Donate Bitcoin

Donate Paypal


PeakOil is You

PeakOil is You

Liberal's War On Science

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby C8 » Wed 29 Apr 2015, 21:18:40

dohboi wrote:"neither Rs nor Ds are wholly on the side of the angels when it comes to science."

But the Rs seem to have the lion's share, in that case (and most others). :-D



This is incorrect

People tend to have demons they distrust- they will not believe any information from that source.

The Demon for conservatives is academia
The Demon for liberals is big business

But conservatives really only care to oppose about two things from academia:
1. global warming and
2. evolution
they don't fight the rest really

But liberals distrust far, far more from big business- because the products of big business interact with our lives much more than the ideas of academia

Liberals are anti-science and against:
1. nuclear power
2. fossil fuel drilling (fracking)
3. forest thinning
4. GMO's
5. pesticides
6. herbicides
7. factory farming and anything not organic
8. factory livestock
9. vaccinations
10. electronic fields generated by cell phones
11. dangers of power line fields to a large area

I could list 2 dozen more

there is no competition- liberals are anti science about modern living in general because it is largely provided by large corporations

Its all about who you choose to make a demon
User avatar
C8
Heavy Crude
Heavy Crude
 
Posts: 1074
Joined: Sun 14 Apr 2013, 09:02:48

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby Cid_Yama » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 01:26:19

Again with the strawmen, a whole list of them. I guess if you don't personally know any Liberals, you can believe whatever you want about them.

Some specific things about your list:

We really DON"T know how to handle Corium when something goes wrong.(Fukushima) And nuclear plants ARE potential time bombs in a societal collapse or natural disaster. And we are still storing the waste onsite.

Fossil fuels DO produce greenhouse gasses, and atmospheric chemistry DOES show they lead to potentially catastrophic warming (and extreme weather events), that would lead to crop failures around the globe.

Fracking DOES contaminate ground water, as we face a looming clean water scarcity.

These are scientifically verified facts. All leading to a very REAL future you won't like.

Forest thinning is good, forest clearing is bad.

Don't know enough about GMOs themselves, but the way these companies are enforcing their patents on seed lines is bad, preventing farmers from saving their own seeds, and intimidating farmers who don't use their products through law suits after cross pollination.

I use pesticides. I use herbicides.

My only problem with factory farming is the risk of widespread crop failures through monoculture.

Factory livestock practices are cruel, but otherwise the lower classes would not be able to afford meat.

Anti-vaccination is a right-wing thing, and foolishly places the wider community at risk.

There is evidence for higher incidence of brain cancer with excessive cell phone use. But I could give a shit, I don't use them.

There are cancer clusters in areas near high tension power lines. I would suggest not living near such power lines.

So you really don't know what 'Liberals' believe. (hint: They are people who are as different from each other as they are from you, each taking their own positions on various issues.)

None of that is anti-science. Unless of course, by that you mean anyone that disagrees with you must be anti-science. That's just plain nonsense.

Seems you have a problem with political bigotry. You can't just lump a group of people based on one criteria and claim they are all the same and believe the same things. Not even most of them.


P.S. Academia is made up of scientists. (Academia is how we know what we know. If you don't accept what academia has to say, what do you use, tea leaves? If you are anti-academia...)

I know for a fact most conservatives are not anti-academia. Only the stupid ones.

Corporations are not people, they do not have consciences. They do not distinguish right from wrong because there is no place on the spreadsheet for it. they refer to it as 'externals'. Profit is the bottom line. Inconvenient externals are dealt with based on how much it will cost them.

That is why corporations need to be regulated. We need to be their consciences.
"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry

The level of injustice and wrong you endure is directly determined by how much you quietly submit to. Even to the point of extinction.
User avatar
Cid_Yama
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 7169
Joined: Sun 27 May 2007, 03:00:00
Location: The Post Peak Oil Historian

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 04:15:14

Not to mention, you guys are using the term "Liberal" without knowing what it actually means. I often tell people I am a "libertarian" (with a small "l") because it avoids a much longer conversation. But that is just laziness on my part.

What I actually am is a "classical liberal". Here's the definition of the term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

Those are who call themselves "Liberals" today (and I think of as neo-Libs) actually are (again with the classical definition) Fascists. I most often say "radical authoritarians" which is closer to correct, and most people are offended to be identified as Fascists.

Nor are US Democrats truly Liberals. They span the spectrum from classical Fascism to rank Socialists.

YES I do know what the words mean. Look them up before you reply.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001

Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.

Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
KaiserJeep
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 6094
Joined: Tue 06 Aug 2013, 17:16:32
Location: Wisconsin's Dreamland

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby ennui2 » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 11:23:41

Fascist is an epithet. Any attempt to apply that label onto a group is merely an ad hom. Heck, Fox News already turned the word liberal itself into an epithet, and liberals capitulated by rebranding themselves "progressives".

As far as science goes, there is a science that is too often ignored here. Ecology, as documented in, let's say, Silent Spring or Limits to Growth. Once you realize that progress has a downside, you have to make some hard choices about what to support. Supporting technology while ignoring the tradeoffs is, in effect, ignorant of the basic science of cause and effect.

That being said, I think some of the fears over GMO and fluoridated water in the left teeter into tinfoil territory, but that kind of ignorance is dwarfed by right-winger ostrich attitudes about anything that might call into question unrestricted consumption.
"If the oil price crosses above the Etp maximum oil price curve within the next month, I will leave the forum." --SumYunGai (9/21/2016)
User avatar
ennui2
Permanently Banned
 
Posts: 3920
Joined: Tue 20 Sep 2011, 10:37:02
Location: Not on Homeworld

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 11:30:09

pstarr wrote:Just more of the same, industrial grain-based agriculture that destroys ecosystems and makes people sick. But that is neither a left nor a right problem. It's neolithic.


You still have freedom of choice. You either eat this and get sick or you starve. Who said that during human overshoot we won't have the freedom to choose?
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
blog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/
website: http://www.mounttotumas.com
User avatar
Ibon
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 9568
Joined: Fri 03 Dec 2004, 04:00:00
Location: Volcan, Panama

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 12:19:28

Ennui, historically it was mostly the far right that was freaked out by floridation because they thought it was a communist conspiracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluo ... s-1960s.29

In any case, proposals are now being floated to cut the amounts in half since people can get fluoride from toothpaste, mouthwash and other products that apply more specifically to the desired target--teeth.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/24 ... n-50-years

But yeah, I guess if you falsely attribute to the left all the wacko conspiracy theories that are actually espoused by the right, it sure the heck will look like there's a lot of bad science going on on the left!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :P :P :P
User avatar
dohboi
Harmless Drudge
Harmless Drudge
 
Posts: 19990
Joined: Mon 05 Dec 2005, 04:00:00

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby Plantagenet » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 14:52:45

dohboi wrote:Ennui….I guess if you falsely attribute to the left all the wacko conspiracy theories that are actually espoused by the right, it sure the heck will look like there's a lot of bad science going on on the left!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :P :P :P


Any objective look at science finds wacko anti-science conspiracy theories on both the right and the left.

For instance, if you look at the Flouride controversy you find that in 2004, on the leftwing U.S. television program Democracy Now, investigative journalist and author of the book The Fluoride Deception, Christopher Bryson claimed that, “the post-war campaign to fluoridate drinking water was less a public health innovation than a public relations ploy sponsored by industrial users of fluoride—including the government’s nuclear weapons program.”

Image
So there actually are leftwing as well as rightwing anti-Flouridation nuts? Who knew? :lol: :lol: :lol: :P :P :P
User avatar
Plantagenet
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 26616
Joined: Mon 09 Apr 2007, 03:00:00
Location: Alaska (its much bigger than Texas).

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby Lore » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 14:57:17

My dad always said fluoride was a Communist plot!
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt
User avatar
Lore
Fission
Fission
 
Posts: 9021
Joined: Fri 26 Aug 2005, 03:00:00
Location: Fear Of A Blank Planet

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 15:16:21

Of course, there are billions of people in the world, and a good portion of them, from whatever political stripe, are wacko (many would consider most of us here to be wacko of course).

But on fluoridation, the right really did spearhead that particular phobia and still hold a pretty strong majority of those opposed to it.

But yeah, you will always be able to find at least one person on any side of the political spectrum that holds whatever particular view you want to name.

If the level of argument here is going to be, "Hey, I found somebody who says their liberal or leftist who believes corporations should take over the world, so, seeeeee, leftists are just as pro-corporate as people on the right."...then I'll just bow out of participating in a dialogue that has descended to the level of utter idiocy.

Tata, for now.
User avatar
dohboi
Harmless Drudge
Harmless Drudge
 
Posts: 19990
Joined: Mon 05 Dec 2005, 04:00:00

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby kuidaskassikaeb » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 15:33:27

Ibon wrote

. Because I posted a rebuttal to your last post I must obviously be pro GMO. But this is not true. The points you made about corporate agriculture were valid actually in the dependency this can cause on 3rd world country farmers. It is also a huge concern having a corporation like Monsanto able to sue an organic farmer because some of his seeds through inadvertant pollination had some traces of patented trademarked GMO genetic material. This corporate take over of our agricultural sector is a real problem. And so is feeding 7 billion people by the way. I am not pro or anti Monsanto.

People are complaining about bakers with their mouths full of GMO corn bread! A variation on Pops statement :)

GMO products are not inherently bad. They can be extremely beneficial in the right application. They might possibly create some unforeseen detrimental affects as well depending on the genetic modification. But they do not warrant the fear mongering anti GMO, anti science groups advocate.


This may come as a surprise to you but that position is the standard liberal position. Even Mother Jones and the Nation have written the same articles that say exactly the same thing. I don't follow the GMO arguments, but when I do that is what I get. Liberals bitch about the social effects of a technology and you can't even find the science. When corporations don't like the science, corporate PR attacks the scientists and science.

I guess I consider the latter a war on science, and the former dealing with the reality of change.
User avatar
kuidaskassikaeb
Coal
Coal
 
Posts: 438
Joined: Fri 13 Apr 2007, 03:00:00
Location: western new york

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby Cid_Yama » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 17:31:06

Sorry, ennui. Nobody did any rebranding. The Progressive movement has existed since the end of the 19th century.

What is Progressivism?
Progressivism is the specifically American development of liberal populism that seeks social and economic justice above all else, most specifically with reference to the obstacles posed to social and economic justice by large corporations and banks. Though Progressives strongly support civil liberties, the "progress" in Progressivism lies, most fundamentally, with ensuring, as the American pledge to the flag puts it, "justice for all". Because of this core concern, Progressives have advocated governance "of the people, by the people, for the people", the phrase "the people" here standing in sharpest contrast to governance by the corporation, or rather its principle owners and beneficiaries.

link


Progressivism 101: The differences between progressivism and liberalism
Progressives tend to oppose monopolies and powerful corporate trusts. As a result, they favor trust-busting and regulation in order to check corporate corruption and strength. Some progressives are disappointed with President Obama, who has used markedly liberal policies to end the financial crisis. Instead of directing the Justice Department to launch anti-trust investigations against the nation’s largest financial firms, he has instead favored government bailouts and government takeovers. The more traditional progressive response to banks and companies that are “too big to fail,” would be to make them smaller.

Progressives also favor environmental protection, conservation and stewardship, and energy independence. A liberal solution to high energy costs might be to increase federal spending for a program like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). Progressives, however, would “also crack down on price gouging and pass laws better-regulating the oil industry's profiteering and market manipulation tactics.”

Progressives are opposed to the efforts of corporate entities that seek greater influence in government. As previously mentioned, progressives like to strengthen democracy, and generate more power for the public. That’s why the progressive movement was responsible for the constitutional amendment that allowed for the direct election of U.S. Senators (members of the Right should note that Scott Brown [R-MA] could not have been elected without this important contribution). Now, progressives support the public financing of elections, they support direct elections, and they support other efforts to reform government and politics.

link


A Rendezvous With Destiny
To understand the root cause of where the American People find themselves today one must look no further than FDR's speech which sums up the history of power in America.

FDR Speech before the 1936 Democratic National Convention
June 27, 1936


The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution - all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free.

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small-businessmen and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor - these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age - other people's money - these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.

Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.

Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.

An old English judge once said: "Necessitous men are not free men." Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.

The brave and clear platform adopted by this convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster.

But the resolute enemy within our gates is ever ready to beat down our words unless in greater courage we will fight for them.

link

The growth of oligarchy in America happened throughout the 20th Century and is a matter of historical fact.

Progressivism is the movement that arose to fight back, and it's thread extends back all the way to the end of the 19th century. That movement is not dead and is represented in Congress by the Progressive Caucus. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is the leading spokesperson for the Progressive movement.


Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906)
Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose the appalling working conditions in the meat-packing industry. His description of diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat shocked the public and led to new federal food safety laws.

Before the turn of the 20th century, a major reform movement had emerged in the United States. Known as progressives, the reformers were reacting to problems caused by the rapid growth of factories and cities. Progressives at first concentrated on improving the lives of those living in slums and in getting rid of corruption in government.

By the beginning of the new century, progressives had started to attack huge corporations like Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, and the Armour meat-packing company for their unjust practices. The progressives revealed how these companies eliminated competition, set high prices, and treated workers as "wage slaves."

The progressives differed, however, on how best to control these big businesses. Some progressives wanted to break up the large corporations with anti-monopoly laws. Others thought state or federal government regulation would be more effective. A growing minority argued in favor of socialism, the public ownership of industries. The owners of the large industries dismissed all these proposals: They demanded that they be left alone to run their businesses as they saw fit.

Theodore Roosevelt was the president when the progressive reformers were gathering strength. Assuming the presidency in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley, he remained in the White House until 1909. Roosevelt favored large-scale enterprises. "The corporation is here to stay," he declared. But he favored government regulation of them "with due regard of the public as a whole."

Roosevelt did not always approve of the progressive-minded journalists and other writers who exposed what they saw as corporate injustices. When David Phillips, a progressive journalist, wrote a series of articles that attacked U.S. senators of both political parties for serving the interests of big business rather than the people, President Roosevelt thought Phillips had gone too far. He referred to him as a man with a "muck-rake."

Even so, Roosevelt had to admit, "There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake." The term "muckraker" caught on. It referred to investigative writers who uncovered the dark side of society.

link

So you see, Progressive is a very specific thing, and not interchangeable with Liberal. I am a Progressive not a Liberal.
"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry

The level of injustice and wrong you endure is directly determined by how much you quietly submit to. Even to the point of extinction.
User avatar
Cid_Yama
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 7169
Joined: Sun 27 May 2007, 03:00:00
Location: The Post Peak Oil Historian

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Thu 30 Apr 2015, 17:43:30

A lot of lefties have a back-to-the-land fantasy and they are convinced that it's GMOs that are preventing them from quitting their day jobs and becoming goat herders. However, many right wingers have exactly the same back-to-the-land fantasy (except with more guns) and they don't like GMOs either. But the leftists seem to have this idea that this is lifestyle is somehow just out of grasp and Monsanto is at fault. And they complain that GMOs are not socially engineering their own personal utopia.

People here are more articulate than most GMO critics. Often we see the people who are extremely emotional but short on specifics and seem to have a hard time following a train of thought. I think many of them are actually bipolar, and with bipolar disorder comes a lot of inflammatory problems and mysterious but real health problems. Look up any inflammatory disease on the web and you will immediately find conspiracy web sites blaming that specific disease on GMOs, which are likely to seem totally convincing to someone bipolar.
User avatar
PrestonSturges
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 6052
Joined: Wed 15 Oct 2008, 03:00:00

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 28 Jan 2017, 12:47:47

To me this sounds great, Scientists checking the work of other Scientists to root out confirmation bias and make sure the results reflect reality. I quoted the significant portion of the story and stopped where they started talking politics, there are another dozen paragraphs at the link below the quote if that part interests you.

John Arnold Made a Fortune at Enron. Now He’s Declared War on Bad Science

Brian Nosek had pretty much given up on finding a funder. For two years he had sent out grant proposals for his software project. And for two years they had been rejected again and again—which was, by 2011, discouraging but not all that surprising to the 38-year-old scientist. An associate professor at the University of Virginia, Nosek had made a name for himself in a hot subfield of social psychology, studying people’s unconscious biases. But that’s not what this project was about. At least, not exactly.

Like a number of up-and-coming researchers in his generation, Nosek was troubled by mounting evidence that science itself—through its systems of publication, funding, and advancement—had become biased toward generating a certain kind of finding: novel, attention grabbing, but ultimately unreliable. The incentives to produce positive results were so great, Nosek and others worried, that some scientists were simply locking their inconvenient data away.

The problem even had a name: the file drawer effect. And Nosek’s project was an attempt to head it off at the pass. He and a graduate student were developing an online system that would allow researchers to keep a public log of the experiments they were running, where they could register their hypotheses, methods, workflows, and data as they worked. That way, it would be harder for them to go back and cherry-pick their sexiest data after the fact—and easier for other researchers to come in and replicate the experiment later.

Nosek was so taken with the importance of redoing old experiments that he had also rallied more than 50 like-minded researchers across the country to participate in something he called the Reproducibility Project. The aim was to redo about 50 studies from three prominent psychology journals, to establish an estimate of how often modern psychology turns up false positive results.

It was little wonder, then, that funders didn’t come running to support Nosek: He wasn’t promising novel findings, he was promising to question them. So he ran his projects on a shoestring budget, self-­financing them with his own earnings from corporate speaking engagements on his research about bias.

But in July 2012, Nosek received an email from an institution whose name he didn’t recognize: the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. A Google search told him that the Arnolds were a young billionaire couple in Houston. John, Nosek learned, had made his first millions as a wunderkind natural gas trader at Enron, the infamous energy company, and he’d managed to walk away from Enron’s 2001 collapse with a seven-­figure bonus and no accusations of wrong­doing attached to his name. After that Arnold started his own hedge fund, Centaurus Energy, where he became, in the words of one hedge fund competitor, “the best trader that ever lived, full stop.” Then Arnold had abruptly retired at the ripe age of 38 to focus full time on philanthropy.

As Nosek tells it, John Arnold had read about the Reproducibility Project in The Chronicle of Higher Education and wanted to talk. By the following year, Nosek was cofounding an institution called the Center for Open Science with an initial $5.25 million grant from the Arnold Foundation. More than $10 million more in Arnold Foundation grants have come since. “It completely transformed what we could imagine doing,” Nosek says. Projects that Nosek had once envisioned as modest efforts carried out in his lab were now being conducted on an entirely different scale at the center’s startup-like offices in downtown Charlottesville, with some 70 employees and interns churning out code and poring over research. The skeletal software behind the data-sharing project became a slick cloud-based platform, which has now been used by more than 30,000 researchers.

The Reproducibility Project, meanwhile, swelled to include more than 270 researchers working to reproduce 100 psychology experiments—and in August 2015, Nosek revealed its results. Ultimately his army of volunteers could verify the findings of only about 40 percent of the studies. Media reports declared the field of psychology, if not all of science, to be in a state of crisis. It became one of the biggest science stories of the year.

But as it happens, Nosek is just one of many researchers who have received unsolicited emails from the Arnold Foundation in the past few years—researchers involved in similar rounds of soul-searching and critique in their own fields, who have loosely amounted to a movement to fix science.

John Ioannidis was put in touch with the Arnolds in 2013. A childhood math prodigy turned medical researcher, Ioannidis became a kind of godfather to the science reform crowd in 2005, when he published two devastating papers—one of them titled simply “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” Now, with a $6 million initial grant from the Arnold Foundation, Ioannidis and his colleague Steven Goodman are setting out to turn the study of scientific practice—known as meta-research—into a full-fledged field in its own right, with a new research center at Stanford.

British doctor Ben Gold­acre also got an email from the Arnold Foundation in 2013. Famous in England as a sharp-witted scourge of “bad science,” Goldacre spent years building up a case that pharmaceutical companies, by refusing to reveal all their data, have essentially deceived the public into paying for worthless therapies. Now, with multiple grants from the Arnolds, he is leading an effort to build an open, searchable database that will link all publicly available information on every clinical trial in the world.

A number of the Arnolds’ reform efforts have focused on fixing nutrition science. In 2011 the science journalist Gary Taubes received an email from Arnold himself. Having spent more than a decade picking apart nutrition science, Taubes soon found himself cofounding an organization with a substantial grant from the Arnold Foundation, to rebuild the study of obesity from the ground up. And in 2015 the Arnold Foundation paid journalist Nina Teicholz to investigate the scientific review process that informs the US Dietary Guidelines. Just weeks before the federal guidelines were due for an update, Teicholz’s blistering report appeared in the prominent medical journal The BMJ, charging that the government’s panel of scientists had failed to consider evidence that would have done away with long-held worries about eating saturated fat.

And those are just a few of the people who are calling out iffy science with Arnold funding. Laura and John Arnold didn’t start the movement to reform science, but they have done more than anyone else to amplify its capabilities—typically by approaching researchers out of the blue and asking whether they might be able to do more with more money. “The Arnold Foundation has been the Medici of meta-research,” Ioannidis says. All told, the foundation’s Research Integrity initiative has given more than $80 million to science critics and reformers in the past five years alone.

Not surprisingly, researchers who don’t see a crisis in science have started to fight back. In a 2014 tweet, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert referred to researchers who had tried and failed to replicate the findings of a senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge as “shameless little bullies.” After Nosek published the results of his reproducibility initiative, four social scientists, including Gilbert, published a critique of the project, claiming, among other things, that it had failed to accurately replicate many of the original studies. The BMJ investigation, in turn, met with angry denunciations from nutrition experts who had worked on the US Dietary Guidelines; a petition asking the journal to retract Teicholz’s work was signed by more than 180 credentialed professionals.


https://www.wired.com/2017/01/john-arno ... d-science/
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
User avatar
Tanada
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 17050
Joined: Thu 28 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: South West shore Lake Erie, OH, USA

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Sat 28 Jan 2017, 13:50:54

"...the file drawer effect." So freaking common in the oil patch. Mentioned a number of times about the thousands of project ideas petroleum geologist/engineers have stuck in the back of a file draw. Actually these days are likely in the hard drives in a file labeled something like "Good ideas".

I'll fill in a few more details of the Rockman's personal expertience. And it highlights not just unaccepted science but accepted by one group and defected by another. I'll skip a lot of the tech details to limit post length.

Redeveloping certain 50+ year old ONSHORE oil fields with horizontal wells bores. In the early 90's a company not only proved a lot of residual oil remained but that a hz could flow 100's of bopd offsetting wells making 15 bopd and hundreds of bbls of water per day. But the science they had not developed was the right completion method so their 6 efforts failed big time on a monetary basis. So jump 10 years ahead and OFFSHORE we learned how to complete those unconsolidated oil reservoirs and make commercial completions. BTW other onshore players knew about that company's effort and tried their own horizontal wells. And all failed for similar tech errors.

So now the Rockman has the DOCUMENTED proof that not only the oil is there but also DOCUMENTED proof of how to complete them. Should be easy to sell the idea to an onshore player in those trends. NOT! LOL. Years go by with rejection after rejection. The science was real and proven but onshore players lacked the sophistication that was common with offshore players. But eventually the Rockman got a $billionaire with a PH.D in physics who once consulted with NASA to listen to his story. A man generating the bulk of his incoming trading in the stock market. Oddly similar to the fellow in the story. And he provided the $millions to determine if the Rockman was full of sh*t or not. LOL

Long story short: two other local companies are trying to match Rockman's efforts. One doing semi OK and the other doing poorly. And very few in the oil are aware of what the Rockman accomplished a few years ago. Not being a pubco with stock to push we don't put out press releases. IOW we may have proven the approach (which is still economic at $50/bbl) but we don't want potential competitors to learn what we know.

As said many times: it ain't personal...just business. LOL

BTW the Rockman is also well versed in anoither EOR method proven more the 50 years ago. And gave up pitching that idea years ago. Much more technically complex then hz drilling. Andvthe Rockman understands this tech better then the vast majority of the oil patch. But not because he's that smart but because all the experts are DEAD. Sertiously: they were senior researchers in the late 50's. Unless one digs out very old studies and published reports you won't even know the method exists let alone how to do it properly.

And no...not going to advertise the method and will take it to the grave with me...just like all the other dead old farts did. So f*ck all of you. LOL. Actually have a former partner still trying to get a pilot project started. The Rockman just doesn't have the time to help him these days.
User avatar
ROCKMAN
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 11397
Joined: Tue 27 May 2008, 03:00:00
Location: TEXAS

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby Cog » Sat 28 Jan 2017, 17:30:36

Perhaps Rex Tillerson could make you the Undersecretary for Cool energy ideas. Give the Donald a call.
User avatar
Cog
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 13416
Joined: Sat 17 May 2008, 03:00:00
Location: Northern Kekistan

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby clif » Sat 28 Jan 2017, 22:00:59

They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction.
FDR

About the perfect description of the T-Rump campaign and current mis-admistration.
How cathartic it is to give voice to your fury, to wallow in self-righteousness, in helplessness, in self-serving self-pity.
User avatar
clif
Tar Sands
Tar Sands
 
Posts: 620
Joined: Tue 11 Aug 2009, 13:04:10

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 09 Jul 2017, 12:40:04

More like conservatives war on science
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/science-div ... rs-depart/
Science division of White House office left empty as last staffers depart
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
User avatar
onlooker
Fission
Fission
 
Posts: 10957
Joined: Sun 10 Nov 2013, 13:49:04
Location: NY, USA

Re: Liberal's War On Science

Unread postby Cog » Sun 09 Jul 2017, 14:07:00

I'm sure if those staffers have any value they should have no problem finding work in the private sector.
User avatar
Cog
Fusion
Fusion
 
Posts: 13416
Joined: Sat 17 May 2008, 03:00:00
Location: Northern Kekistan

PreviousNext

Return to Environment, Weather & Climate

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 53 guests