Palko, from 2013 on “the rhetorical deception I [Palko] call the cigarettes and cocaine argument”: “We just don’t have the money for you to keep smoking. Do you realize that between your smoking and my cocaine habit we’re spending more … Continue reading
Paul Alper writes: In your blog today you once again criticize Tol’s putative results regarding global warming: “At no point did Tol apologize or thank the people who pointed out his errors; instead he lashed out, over and over again. … Continue reading
Jeff points me to this news article and asks, Can this be right? Hmmm . . . the article defines “wealthier smokers” as “those earning 60,000 or more.” So suppose a “low-income smoker” makes $20K, then 25% is $5000, which … Continue reading
To the person who posted an apparently non-spam comment with a URL link to a “cheap cigarettes” website: In case you’re wondering, no, your comment didn’t get caught by the spam filter–I’m not sure why not, given that URL. I … Continue reading
Nina Strohminger and Olúfémi Táíwò write: Most of us have been taught to think of scientific bias as a distortion of scientific results. As long as we avoid misinformation, fake news, and false conclusions, the thinking goes, the science is … Continue reading
Paul Campos writes: Probably the biggest public health success in America over the past half century has been the remarkably effective long-term campaign to reduce cigarette smoking. The percentage of adults who smoke tobacco has declined from 42% in 1965 … Continue reading
Flavio Bartmann asked what I think of this article by Scott Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff, “America needs a rebirth in science.” My reply: 1. It’s hard to disagree with their general point about risk-taking in science. 2. I … Continue reading
I was reading a recent New Yorker and what should I come to but a Malcolm Gladwell article. With the same spirit that leads us to gawk at car crashes, I read it. I gotta give Gladwell some credit for … Continue reading
This email came in from the National Institute of Statistical Sciences: Ingram Olkin (S3) Forums: Call for Proposals The Statistics Serving Society (S3) is a series of forums to honor the memory of Professor Ingram Olkin. Each forum focuses on … Continue reading
Forecasting elections using prediction markets has a theoretical appeal, as people are betting their own money so are motivated to get things right. On the other hand there’s been concern about the thinness of the market, especially early on during … Continue reading
We’re ready! Background is here. – Duplicate names: Yo-Yo Ma (1) Joseph Heller (2) Vladimir Putin (3) Boutros Boutros-Ghali (4) Ai Weiwei Kris Kristofferson Lisa Lisa Li Wenwen – Alleged tax cheats: Martha Stewart (1) Pete Rose (2) Al Capone … Continue reading
Gary Smith is coming out with a new book, “Distrust: Big Data, Data Torturing, and the Assault on Science.” He has a lot of examples of overblown claims in science—some of these have appeared on this blog, and Smith takes … Continue reading
Last month we discussed the controversy regarding the recent revelation that, back in 2015, economist Alan Krueger had been paid $100,000 by Uber to coauthor a research article that was published at the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research, a … Continue reading
As part of the preparation for some teaching materials, I was looking something up on the AP Statistics webpage, and I came across the phrase “six-sided number cube,” which is a kind of person-from-Mars description of what in English is … Continue reading
Robert Proctor points us to this lecture, “Why did Big Tobacco love (and fund) eugenicists like R.A. Fisher?” It’s pretty good! He talks about material from his 2011 book, Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for … Continue reading
Gary Smith tells an interesting story. 1. Funny output from OpenAI’s GPT-3 A few months ago, Smith wrote an AI-skeptical article where he threw some sentences at the GPT-3, a text processor from Open AI. As wikipedia puts it: Generative … Continue reading
I read this post by Paul Campos that says that Harry Truman made tons of money as president and then he got even richer afterward. I don’t know anything about this, but the article has a lot of detail and … Continue reading
Ambarish Chandra writes: I’m writing regarding the CDC study on school mask mandates from last month, which shows that counties with school mask requirements had lower pediatric covid cases than those without them. As any social scientist knows, the study … Continue reading
Paul Kedrosky wrote: This paper is getting passed around today, with its claim that there not only isn’t a causal relationship between smoking and COVID, but possibly a protective role. This sort of thing drives me crazy about pre-prints. If … Continue reading
I first heard about Rationality, the latest book from linguist Steven Pinker, from his publisher, offering to send me a review copy. Pinker has lots of interesting things to say, so I was happy to take a look. I’ve had … Continue reading