I believe the problem the author describes is called 'Illusory Correlation', i.e. the situation where people perceive a correlation that is either too high, or completely non-existent.
The reason for this seems to be the confirmation bias, where people censor the information they obtain according to their beliefs. In the example of the author, we believe that the Newspaper only picks up that which is interesting enough (maybe because it used to be the only source of news). Now, in more modern times, we still believe this and censor incoming information with this filter, resulting in too high a correlation.
One thing though, you're talking about a real-life, fluid situation where interpretations and motivations matter. These are rarely, if ever, captured by classifying them into 'fallacy groups'.
In fact, when I do this, I tend to get it back from the editor with the kind request of removing those pesky links.
I whole heartedly agree that everyone should use those links, but it seems scientific publishing is having none of it.
Hmm, did anyone notice that the conclusion (renewables surpassed nuclear) is only based on the first 3 months of 2011?
I am all for extrapolating, but shall we wait with celebrating just yet and wait for the year to be out?
Maybe this depends on your field. My lab publishes a lot in open source journals, for a number of reasons:
1) The ones we use have a fully transparent and public peer reviewing process.
2) Because it is open access, they don't have a paper version, and as such everything happens online. This speeds up the process tremendously.
3) We measure prestige in impact factor, open source journals tend to have a higher impact factor exactly because they are open access.
As an example, we tend to like publishing in Water Resources Research (impact factor of something like 2.5) because they have a lot of prestige. However, HESS, their main competitor, is open access and has an impact factor of 2.7 (huge in a small field). The problem I have is that in the sciences, an articles prestige is in citations, not in what journal published it... well, I guess I am a naive PhD student.:p
Also, now that we are talking about this: At a journal, the editor is a volunteer, the peer reviewers are volunteers, the authors pay for publication (a lot), and the readers pay to read it. Now, I get that support staff is expensive, as are servers... but I don't get where all this money goes....
No no, you got it all wrong. Criminals will do crime still. However, other people will be too busy meditating to report the crime.
The same goes for war, people will be too busy meditating to fight for freedom, so they will just be dominated. No fighting, no war.
Explain to me how you will get that mortar in the second floor window of a 3 story building without demolishing the floor above it...
This is a (more-or-less) direct fire weapon that does not rerquire any time to setup, does not require the soldier to take his eyes of the enemy, and can be carried by one infantryman. To me, that seems like a solid improvement over a mortar or a machinegun, provided the right situation.
Since instantaneous detection isn't relevant, one could use the consistent speed over a few minutes. If you are travelling at any appreciable speed, the displacement will be noticable, and the random jumps can be filtered out. Moreover, using a suitable model of displacement, a filtering approach (i.e. a Kalman filter) could be used to make this all work as well as needed.
Of course, the idea is ridiculous for a myriad of reasons; the primary one being: what ever happened to personal responsibility? We don't cap cars at the maximum speed so people don't speed, so why can't we just tell people not to call and just 'trust'* them.
* read: have police officers enforce it.
Since, apparently, the only difference between a Theocracy and a Dictatorship is the motivation, we should stop calling it a theocracy (Well, unless God himself can be proven to speak directly to his people) and start calling it what it is: A religious dictatorship.
In a sense it reminds me of communism, a decent idea in theory, but all to easily abused by those willing to lie, cheat and kill to enrich themselves.
Heh, yeah, I had that too. It can be caused by combining it with the wrong kind of alcohol (in my case, red wine) or weed that is too strong.
Also, I had visuals that I could direct and felt very real (although I knew they were not). It was a nice experience, although the first time sucked badly as I did not know what was happening and I had a panick attack.
The issue with online sources, and any other sources is that they tend to be biased, and they usually only contain the records of those fitting that bias. However, as I was taught in high school (yay Dutchies!), if you are going to do something potentially dangerous and illegal, always have a babysitter, and always fess up with things go bad. No one wants to die pointlessly.
Acceptance and feeling comfortable with using drugs lead to an increase in drug usage!! News at eleven!
Nonsense! Case in point, the Netherlands. We have a hugely tolerant climate to all sorts of drugs, to the point where, say, a club cannot take your hard drugs away from you permanently (they have to give it back when you leave). And as a surprise, our drug usage is much lower than a lot of countries that have less tolerant attitudes towards it (like the US).
Ha, this reminds me of a story of my own. I was flying from a small regional airport in Turkey (Kayseri) to Germany and was sitting in the boarding area, after the final safety scan. And this elderly Turkish woman next to mean takes an apple out of her bag, takes a knife out of her pocket and starts peeling it.... apparently airport security seems to vary massively on where you fly from and to.
1) Car theft was a legal minefield like downloading copyrighted material is.
2) The chances of getting away with it are rather good.
Now, add to that the notion that one would not deprive the previous owner of his car. Yeah...how many people would steal a car? For an example, look at the Bosten police strike: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Police_Strike#Strike
With the chances of getting caught going to zero, the incidence of crime skyrocketed.....I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.
I think you have this figures messed up... condoms fail about 10-18% of the time. I believe that the 'rhythm' method is about 25% effective, now that means 75% failure rate. Also, this is not a per time figure, this is over a year of regular sex, no other contraceptives, 3 in 4 couples on the rhythm method get pregnant. Compare that to 1 in 5 couples for condoms. I know which I am using....
In the meantime, busses, trains, and ships/boats still work. Ok maybe not in one day nor as cheap, but if you must travel those options do exist. Instead of whining, Branson should be scouting for other opportunities in transportation.
I think part of the reason for the cautiousness was this. In the US, everybody would be screwed (well, save a long drive), whereas Europe has an extensive railnet that is fast and efficient. Hence, we can afford to be overcautious.
Besides, I view this whole thing as an inherent risk of the flying bussiness. If the tides are too high for the ferries to go, no one compensates them either, nor do the bus companies get compensated for slippery roads, or any other transportation companies if problems arise. If everybody was going to go bankrupt over it, they might have a case (we need airlines), but they aren't.
That's complete BS. When it comes to live saving drugs, trials aren't placebo controlled for, obvious, ethical reasons. How would you like to tell the family that mommy could have lived another 10 years, but instead died in the interest of a stronger experimental procedure?
Bingo!
I think most researchers are too busy with research and grant-finding to really bother...but the whole idea is insane.
Also, most people may not have the resources to do the research, nor the skills, when it comes to biochemistry. However, think of any CS field, or perhaps mathematics, theoretical physics and statistics. All you need to play along is a computer, some programming skills and the drive to read an article and study hard enough to understand it (well, brains help too). Especially in these fields, opening up science may greatly speed up the pace and scope of the science.
Finally, it has nothing to do with being able to understand it, being able to replicate it, or even being able to do anything meaningful with it.
1) The publishers cannot know whether or not I can do anything meanigful with it, I might be a major hobbyist in Biochem, and have a fully equipped lab in my basement....highly unlikely, but they cannot know that.
2) Tax dollars are involved, I want what I paid for.
I believe MechWarrior (at least 3 and 4) had this control scheme, you could pivot the arms on your mech separately from the torso.
This was advantageous because sometimes you'd hit another mech and this would prevent your torso from turning. Also, mindlessly blowing pulse lasers in some direction was occasionally useful (basically to prevent someone from standing still and lining up a shot).
In short, I can see uses for it, especially in tactical shooters with one-shot-one-kill dynamics where getting shot at is a very good reason to immediately seek cover. If we're talking UT here, yeah, the point becomes a bit moot.
Of course, every market has its issues. This is true for industry as it is for science. No one in science denies this, but I think some people outside of science have a slightly too romantic view of it.
As for the multi-pub thing: The case is isn't that if you have some severly deficient research you should just publish it, more that you
1) Shouldn't see your paper as the last one (either by your lab, or by others)
2) Shouldn't try to cover ever inch of the matter.
As you state:
My project is rather tangential to the work the rest of the lab does. I will be the only who ever does the work in the lab, and no one else will ever follow up on it.
And in the light of this, your statement does make some more sense.
I think the main problem, with China and elsewhere, is that it is very, very difficult to assess the quality of someone's scientific work. As a result, pubs and impact factor have become the standard of choice, and it has brought forth a mercenary attitude. Because of this, people have attempted less than honest tactics. Sadly, the only solution I see is either removing the entire meritocracy in science, or a complete reworking of the system in some way (don't ask me how). In short, I doubt that the problem is really China or Chinese culture, but has more to do with the way science is currently organized.
Well, evidently you have never published, or if you have, you have never run a larger (multi-pub) project. In this case, you'd publish and then proceed to do the background checks. If the background checks fail, you can publish those as well. If your original research turns out fine, you tack on some additional (original) research and publish that.
Also, given that it worked in a single case, you are evidently on to something. Ergo, checking again is, at this point, a waste of time. You share your findings with the world, and then have other people run with it as well.
More on-topic: I have seen a lot of Chinese, and more generally Asian, papers in my field... but not one of them is original. Also, doubtful results do pass by from time to time (although verifying this is hard, when it comes to sattelite observations there's no doing it twice). It seems that Chinese scholars (based on the ones I know and the research I see) are more concerned with quantity, as it improves your scholarly standing very directly, than with quality. So reproducing research (in my field: doing data assimilation on soil moisture for the umphteenth time) is a quick and easy way to get this.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the problem the author describes is called 'Illusory Correlation', i.e. the situation where people perceive a correlation that is either too high, or completely non-existent.
The reason for this seems to be the confirmation bias, where people censor the information they obtain according to their beliefs. In the example of the author, we believe that the Newspaper only picks up that which is interesting enough (maybe because it used to be the only source of news). Now, in more modern times, we still believe this and censor incoming information with this filter, resulting in too high a correlation.
One thing though, you're talking about a real-life, fluid situation where interpretations and motivations matter. These are rarely, if ever, captured by classifying them into 'fallacy groups'.
"Disruptive" really shifted the paradigm on buzzword market-babble.
\br Is that to say that it disrupted the buzzword market-babble?
In fact, when I do this, I tend to get it back from the editor with the kind request of removing those pesky links. I whole heartedly agree that everyone should use those links, but it seems scientific publishing is having none of it.
Hmm, did anyone notice that the conclusion (renewables surpassed nuclear) is only based on the first 3 months of 2011? I am all for extrapolating, but shall we wait with celebrating just yet and wait for the year to be out?
Maybe this depends on your field. My lab publishes a lot in open source journals, for a number of reasons: 1) The ones we use have a fully transparent and public peer reviewing process. 2) Because it is open access, they don't have a paper version, and as such everything happens online. This speeds up the process tremendously. 3) We measure prestige in impact factor, open source journals tend to have a higher impact factor exactly because they are open access. As an example, we tend to like publishing in Water Resources Research (impact factor of something like 2.5) because they have a lot of prestige. However, HESS, their main competitor, is open access and has an impact factor of 2.7 (huge in a small field). The problem I have is that in the sciences, an articles prestige is in citations, not in what journal published it... well, I guess I am a naive PhD student. :p
Also, now that we are talking about this: At a journal, the editor is a volunteer, the peer reviewers are volunteers, the authors pay for publication (a lot), and the readers pay to read it. Now, I get that support staff is expensive, as are servers... but I don't get where all this money goes....
If only we could make a vaccine against stupidity...
No no, you got it all wrong. Criminals will do crime still. However, other people will be too busy meditating to report the crime. The same goes for war, people will be too busy meditating to fight for freedom, so they will just be dominated. No fighting, no war.
Explain to me how you will get that mortar in the second floor window of a 3 story building without demolishing the floor above it... This is a (more-or-less) direct fire weapon that does not rerquire any time to setup, does not require the soldier to take his eyes of the enemy, and can be carried by one infantryman. To me, that seems like a solid improvement over a mortar or a machinegun, provided the right situation.
Anyone care to google: Funhouse mirror p0rn? Because I sense rule 34...
Since instantaneous detection isn't relevant, one could use the consistent speed over a few minutes. If you are travelling at any appreciable speed, the displacement will be noticable, and the random jumps can be filtered out. Moreover, using a suitable model of displacement, a filtering approach (i.e. a Kalman filter) could be used to make this all work as well as needed.
Of course, the idea is ridiculous for a myriad of reasons; the primary one being: what ever happened to personal responsibility? We don't cap cars at the maximum speed so people don't speed, so why can't we just tell people not to call and just 'trust'* them. * read: have police officers enforce it.
Exactly!
Since, apparently, the only difference between a Theocracy and a Dictatorship is the motivation, we should stop calling it a theocracy (Well, unless God himself can be proven to speak directly to his people) and start calling it what it is: A religious dictatorship.
In a sense it reminds me of communism, a decent idea in theory, but all to easily abused by those willing to lie, cheat and kill to enrich themselves.
Heh, yeah, I had that too. It can be caused by combining it with the wrong kind of alcohol (in my case, red wine) or weed that is too strong.
Also, I had visuals that I could direct and felt very real (although I knew they were not). It was a nice experience, although the first time sucked badly as I did not know what was happening and I had a panick attack.
The issue with online sources, and any other sources is that they tend to be biased, and they usually only contain the records of those fitting that bias. However, as I was taught in high school (yay Dutchies!), if you are going to do something potentially dangerous and illegal, always have a babysitter, and always fess up with things go bad. No one wants to die pointlessly.
Acceptance and feeling comfortable with using drugs lead to an increase in drug usage!! News at eleven!
Nonsense! Case in point, the Netherlands. We have a hugely tolerant climate to all sorts of drugs, to the point where, say, a club cannot take your hard drugs away from you permanently (they have to give it back when you leave). And as a surprise, our drug usage is much lower than a lot of countries that have less tolerant attitudes towards it (like the US).
The official language of Morocce is Arabic....has been for many years.
Ha, this reminds me of a story of my own. I was flying from a small regional airport in Turkey (Kayseri) to Germany and was sitting in the boarding area, after the final safety scan. And this elderly Turkish woman next to mean takes an apple out of her bag, takes a knife out of her pocket and starts peeling it.... apparently airport security seems to vary massively on where you fly from and to.
Well, that. Also, let us assume that
1) Car theft was a legal minefield like downloading copyrighted material is.
2) The chances of getting away with it are rather good.
Now, add to that the notion that one would not deprive the previous owner of his car. Yeah...how many people would steal a car? For an example, look at the Bosten police strike:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Police_Strike#Strike
With the chances of getting caught going to zero, the incidence of crime skyrocketed.....I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.
I think you have this figures messed up... condoms fail about 10-18% of the time. I believe that the 'rhythm' method is about 25% effective, now that means 75% failure rate. Also, this is not a per time figure, this is over a year of regular sex, no other contraceptives, 3 in 4 couples on the rhythm method get pregnant. Compare that to 1 in 5 couples for condoms. I know which I am using....
what do they drive? Given how much they hate trees, probably small hummers.
In the meantime, busses, trains, and ships/boats still work. Ok maybe not in one day nor as cheap, but if you must travel those options do exist. Instead of whining, Branson should be scouting for other opportunities in transportation.
I think part of the reason for the cautiousness was this. In the US, everybody would be screwed (well, save a long drive), whereas Europe has an extensive railnet that is fast and efficient. Hence, we can afford to be overcautious.
Besides, I view this whole thing as an inherent risk of the flying bussiness. If the tides are too high for the ferries to go, no one compensates them either, nor do the bus companies get compensated for slippery roads, or any other transportation companies if problems arise. If everybody was going to go bankrupt over it, they might have a case (we need airlines), but they aren't.
That's complete BS. When it comes to live saving drugs, trials aren't placebo controlled for, obvious, ethical reasons. How would you like to tell the family that mommy could have lived another 10 years, but instead died in the interest of a stronger experimental procedure?
Bingo! I think most researchers are too busy with research and grant-finding to really bother...but the whole idea is insane.
Also, most people may not have the resources to do the research, nor the skills, when it comes to biochemistry. However, think of any CS field, or perhaps mathematics, theoretical physics and statistics. All you need to play along is a computer, some programming skills and the drive to read an article and study hard enough to understand it (well, brains help too). Especially in these fields, opening up science may greatly speed up the pace and scope of the science.
Finally, it has nothing to do with being able to understand it, being able to replicate it, or even being able to do anything meaningful with it.
1) The publishers cannot know whether or not I can do anything meanigful with it, I might be a major hobbyist in Biochem, and have a fully equipped lab in my basement....highly unlikely, but they cannot know that. 2) Tax dollars are involved, I want what I paid for.
I believe MechWarrior (at least 3 and 4) had this control scheme, you could pivot the arms on your mech separately from the torso.
This was advantageous because sometimes you'd hit another mech and this would prevent your torso from turning. Also, mindlessly blowing pulse lasers in some direction was occasionally useful (basically to prevent someone from standing still and lining up a shot).
In short, I can see uses for it, especially in tactical shooters with one-shot-one-kill dynamics where getting shot at is a very good reason to immediately seek cover. If we're talking UT here, yeah, the point becomes a bit moot.
Apparently, the legality of grooveshark is doubtfull: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark#Legal_issues Also, it keeps dying on my over here (Belgium), which sucks.
As for the multi-pub thing: The case is isn't that if you have some severly deficient research you should just publish it, more that you
1) Shouldn't see your paper as the last one (either by your lab, or by others)
2) Shouldn't try to cover ever inch of the matter.
As you state:
My project is rather tangential to the work the rest of the lab does. I will be the only who ever does the work in the lab, and no one else will ever follow up on it.
And in the light of this, your statement does make some more sense.
I think the main problem, with China and elsewhere, is that it is very, very difficult to assess the quality of someone's scientific work. As a result, pubs and impact factor have become the standard of choice, and it has brought forth a mercenary attitude. Because of this, people have attempted less than honest tactics. Sadly, the only solution I see is either removing the entire meritocracy in science, or a complete reworking of the system in some way (don't ask me how). In short, I doubt that the problem is really China or Chinese culture, but has more to do with the way science is currently organized.
Well, evidently you have never published, or if you have, you have never run a larger (multi-pub) project. In this case, you'd publish and then proceed to do the background checks. If the background checks fail, you can publish those as well. If your original research turns out fine, you tack on some additional (original) research and publish that. Also, given that it worked in a single case, you are evidently on to something. Ergo, checking again is, at this point, a waste of time. You share your findings with the world, and then have other people run with it as well. More on-topic: I have seen a lot of Chinese, and more generally Asian, papers in my field... but not one of them is original. Also, doubtful results do pass by from time to time (although verifying this is hard, when it comes to sattelite observations there's no doing it twice). It seems that Chinese scholars (based on the ones I know and the research I see) are more concerned with quantity, as it improves your scholarly standing very directly, than with quality. So reproducing research (in my field: doing data assimilation on soil moisture for the umphteenth time) is a quick and easy way to get this.