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Re: [Phys-l] "The Truth Wears Off" by Jonah Lehrer in The New Yorker Dec 13, 2010.



Ahh, I get it. Any fact that is irrelevant to the "result" is a "fact that does not confirm the result" and, according to the AGW naysayer, should not be ignored. There are obviously many more such facts than there are facts that confirm the result, and, by a simple process of counting it becomes obvious that the claimed result is improbable.
Try that logic at your local horse-race establishment.
Somehow that line of argument is one that I am not persuaded to adopt, And I'll continue to view AHW as an imminent threat.
Regards,
Jack

"Trust me. I have a lot of experience at this."
General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley




On Fri, 31 Dec 2010, brian whatcott wrote:

Probably something like this:
Notice that ice-dependent species like the Polar bear are
being disturbed by the changing frequency and longevity of ice-floats in
the Arctic.

So then a 35 year study of another ice-dependent species like the Adele
penguin of the
Antarctic shows it is also being disturbed. In this case, where the
Adele is hard wired
to return to its birth-place, an impartial observer can report seeing
the LAST birth of an
Adele chick to a population on a particular island. The potential
parents are dying
over winter in changed ice-float conditions. A sub-population down by 85%
There's a tear-jerker!

It is less gripping to notice that on the large scale of Adeles,
there are still millions
of breeding pairs left in viable locations of the Antarctic. So far.

Brian W

On 12/31/2010 1:23 PM, Jack Uretsky wrote:
Please, what result are you referring to, tha
don't confirm the results"?
Regards,
Jack

"Trust me. I have a lot of experience at this."
General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley




On Fri, 31 Dec 2010, Folkerts, Timothy J wrote:

I wonder how much of this same effect is at work in AGW. As the
article says:

"The disturbing implication of the Crabbe study is that a lot of
extraordinary scientific data are nothing but noise. The
hyperactivity of those coked-up Edmonton mice wasn?t an interesting
new fact?it was a meaningless outlier, a by-product of invisible
variables we don?t understand."

and

"The problem of selective reporting is rooted in a fundamental
cognitive flaw, which is that we like proving ourselves right and
hate being wrong. ?It feels good to validate a hypothesis,? Ioannidis
said. ?It feels even better when you?ve got a financial interest in
the idea or your career depends upon it. And that?s why, even after a
claim has been systematically disproven??he cites, for instance, the
early work on hormone replacement therapy, or claims involving
various vitamins??you still see some stubborn researchers citing the
first few studies that show a strong effect. They really want to
believe that it?s true."

There is a clear reason to expect AGW (increased CO2). There is
clear increase in temperature in the last few decades. How much do
researchers pursue results that confirm the results, while dropping
results that so no results, simply from psychology, not impartial
science?

Tim Folkerts

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