Science For Smart People or Scientists Are Freakin' Liars

[Superchip]

angua, excellent clips, ended up watching some of Clarkson's intuitive responses from Top Gear et al.
and I loved your ambulance hypothesis.
librarising thanks for the link to NuSi, I wonder who is funding them, Kellogs ?
Cynical old b**g*r aren't I !

Superchip

[librarising]

angua wrote
Just to paraphrase or take and completely put my own spin on it "So the point is what - some of us less smart than you and do not have open minds?"

Other than being responsible for putting it in the thread title, Science For Smart People is the title of the talk in the video linked in the first post. We all know the 'xxxx For Dummies' series. I've got one out of the library at the moment (Thyroid For Dummies.) That certainly doesn't make me, or anyone who reads any book in that series a 'dummy.'

In a humourous twist the talk is changed from Science For Dummies to Science For Smart People.

When people show they have watched the video, read the article, and put their reasonable objections to them, then they show they are open-minded.
Smart is an attitude, not an intellectual measurement.
If you have a sharp pain in your chest, the 'smart' thing to do is go and see your GP.
If you're asked to take supposed life-protecting medicine, the smart thing to do is be aware of possible side effects.

My call for smarter debate is simply a call to debate issues, and not to descend to attacking posters, or people referred to in posts. That's all.

Similarly 'Scientists Are Freakin' Liars' are someone else's words, and not mine. Someone in a recent post on another thread misrepresented me by saying

unless you truly believe that all scientists are liars or scoundrels

I never said that, and I don't believe that.

I was also misrepresented here

But with LDL's dismissing them as completely harmless

I never said that. I said

LDL as a figure is also fairly meaningless

Hope that clears up a few things

Geoff

[catherinecherub]

A few more links to add to the debate.

The Art of Being Right.
http://changingminds.org/techniques/gen ... _right.htm

Why is it so important to be right?
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shi ... t-be-right

Five minutes with Ben Goldacre.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19517224

[librarising]

catherinecherub wrote
A few more links to add to the debate.

Dipped into the first link, and looking forward to reading further

But I thing Ben Goldacre has just called me a nerd

Thanks for the links

Geoff

[phoenix]

Libra Rising suggests some alternative reading, here is some more mainstream: (and unless you truly believe that all scientists are liars or scoundrels .then perhaps,there is a reason for them being mainstream.)

I am sorry that you took my statement to refer individually to you. (ie Libra Rising). If I had actually meant to say LibraRising believes that all scientists are liars and scoundrels then that is what I would have said.
You was a generic plural you. There should have been a full stop and not a comma after the word reading (and a comma rather than a full stop after the word scoundrels. Proof reading was never my forte.

I have read far too many posts that imply that scientists are in the pay of big pharma, the food industry or some other global conspiracy and that for some reason or other cardiologists, the British Heart foundation , DUK, etc etc are all trying to kill us off. That is the reason for my rather jaded statement

As to the video, I've now watched it and hated it, obviously my sense of humour at fault. Darryl Huff did it better over 60 years ago and I didn't have to listen to the giggles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lie_with_Statistics
Moving on to say association doesn't imply causation is to oversimplify things. One has to look at as much evidence as possible remembering that the jigsaw will always be incomplete.

"All scientific work is incomplete- whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. This does not confer upon a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action that it appears to demand at a given time. Who knows, asked Robert Browning, but that the world may end to-night? True, but on available evidence most of us make ready to commute on the 8.30 next day."

Sir Austin Bradford Hill
Sir Austin Bradford Hill (July 8, 1897 - April 18, 1991),He was an English epidemiologist and statistician. Bradford Hill pioneered the randomized clinical trial and, together with Richard Doll, was the first to demonstrate the connection between cigarette smoking and lung Cancer ,
Bradford Hill Criteria for causality
http://www.southalabama.edu/coe/bset/jo ... iteria.pdf

[librarising]

phoenix wrote
I am sorry that you took my statement to refer individually to you.

I am equally sorry for any misunderstanding

Geoff

[librarising]

phoenix wrote
One has to look at as much evidence as possible remembering that the jigsaw will always be incomplete.

Think that was Tony Blair's defence over WMD

Humour aside, for me the elephant in the room is the state of the Nation's health. For me, mainstream isn't working, and we all know the definition of insanity

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results."

It's attributed to Albert Einstein, but I can't be definitive on that.

Geoff

[xyzzy]

The Art of Being Right.
http://changingminds.org/techniques/gen ... _right.htm

Hey Catherine don't give away all my secrets

[catherinecherub]

I knew it would strike a chord with some posters.