackboard, says it is “very detailed”, discusses reactions of previous classes of students to this book, talks about his vacation in the Bahamas with some other important guy, reading textbook by the pool unlike the other stupid tourists who were reading novels. Discussion of what number the current edition is. “I met a really prominent person on Wall Street” who told him that his son had dropped out of the course because the textbook was too hard. Apparently Yale students are too stupid/lazy to read this book intended for undergrads at schools with more motivated students.
  • 15-16: discussion of how library is obsolete in the Internet age, how Franco Modigliani is 2nd author of primary textbook, a Nobel Prize winner, and “my teacher at MIT”

Funny! Spy had a similar article about 24 hours of an all-sports-talk radio show. Okay, Robert Shiller is full of himself. The most telling criticism of the modern university is in a comment by Mike Lin:

The first day of Statistics 100 at the University of Michigan, the professor said our final grade was either the average score of our midterm and final, or the score of the final — whichever was greater. Our labs and homework assignments did not impact our course grade. My roommate, also enrolled in the same course, didn’t make the first class. I told him about the grading system. Neither of us attended another class, nor took the midterm.

Before the final, we spent two days straight, reading the material and doing problem sets. I got a B+. He got an A-. [Shades of Tucker Max.]

I am ashamed to admit that I wasted all those lectures and labs that my family paid for. But what does it say about inadequacy and inefficiency of the lecture system when we arguably learned the practical application of our course material with 24 hours of self-study spread over two days and a $100 textbook?

It says a lot.

Via Aaron Swartz.

Nature Editorializes on Climategate

Seth Roberts3 Comments

It reads like something from Shouts and Murmurs in The New Yorker:

If there are benefits to the e-mail theft, one is to highlight yet again the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate-change researchers, often in the form of endless, time-consuming demands for information under the US and UK Freedom of Information Acts.

If only all Nature editorials were this amusing. It ends with the same pompous reference to “science” as Elizabeth Kolbert’s review of Superfreakonomics:

The pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science.

Thanks to Bruce Charlton.

More Here’s what James McCarthy, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography at Harvard and President-elect of AAAS, has to say: “The content of a few personal emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming.” He is ignoring the fact that the data has been revealed to be a huge mess.

Foot Fungus Cured With Socks

Seth Roberts14 Comments

A friend writes:

I remember reading on your blog about more socks as a cure for Athlete’s Foot and I had a fungal infection on my foot from climbing around barefoot outside, I think. I tried using two different antifungal creams. They didn’t work. To be honest I didn’t use them for the recommended time cuz it’s a huge fucking hassle. You have to put it on your feet, let it dry, rub it in blah blah blah. And it’s kinda gross to use. So I went to Uniqlo [a Japanese clothing store] and bought like 20 pairs of extra socks and forgot about it. But when I wash socks the washed ones get put in the back of the drawer so the effect is the socks I wear spend like 3-4 days away from my feet every time. Anyway, the infection COMPLETELY disappeared. There is a weird sense of satisfaction from this kind of cure. It feels like just by doing some small things ‘right’ all these health issues can be fixed.

I had foot fungus for years, I too tried antifungal creams without success, and the problem cleared up within days when I bought a lot more socks. It has remained cleared-up. You could call it the staging-area problem: Our things act as staging areas for harmful bugs. Another example is getting an eye infection from pillowcases.

The Parable of the Children’s Book

Seth Roberts16 Comments

In 2007, Laurie David, producer of An Inconvenient Truth, ex-wife of Larry David, and self-described “global warming activist,” published The Down To Earth Guide to Global Warming, a book for children. It contained a graph showing the very strong correlation over time between carbon dioxide levels and global temperature. The point was that carbon dioxide controlled global temperature. But there was a problem: The graph was mislabeled. The function labeled “carbon dioxide” was actually the temperature function. Correctly labeled, the graph showed that carbon dioxide changes followed temperature changes. Which meant that the temperature changes had caused the carbon-dioxide changes, rather than the other way around — which was one of the book’s main points.

David’s reaction to the mistake?

Thanks guys! We will correct the illustration in the next edition. We’re happy to learn that that was the only question SPPI had about the entire fact-filled book!

As if it’s trivial.

Moral: A sign of things to come.

More The fact that a producer of An Inconvenient Truth, the movie that arguably won Al Gore a Nobel Prize, could (a) make such a basic mistake and (b) dismiss it as trivial is the ladies-who-lunch equivalent of the fact that Jones and other CRU scientists were scared of a New York Times reporter.

Climategate: Its Educational Value

Seth Roberts25 Comments

Before the printing press, there were very few books. It was extremely hard to learn math; you had to pay a tutor. Of course literacy was very low — but all knowledge that could be transmitted through books (such as math) was very low.

Science cannot be taught through books. You can learn a lot about calculus by reading books. You can learn almost nothing important about science. Science is not a collection of facts, it is a method, a way of gathering knowledge. Almost always it is taught by doing — by working in a lab, for example. Just as, before printed books, almost no one could do any math, it is true today that almost no one can do any science. (Most doctors think the bigger the sample size, the better.)

If you look at a biology textbook, it is full of conclusions. It says practically nothing about the process by which those conclusions were reached. For some reason biologists have decided not to teach that — perhaps because it is difficult and messy to teach. And someone might be offended. Whatever the reason, the process goes undescribed. And it’s all sciences, not just biology. (Until recently, economists avoided teaching data. At least in introductory economics, data was too messy for them.)

As long as you have to learn science by doing it practically no one will understand it — just as almost no one did math when you had to hire a tutor to learn it. But now we have the Internet. And blogs. Two new things have entered the picture: a great deal of emotion (blogs are full of emotion, unlike textbooks); and unlimited space. Now science can begin to be taught without actually doing an apprenticeship. If you add enough emotion, anything becomes riveting. And there is now plenty of room for all the false starts and messy details. I suppose most scientists who blog are too worried about being dignified to say anything emotional or messy, but that doesn’t matter because there are so many bloggers.

According to Stephen Dubner, “if you are fan of science, this [Climategate] is a pretty grim day.” I think it’s a great day. As great as the day the first math text was printed. It’s the first time a large number of people are getting a real lesson in science. Mainstream media coverage is pathetic but there are so many bloggers it doesn’t matter. You can read about it endlessly. As you do, you will painlessly and unforgettably learn what Leonard Syme taught his students for years, and what I blogged about a few weeks ago: The apparent consensus on any difficult issue is more fragile than it looks. You are learning how conclusions are actually arrived at. It isn’t pretty — which textbook writers and professors, seeking dignity above all else, fail to mention.

Climategate: Its Educational Value (continued)

Seth Roberts7 Comments

In a response to the comments on my previous post, I say that the primary attitude of science isn’t to be skeptical, it is to think for yourself. (Which, in practice, means ignoring what fancy hot-shot scientists at prestigious universities tell you to think.) Funny that fancy hot-shot scientists at prestigious universities never teach that.

Or almost never. In another comment on that post, Andrew Gelman mentions the Feynman Lectures as books from which you can learn about science. Having read Volume 1, I have no idea what he means. I was a freshman at Caltech. Feynman was a professor there at the time. The Feynman Lectures had been published but they were judged too difficult for most of the freshmen! I am not kidding. The faculty had learned that they were too hard to understand. They didn’t teach what the faculty called “problem-solving” — that is, deriving predictions from theories. So there were two tracks of Intro Physics at Caltech: the Feynman track (fewer students) and the non-Feynman track (more students). I was in the Feynman track. He wasn’t the professor, but we used his book. That’s how I came to read Volume 1. I liked it, but it didn’t teach me anything important about science.

Yet — during the exact same time, freshman year — Feynman himself did teach me something important about how to be a scientist. He taught me (= encouraged me) to think for myself. Not in any obvious way. On Wednesdays at 11:00 am, Feynman would answer questions for an hour. Anything except textbook problem-solving questions. There were more than a thousand students at Tech but maybe 20-30 attended these little sessions. One day I asked: “I’ve read some philosophy. It doesn’t make sense. Yet lots of people say it’s important. Am I missing something, or does it have as little value as I think it has?” Feynman’s answer: He agreed with me. There was one book of philosophy he liked, a survey by Bertrand Russell, but for the rest of it, it was people talking and talking and saying nothing.

Wow, he agrees with me, I thought. I had reached what I thought was a very minority opinion — an opinion I’d read nowhere else, had heard nowhere else — and this famous person who I respected agreed with me! It certainly taught me to think for myself.