Lab politics

[LionElJonson]

I'm a right-winger and even I think that was stupid. Did you ignore what he just said?

And yes, if you are making a statement, some proof for it is entirely appropriate.

He asked for evidence of cognitive bias and I gave it to him. Rereading it, though, I think I may have missed some of his intention, there; thanks for that. I need more sleep.

And the evidence you were asking for is right in the article, dude; only 6% of scientists are Republicans.

She, and she asked for global statistics. Not American ones. You shouldn't give people ammunition like that.

What, do you want me to run through the full inferential proof or something? I'm not going to uni to be a bloody mathematician; it's not my field. It's not like it's a difficult conclusion to draw, if you're doing it informally; if almost all American scientists are left-wing, and the rest of the world is more left wing than America, then the scientists of the rest of the world will be more left-wing than those of America and therefore less right-wing scientists than in America.

Besides, it's not like you're automatically female because your avatar has tits.

[Bakustra]

Serafina is female. You can ask her if you like, or indeed the majority of the regulars.

You made the claim, you back it up. If you cannot back up the claim, then you should probably withdraw it. Your inferences demand evidence and there is not necessarily a logical connection between the two parts. Perhaps scientists have a tendency to be centrist and so are self-identified as on the left of American politics but would be on the center in other countries. Perhaps this is an American phenomenon. Perhaps you are desperately grasping.

[Junghalli]

Cross-posted from Spacebattles.com thread on the same study, might find it interesting (the first part of the post is the relevant one).

The way those poll results are reported is utterly dishonest.

It isn't a poll of scientists in general.
It is an online questionnaire interview poll of members of the AAAS, which is a largely political group even though such officially pretends to be non-partisan. (Probably for legal reasons, the polling group technically admitted that in a deeply buried page nobody would normally look at here; note the article carefully never mentions such, only my google-fu being good enough to find out what I was never supposed to know).

To illustrate the principle with a bit more extreme example, pretend one polled scientists who were members of Greenpeace. One wouldn't get a representative picture of scientists in general.

I'll probably look around later for some good poll data, but I would wager:

* Engineers are mostly Republicans.

* Scientists working for the government, in fact most people in general working for the government, are mostly Democrats, but still far more than 6% are Republicans (if looking at them in general, not unscientific garbage reporting of a poll of members of a semi-political advocacy group).



A similar number, 62%, of Democrats say that we must take immediate action against global warming.

Of all saying that, 56% of them believe it is likely that global warming will destroy human civilization within the next century (though they are correspondingly less of the total population).

There are many things one can say about that, but such being indicator of good scientific education or mathematical literacy sure as heck isn't one of them.

The "effects" of global warming I'm gone over a lot in another thread here, so I won't repeat that automatically in detail. However, the real-world observed effects can be summed up as slightly less mm/year sea level rise on average in recent decades than in the first half of the 20th century, Greenland melting at a rate which would take thousands of years to melt the whole ice mass but has been melting since the Little Ice Age, nil rise in hurricanes, nil increase in drought, etc. (And that's with highly underreported substantial rise in net primary productivity from CO2 fertilization, beneficial changes to stomatal conductance of plants increasing water usage efficiency, etc). Overall, those answering "no" to the poll are closer to accurate than answering "yes," when the poll is trying to encourage simplistic moronic binary thought, when the poll really means by "yes" agreement with the usual exaggerated lies about the topic.



That's as inaccurate as usual. Like Dr. Cohen pointed out well in his now online book, it is the ignorant and mathematically illiterate who think nuclear waste disposal is a problem, not most scientists (aside from any corrupted by political advocacy groups):



http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter11.html

Their misrepresentation of global warming alarmism (versus most scientists aside from those in positions dependent on it for funding) would be a whole separate topic, although partially covered in the other thread.

[Bakustra]

Oh look at that, an asshole insisting that the people who study the climate must therefore be biased. I wonder why nobody ever accuses physicists of making up the Higgs boson for funding.

EDIT: Not you Junghalli, but the good monsignor you quoted.

[Junghalli]

Oh look at that, an asshole insisting that the people who study the climate must therefore be biased. I wonder why nobody ever accuses physicists of making up the Higgs boson for funding.

EDIT: Not you Junghalli, but the good monsignor you quoted.

I'm more interested in the part where he says it isn't a representative survey.

[Bakustra]

Oh look at that, an asshole insisting that the people who study the climate must therefore be biased. I wonder why nobody ever accuses physicists of making up the Higgs boson for funding.

EDIT: Not you Junghalli, but the good monsignor you quoted.

I'm more interested in the part where he says it isn't a representative survey.

He may well be wrong about that. The AAAS is the largest general association of scientists in the US, so it's hardly unreasonable to assume that they are an essentially representative sample. His belief that they are political seems to be based, judging from the rest of his post, on their belief in anthropogenic climate change and advocacy of action to counteract that. So I would be careful in taking his claims of bias at face value.

[Alyrium Denryle]

And whenever anyone tries, they just get shouted down as a "global warming denier", or accused of being in the pocket of big business.

That is because they dont have the data. They also tend to be literally paid by big business.

Those individual's do not get published. They do not even SUBMIT for publication.

Yes, because the politicians, activists, and lobbyists have no sway over the bureaucracies at all.

Funding decisions are made by scientists holding temporary 1-3 year terms as program officers, and on 1 year term review panels. So no. They dont.

The one named "reality". The only right-leaning media channel is Fox. All the others lean left. This is a well-known fact.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Then why is it that the media in general, not just Fox, allows the republicans to dictate what ends up in the media, and allow the republicans to control the terms of political debate? Why do they, with a few exceptions, suck on Sarah Palin's clit, and publicize the tea party at every opportunity?

This is only a well known fact in your sad little world. You know, the one where you think the angels with flaming swords keeping people out of the mythic garden of eden were robots.

The vast majority of everyone outside of America and living in the First World are left-leaning; it's just that you don't see it that way, because you're probably left-leaning yourself and your biases blind you to this; you register left-leaning biases as normal and simply the way reality is.

Statistics 101. You do not get to take a small regionally clustered and non-independent sample of the world's population, construct a curve out of that, and then claim that everyone else is in the second standard deviation from the mean.

No, I didn't; this article was about American politics, so the assumption is that the discussion is framed in the American political spectrum.

Except the data regarding climate change does not just come from the US. The world scientific community has the exact same consensus. As a result, if you are going to claim left wing bias, you have to apply the world political spectrum.

What, do you want me to run through the full inferential proof or something? I'm not going to uni to be a bloody mathematician; it's not my field. It's not like it's a difficult conclusion to draw, if you're doing it informally; if almost all American scientists are left-wing, and the rest of the world is more left wing than America, then the scientists of the rest of the world will be more left-wing than those of America and therefore less right-wing scientists than in America.

And as I have already gone over, scientists are pragmatic in their ideologies. They do not accept a belief, any belief, a priori and then try to make the data fit. We get the data, and then form our beliefs based on those. We are specifically trained to do exactly that, and typically it is the natural inclination of everyone who ends up a scientist.

In terms of the world's political spectrum, America is exceedingly far right. To the point of the formal definition of fascism. Almost everyone is more left leaning than the US, because we as a nation are an outlier if you plot average political beliefs of the developed world into a frequency distribution.

I'm more interested in the part where he says it isn't a representative survey.

AAAS is in fact non-partisan.

http://www.aaas.org/policy_pos.shtml

The issues where they are politically active are restricted to things like the regulation of research, funding, matters where science can inform policy, and science education. A fairly narrow purview, and not restricted to party. There is no over-arching ideology present.

As for the representative nature of the sample, a great many scientists the world over are members. It is as close as you will get to a representative sample of the population of the world's scientists.

[Simon_Jester]

I find it bitterly amusing that Jonson would pick Yudkowsky as a source when trying to explain how the scientific community is all biased against his nice, righteous, robot-Jesus-fundie frame of reference and therefore reject the facts that would prove him right because it doesn't square with their political views.

Particularly when, on the very page Jonson linked to, we have a link to Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People

Once upon a time I tried to tell my mother about the problem of expert calibration, saying: "So when an expert says they're 99% confident, it only happens about 70% of the time." Then there was a pause as, suddenly, I realized I was talking to my mother, and I hastily added: "Of course, you've got to make sure to apply that skepticism evenhandedly, including to yourself, rather than just using it to argue against anything you disagree with -"

And my mother said: "Are you kidding? This is great! I'm going to use it all the time!"

...

If you're irrational to start with, having more knowledge can hurt you. For a true Bayesian, information would never have negative expected utility. But humans aren't perfect Bayes-wielders; if we're not careful, we can cut ourselves.

I've seen people severely messed up by their own knowledge of biases. They have more ammunition with which to argue against anything they don't like. And that problem - too much ready ammunition - is one of the primary ways that people with high mental agility end up stupid, in Stanovich's "dysrationalia" sense of stupidity.

...

I recall someone who learned about the calibration / overconfidence problem. Soon after he said: "Well, you can't trust experts; they're wrong so often as experiments have shown. So therefore, when I predict the future, I prefer to assume that things will continue historically as they have -" and went off into this whole complex, error-prone, highly questionable extrapolation. Somehow, when it came to trusting his own preferred conclusions, all those biases and fallacies seemed much less salient - leapt much less readily to mind - than when he needed to counter-argue someone else.

I told the one about the problem of disconfirmation bias and sophisticated argument, and lo and behold, the next time I said something he didn't like, he accused me of being a sophisticated arguer. He didn't try to point out any particular sophisticated argument, any particular flaw - just shook his head and sighed sadly over how I was apparently using my own intelligence to defeat itself. He had acquired yet another Fully General Counterargument.

Even the notion of a "sophisticated arguer" can be deadly, if it leaps all too readily to mind when you encounter a seemingly intelligent person who says something you don't like.

[Carinthium]

Not arguing with you on most of that (I learned not to since losing that last debate so badly), but the definition of facism:

a political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism)
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

[Alyrium Denryle]

Not arguing with you on most of that (I learned not to since losing that last debate so badly), but the definition of facism:

a political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism)
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/ ... t_23_2.htm

Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.

I have bolded the ones we meet.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and “terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.

5. Rampant sexism. Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.

6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.

7. Obsession with national security. Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.

9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. “Normal” and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.

14. Fraudulent elections. Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.

[Morilore]

How would a more politically diverse scientific community improve this situation? First, it could foster greater confidence among Republican politicians about the legitimacy of mainstream science. Second, it would cultivate more informed, creative, and challenging debates about the policy implications of scientific knowledge. This could help keep difficult problems like climate change from getting prematurely straitjacketed by ideology. A more politically diverse scientific community would, overall, support a healthier relationship between science and politics.

....

In lieu of any real effort to understand and grapple with the politics of science, we can expect calls for more "science literacy" as public confidence begins to wane. But the issue here is legitimacy, not literacy. A democratic society needs Republican scientists.

This person is a total asshole and this article literally makes my blood boil. Science is not government. It does not follow the same rules. SCIENTIFIC LEGITIMACY DOES NOT COME FROM BEING POLITICALLY REPRESENTATIVE OF SOCIETY. Fuck this guy so hard.

[Junghalli]

I can see where he's coming from to an extent: when trying to reason with people like (say) global warming deniers it probably doesn't help that the scientists they're supposed to trust are apparently overwhelmingly on the opposite side of the political spectrum. It makes it that much easier for them to suspect and dismiss it as a ploy of their political and ideological enemies. Yes, it's not the scientists' problem that reality has a known liberal bias and the answer isn't necessarily that we need more Republican scientists etc. etc., but it is an issue that may be worth considering.

[Ryan Thunder]

They just don't want to consider the obvious;
Q: Why do most of the people with jobs that require brains and knowledge not vote Republican?

For a Republican the most obvious answer is simply one they can't accept, so they have to resort to lunatic alternatives like this whole "there aren't enough Republican scientists" thing.

[bobalot]

They just don't want to consider the obvious;
Q: Why do most of the people with jobs that require brains and knowledge not vote Republican?

For a Republican the most obvious answer is simply one they can't accept, so they have to resort to lunatic alternatives like this whole "there aren't enough Republican scientists" thing.

The curious thing is that they honestly wonder why scientists generally wouldn't vote for a party that is proudly immersed in anti-intellectualism. The Republican party is the party of intelligent design. That basically tells the entire story.

I notice LionElJonson has once again run away from a thread after he got called out on his bullshit. I would honestly prefer a spambot posting over LionElJonson.

[wautd]

The one named "reality". The only right-leaning media channel is Fox. All the others lean left. This is a well-known fact.

Pretty much everyting is left leaning compared to extreme right

[someone_else]

But go ahead. Prove your claim that the majority of the worlds scientists are "left-leaning". And use proper definitions, not the distorted ones used in the USA where you get screeched down as a leftists for even the slightest amount of deviation from the far-right.

OMG. And I thought Berlusconi (italian prime minister) was the only one calling "left-leaning" all his enemies. Newspapers and judges alike.

Good to know we aren't alone.

[Carinthium]

Alyrium Denryle, even by your definition the formal definition of facism isn't met- not all the criterion are there. In addition, the idea of fradulent elections in the U.S is questionable.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Alyrium Denryle, even by your definition the formal definition of facism isn't met- not all the criterion are there. In addition, the idea of fradulent elections in the U.S is questionable.

Which is why I said "to the point of". It gets so close it tap-dances around the line. A very large portion of our electorate is rampantly sexist, and large segments of the media, while not controlled outright, serve as mouthpieces for the right wing party to a large extent--with a few notable exceptions.

As for rigged elections, there have been issues. The 2001 elections, the issues with electronic voting machines. voter intimidation.

[LionElJonson]

I notice LionElJonson has once again run away from a thread after he got called out on his bullshit. I would honestly prefer a spambot posting over LionElJonson.

I didn't run away; I live in Australia and sometimes require a little thing called "sleep".

I find it bitterly amusing that Jonson would pick Yudkowsky as a source when trying to explain how the scientific community is all biased against his nice, righteous, robot-Jesus-fundie frame of reference and therefore reject the facts that would prove him right because it doesn't square with their political views.

I'm not a member of any fundamentalist church; I'm a non-denominational Christian and I think you're miscontstruing what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the scientists' biases lead them to accept things they agree with more easily, and this allows the feedback loop with the corrupted scientists (like the scientists involved in the leaked climate model code with arbitrary fudge factors to get it to give the results they wanted) to pass more or less unchecked.

And yes, of course I would pick to quote Yudkowsky; I greatly respect the man and his work, and even if he hasn't done much if any original research on the subject, he has made a nice resource with his writings on his blog/community. I admit I have my own biases, but I try not to let them influence my arguments too much (and it's not like anyone here has given me anywhere near the evidence I'd need to change my mind on anything, whether it be my political stance or whether or not there's a hot dog stand down the road from me).

Funding decisions are made by scientists holding temporary 1-3 year terms as program officers, and on 1 year term review panels. So no. They dont.

That's why the Climate Research Unit in Britain totally wasn't being paid by the politicians to prove the existance of global warming.

This is only a well known fact in your sad little world. You know, the one where you think the angels with flaming swords keeping people out of the mythic garden of eden were robots.

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=left+wing+media+bias
No, it's pretty well known, period. It's just not apparent for you, because as one of you put it, "reality has a liberal bias" (it doesn't, it just seems that way because you do).

Statistics 101. You do not get to take a small regionally clustered and non-independent sample of the world's population, construct a curve out of that, and then claim that everyone else is in the second standard deviation from the mean.

Yes, because the most wealthy and powerful nation on the planet is a "small" sample. America doesn't get measured by the standards of the rest of the world; the rest of the world is measured by the standard of America, and that's just the way things are nowadays.

And as I have already gone over, scientists are pragmatic in their ideologies. They do not accept a belief, any belief, a priori and then try to make the data fit.

That's exactly what the CRU did. They were paid to prove Global Warming, and that's exactly what they set out to do.

[bobalot]

I notice LionElJonson has once again run away from a thread after he got called out on his bullshit. I would honestly prefer a spambot posting over LionElJonson.

I didn't run away; I live in Australia and sometimes require a little thing called "sleep".

In retrospect, I would have preferred it if you ran away because you have come back and posted more pointless bullshit.

What I'm saying is that the scientists' biases lead them to accept things they agree with more easily, and this allows the feedback loop with the corrupted scientists (like the scientists involved in the leaked climate model code with arbitrary fudge factors to get it to give the results they wanted) to pass more or less unchecked.

That's why the Climate Research Unit in Britain totally wasn't being paid by the politicians to prove the existance of global warming.

Yes, because the most wealthy and powerful nation on the planet is a "small" sample. America doesn't get measured by the standards of the rest of the world; the rest of the world is measured by the standard of America, and that's just the way things are nowadays.

That's exactly what the CRU did. They were paid to prove Global Warming, and that's exactly what they set out to do.

PROVE ALL OF THESE CLAIMS.

You haven't provided a shred of evidence for ANY of your claims other than your say so and since you seem like a fucking idiot, please forgive me if I don't take your word on it.

[Alyrium Denryle]

That's why the Climate Research Unit in Britain totally wasn't being paid by the politicians to prove the existance of global warming.

I was referring to the NSF in the US you fucktard. As for the CRU's Funding...

British Council
British Petroleum
Broom's Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre
Central Electricity Generating Board
Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS)
Commercial Union
Commission of European Communities (CEC, often referred to now as EU)
Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC)
Department of Energy
Department of the Environment (DETR, now DEFRA)
Department of Health
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)
Eastern Electricity
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Environment Agency
Forestry Commission
Greenpeace International
International Institute of Environmental Development (IIED)
Irish Electricity Supply Board, KFA Germany
Leverhulme Trust
Ministry of Agriculture
Fisheries and Food (MAFF)
National Power
National Rivers Authority
Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC)
Norwich Union
Nuclear Installations Inspectorate
Overseas Development Administration (ODA)
Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates
Royal Society
Scientific Consultants
Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC)
Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research
Shell
Stockholm Environment Agency
Sultanate of Oman
Tate and Lyle
UK Met. Office
UK Nirex Ltd.
United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP)
United States Department of Energy
United States Environmental Protection Agency
Wolfson Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).

There are very few organizations on this list who have a vested interest in a particular outcome. Most of these are independent government agencies. The US ones at least were controlled by politicians who are against climate change.

Oh, but wait... Grants to research interests by government agencies are still done in pretty much the same way the NSF runs its stuff. Independent review panels composed of experts in the same field, but who neither collaborate with, nor have a vested competitive interest in the applicant.

You betray a hilarious and also sad misunderstanding about how governments give funds to scientific work. They provide funds for meritorious research questions and methods, they do not prescribe results.

No, it's pretty well known, period. It's just not apparent for you, because as one of you put it, "reality has a liberal bias" (it doesn't, it just seems that way because you do).

Lets take a look at the first ten results.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Me ... -6664.aspx

Amazingly shitty methods.

http://www.mrc.org/public/default.aspx

http://newsbusters.org/

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/art ... 5106.shtml

http://www.watchblog.com/republicans/ar ... 03900.html

No, they dont have an agenda at all...

http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/20 ... _from.html

This one accuses fox news of being liberal.... riiiight...

http://www.aim.org/about/frequently-ask ... tions-faq/

This one is very clever, until you realize that what they are, is heavily right wing, so everything is left of them.

The rest are more of the same.

So no. You are just full of shit. All the sites on the first page are themselves explicitly right wing blogs and activist groups etc, with the exception of the first, which reports on a study so shitty that a first year undergraduate could design one better.

Try again.

I would recommend finding a non-political source for your information. Like actual peer reviewed journals. Yes, they do exist for this sort of information.

Yes, because the most wealthy and powerful nation on the planet is a "small" sample. America doesn't get measured by the standards of the rest of the world; the rest of the world is measured by the standard of America, and that's just the way things are nowadays.

Not statistically they dont. Moreover, the EU at this point is wealthier than us, if not militarily more powerful.

In statistics, it is not a matter of "measuring by the standards of". It is a matter of doing good mathematics.

That's exactly what the CRU did. They were paid to prove Global Warming, and that's exactly what they set out to do.

No, they got their research funded. That money did not go to them. It went toward funding the research that they did, not a dime went into their own pockets. That is now how research grants work. Moreover, the funding agencies do not give a shit about WHAT the results are, only that results EXIST and get PUBLISHED.

Go learn something about how things work in the sciences, I happen to actually be a scientist. I know how those things work. You bore me with your ignorance.

[LionElJonson]

I notice LionElJonson has once again run away from a thread after he got called out on his bullshit. I would honestly prefer a spambot posting over LionElJonson.

I didn't run away; I live in Australia and sometimes require a little thing called "sleep".

In retrospect, I would have preferred it if you ran away because you have come back and posted more pointless bullshit.

What I'm saying is that the scientists' biases lead them to accept things they agree with more easily, and this allows the feedback loop with the corrupted scientists (like the scientists involved in the leaked climate model code with arbitrary fudge factors to get it to give the results they wanted) to pass more or less unchecked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
http://www.redstate.com/vladimir/2009/1 ... ge-factor/

That's why the Climate Research Unit in Britain totally wasn't being paid by the politicians to prove the existance of global warming.

Unfortunately, while I remember reading something to this effect, I cannot find a source for it so I suppose I'll have to concede that point.

Yes, because the most wealthy and powerful nation on the planet is a "small" sample. America doesn't get measured by the standards of the rest of the world; the rest of the world is measured by the standard of America, and that's just the way things are nowadays.

Do I really need to source that America is the most wealthy and powerful nation in the world? Come on, it's blatantly obvious to anyone with any knowledge of modern geopolitics, but if I must...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... nominal%29

That's exactly what the CRU did. They were paid to prove Global Warming, and that's exactly what they set out to do.

Again, can't find a source for this one.

[Alyrium Denryle]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
http://www.redstate.com/vladimir/2009/1 ... ge-factor/

Ah yes, a far-right blog and...

Confirmation bias... Yeah, we are trained to avoid that, thanks. You cant get something past reviewers if your study designs dont avoid that obvious pitfall.

The scientific method was specifically designed in order to minimize that prospect, so while it may affect one scientist or research group, it wont dictate the entire world-wide consensus of the entire field of climate science, which has been active for something like 50 years as a distinct entity.

Try again.

[D.Turtle]

Global warming deniers are so predictable and repetitive...

Its not like there were any official investigations, etc.

I'll just link to this post on Realclimate which summarizes all the important stuff about so-called "Climategate".

I'll even be so nice and quote the relevant part about this "fudge factor":

Fudge factors (update) IDL code in the some of the attached files calculates and applies an artificial ‘fudge factor’ to the MXD proxies to artificially eliminate the ‘divergence pattern’. This was done for a set of experiments reported in this submitted 2004 draft by Osborn and colleagues but which was never published. Section 4.3 explains the rationale very clearly which was to test the sensitivity of the calibration of the MXD proxies should the divergence end up being anthropogenic. It has nothing to do with any temperature record, has not been used in any published reconstruction and is not the source of any hockey stick blade anywhere.

But hey, global warming deniers being the incompetent idiots they are, he'll probably come up with one of the other repetitive and debunked claims (maybe harry_read_me.txt, or "hiding the decline", or maybe he is really creative and will come with up with data accessibility).

[LionElJonson]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
http://www.redstate.com/vladimir/2009/1 ... ge-factor/

Ah yes, a far-right blog and...

The source doesn't matter, just the facts, and that was the first source that stated the facts clearly.

Confirmation bias... Yeah, we are trained to avoid that, thanks. You cant get something past reviewers if your study designs dont avoid that obvious pitfall.

Obviously that training hasn't taken hold very well, then.

The scientific method was specifically designed in order to minimize that prospect, so while it may affect one scientist or research group, it wont dictate the entire world-wide consensus of the entire field of climate science, which has been active for something like 50 years as a distinct entity.

That appeals to "scientific consensus" are so common is a hint that something wrong is going on; the opinions of the majority of scientists don't matter, just The Truth. I don't know what The Truth is (though I suspect it's probably rather less catastrophic than many environmentalists and politicians would have you believe), and until politics gets out of the field and stops corrupting the process, noone will.

Its not like there were any official investigations, etc.

Investigations by politicians and their appointees, IIRC.

I'll just link to this post on Realclimate which summarizes all the important stuff about so-called "Climategate".

I'll even be so nice and quote the relevant part about this "fudge factor": *snip*

That post doesn't discuss this particular topic, at all. I cannot find the text you quoted anywhere on that page.