A researcher's response to people pointing out 150 errors in four of his papers • Hacker News Board

Re: A researcher's response to people pointing out 150 errors in four of his papers

#101

Post by pas » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 1:06 PM UTC

averagewall wrote: post #68

throwaway729 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought: ridiculous false equivalency. Conservatives don't distrust science carte blanc. Many of them will chuck money at asinine bullshit as long as it's billed as a way to kill the other team. Check out some of the more ridiculous stuff to come out of DoD. They distrust climate science. And they don't distrust the actual science, just the conclusions. And increasingly not even the most basic conclusion, just the…

Climate science is totally inaccessible to lay people. All we can do is trust. I'm a science teacher and when I teach climate change, it's just the bare basics and a few subjective facts. We can make cardboard greenhouses and draw pictures of IR rays getting absorbed in the atmosphere. But that's not what's in doubt. That's the stuff everyone's accepted for decades. The part people don't trust is the "it'll destroy t…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RffPSrRpq_g This seems like a good intro to climate science, wouldn't you agree?

Re: A researcher's response to people pointing out 150 errors in four of his papers

#102

Post by nonbel » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

mattkrause wrote: post #100

nonbel wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is another one, apparently we can get a drop of up to 99.5% just by switching to lab tests from clinical diagnosis: "Indeed, an average of only 100 cases of measles are confirmed annually [32], despite the fact that >20,000 tests are conducted [28], directly suggesting the low predictive value of clinical suspicion alone." http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S185.... I just don't think these a…

That's not a sensible interpretation of that measles data. Since measles is very contagious, there's a lot of effort putting into identifying and isolating cases. This necessarily involves screening many cases where the disease is only weakly suspected. On top of that, the current protocols cast a really wide drag net. Australia, for example, tests every susceptible patient who shared a waiting room with a measles pa…

So how large do you think such a diagnosis effect may be? That other paper reported only 7% of clinical diagnoses were lab positive for measles in Singapore.

And yet another effect to deal with is that people used to spread measles on purpose:

“Before the introduction of measles vaccines, measles virus infected 95%–98% of children by age 18 years [1–4], and measles was considered an inevitable rite of passage. Exposure was often actively sought for children in early school years because of the greater severity of measles in adults.” http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S4.fu...

I think for these reasons it is clear the effectiveness of measles vaccines has been overstated, it is only a matter of how much.

Re: A researcher's response to people pointing out 150 errors in four of his papers

#103

Post by nashashmi » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 7:35 PM UTC

ajkjk wrote: post #94

nashashmi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then he is called a conservative.

No, that's not true. One's beliefs about climate change are not their politics; they just tend to correlate highly with politics.

I meant more like "He must be a conservative!" kind of explanation (and therefore he should be ignored??).

Re: A researcher's response to people pointing out 150 errors in four of his papers

#104

Post by makomk » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 2:29 PM UTC

nonbel wrote: post #99

throwaway729 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meaning and purpose of the chart is extremely clear. They're varying C02 and similar gasses, and looking at what happens. Water vapor is held constant as a first order effect and so isn't plotted. I don't draw straight lines on all my plots relating constants to (in)dependent variables. Even fifth grade science experiments follow this convention in their plots. It's an extremely common practice. Water vapor isn't…

>"Water vapor isn't being varied" This is another contradiction to what I've been told: "Satellites have observed an increase in atmospheric water vapour by about 0.41 kg/m² per decade since 1988." https://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas-...

Yeah, warming increases atmospheric water vapour slightly so a simplified model that assumes it remains constant is going to slightly underestimate the total warming caused by a given amount of non-water-vapour emissions. Models don't have to take into account every detail to be useful, though.

Re: A researcher's response to people pointing out 150 errors in four of his papers

#105

Post by throwaway729 » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 2:39 PM UTC

nonbel wrote: post #99

throwaway729 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meaning and purpose of the chart is extremely clear. They're varying C02 and similar gasses, and looking at what happens. Water vapor is held constant as a first order effect and so isn't plotted. I don't draw straight lines on all my plots relating constants to (in)dependent variables. Even fifth grade science experiments follow this convention in their plots. It's an extremely common practice. Water vapor isn't…

>"Water vapor isn't being varied" This is another contradiction to what I've been told: "Satellites have observed an increase in atmospheric water vapour by about 0.41 kg/m² per decade since 1988." https://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas-...

That's exactly what I mean by "first order effect".

We aren't actively and directly melting large quantities of ice. It's a second-order effect of increased atmospheric C02.

One option is to allow it to vary but not as a first-order effect. Another option is to simply not let it vary to keep the model simple.