Climate of Complete Certainty

"But in truth the new signs are no more accurate than the old ones. First, some of the glaciers have expanded, not shrunk, in the last decade."

Here's the data set you can check for yourself. Wow! 29 views! Must be all those millions of skeptics in the world doing their homework on that claim. Know what a vector digital data set is? Vectors are probably some kind of communist plot if you ask me.

"In 2013 he described an article by a fellow journalist, which attacked the views of columnist Suzanne Moore, as giving her "such a seeing-to, she'll be walking bow-legged for weeks." Delingpole later apologised."

Looks like the author has a history of retraction himself. What a cuckservative won't even stand by his statements if a woman was offended. Trump would piss on his face and the guy would enjoy it. Executive editor for Breitbart London makes sense as a job, sure beats learning any math or vectors or shit.

It isn't particularly broken and the scientific method is ultimately self correcting so that if someone makes a false claim it will be discovered when someone else tries to do the same experiment again.

The only places where such mistakes don't get found are down dead ends which are so dull that nobody ever bothers to try that route again.

The number of times that has actually happened is incredibly rare. Nature for instance once published an article by a guy who suggested that sunspots were somewhat like the radial flames on a gas hob. The reviewers decided that it was a plausible model so it got published. (it was later proved incorrect but at the time it was just about possible)

Peer review normally only kills off stuff that is fundamentally flawed or badly thought out. Usually reviewers make a few helpful suggestions on how to improve a paper so that it will reach a wider audience. About

10% of stuff is given the benefit of the doubt and published even though the peer review says it is borderline and will ultimately be disproved.

It is a fair heuristic that 10% of the peer reviewed literature is flawed in some significant way. This can be due to anything from bad proof reading to a correction made in proof that inverts the meaning of a sentence. Even the odd famous paper has suffered that indignity.

The only example I can think of where peer review prevented a genuine ground breaking discovery being published was poor old Belusov in the former USSR who discovered the first self catalysed oscillating redox reaction that broke all the rules as they were then known in 1951 and he couldn't get it published. He never lived to see his reaction resurrected and very fashionable after Zhabotinsky revisited it.

It didn't help that he was behind the iron curtain at the time. The irony was that the mix of ingredients is so simple and reliable that the thing can be done as a lab demo in any high school today.

For every complex problem there is at least one simple wrong answer.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

Only if it is an unorthodox view that conflicts with one of the conservation laws, flat Earth, alien abduction or psychic powers.

Extraordinary claims require *EXTRAORDINARY* proof.

Even then the odd senior physics researcher has survived being conned by the likes of Uri Geller without too much damage to their conventional research career. The amazing Randi designed experiments that were much less inclined to to succumb to his "psychic powers" than those designed by physicists. Physics is not used to experimental subjects that cheat.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

I am far from being close to his output as you are, just what hits me through the media (mainly the BBC). So my perception may be wrong. But I can see what you mean and I think this is what I have seen in my more limited evaluation of him, too.

Not in the literal sense of course, nobody is - or could - be micromanaging him. Whether there is one or not can only be speculated of course; what I think is that someone with long term (as opposed to mandated) power has been helpful putting him there, probably having something on him. Not unlike anybody else.... I expect this would be the modus operandi of those who retain some level of control to former colonies etc. Enforcing a couple of crucial decisions per mandate would be plenty - and not necessarily bad for society. But this is not even a conspiracy theory, just a hypothesis which cannot be proven wrong - and it may well be that.

Dimiter

Imagine being so ignorant of the potential geopolitical/military consequences of assassinating Soleimani that no theater missile defense systems were moved into position around the targets in Iraq that Iran would be most likely to target in a retaliatory strike.

A retaliation in that fashion was entirely predictable and Iranian missiles being shot out of the sky making a massive PR-lose for the Iranians would have been entirely predictable to the Iranians as well, making their decision to launch a lot more difficult at the very least.

Instead US forces had no option but to watch as the missiles fell on their heads and it was mostly by good fortune that nobody was killed, though many were injured and Trump has tried to down-play the injuries.

Yep, total unawareness of cause-and-effect can appear like wisdom for a while. Must be a great feeling to see that while our Saudi Arabian friends get a missile defense system the US-based Iraqi forces got _nothing_.

I'm sure there will be someone who will argue what a "grand strategist" he is, allowing US troops to have missiles fall on them with no fore-thought and no means of defense.

Yeah, the idiot only saved a few thousand, or a few hundred thousands, of lives. And changed the course of Persian history.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.  
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

There is another, even worse conspiracy theory. Millions of flyover state voters elected him because he's on their side.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.  
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

Sheesh, why stop at hundreds of thousands. He probably saved a million lives! Perhaps a billion...

"Since President Trump?s inauguration, the administration has vowed to expand national and regional missile defense systems of every kind, and Congress has supported these efforts. In fiscal year 2018, Congress approved $11.5 billion for the Missile Defense Agency, an increase of $3.6 billion, or 46 percent, from the Trump administration?s May 2017 initial budget request. The appropriation is the largest Congress has ever provided for the agency after adjusting for inflation."

Then the one time in the past decade it has a real job to do and it doesn't do a thing. Very impressive value for the money, here.

This might be even a worse one. With todays media influence they'd elect even a chimp telling them he is on their side.

nda

ate

y

James Randi and Johnny Carson. Use a magician to catch a magician (Uri pretended that he wasn't one).

John :-#)#

The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that re-positioning theater missile defense would have presented an effective deterrent and Iran wouldn't have launched missile strikes to begin with.

That is to say, the administration was glad to have US troops hit with ballistic missiles in the hope that casualties would provide a pretext for war. What other conclusion can one draw assuming it was not from incompetence.

Malice or incompetence, take your pick.

What are the chances Donnie Trump Jr. has ever read a word of this "Scripture" he speaks of?

Can't wait to see what the Trump presidential library is going to look like. Will it be filled with thousands of books neither Trump or his family and supporters have ever read, or just two books they've never read the Bible and the art of the deal.

No, those are your picks.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.  
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

95% of the US media was on Hillary's side. And the deplorable uneducated flyover yokels noticed.

The Founders knew that the coastal urban consumers who made the laws and owned the banks would out-vote and exploit the country hicks who sent them their food and fuel and fabrics and liquor. So they built nonlinearities into the system. Pretty smart dudes.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.  
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

I guess she was not smart enough to tell them she was on their side then :-).

Now I understand the idea behind that complex system of voting, it had never hit me directly.

Dimiter

Unfortunately, in some so-called sciences, there is no proof.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Hate to break it to ya but the Founders lived in the original 13 colonies which were all coastal had no idea what a "coastal urban consumer" was or that there would be any "country hicks" they were supposedly exploiting.

One of their main concerns was a deep distrust of the "working class" who they expected would regularly try to elect a true moron. Hence the EC. Lol, you think the FFs were populists! First job George Washington had was violently putting down seditious liquor-manufacturers, so much for their deep respect for the salt of the Earth.

They were pretty smart dudes but believing them to have the ability to see decades or centuries into the future is a bit much, the Constitution was a pragmatic document written mostly to address the main concerns of its time.

Meaningless. Proof is a concept applicable in logic and mathematics. In science, we can disprove, or test, or measure.

What in the world do you mean by 'so-called sciences' ? Astrology, because it ends in '-ology'?

In that case it isn't a science.

To a useful approximation science is:

1) observe 2) formulate hypothesis to explain observations 3) formulate tests that can falsify the hypothesis 4) if it passes the tests repeatedly, the hypothesis becomes a theory

The world becomes greyer when tests cannot be rerun or when the hypothesis makes statistical predictions.

But grey != black, extraordinary claims still require extraordinary proof, and imperfect science is still better than emotion.