Sometimes we hear stories about silly cultural studies types who can’t handle the objective timeless nature of science. Ha ha ha, we laugh—and, indeed, we should laugh if we don’t cry because some of that stuff really is ridiculous. But … Continue reading
Jay Coggins, a professor of applied economics at the university of Minnesota, writes in with some thoughts about serious problems of within the field of environmental economics: Your latest on Tol [a discussion of a really bad paper he published … Continue reading
Remember that “gremlins” paper by environmental economist Richard Tol? The one that had almost as many errors as data points? The one where, each time a correction was issued, more problems would spring up? (I’d say “hydra-like” but I’d rather … Continue reading
Brandon Shollenberger writes: I’ve spent some time examining the work done by Richard Tol which was used in the latest IPCC report. I was troubled enough by his work I even submitted a formal complaint with the IPCC nearly two months ago … Continue reading
We had a discussion the other day of a paper, “The Economic Effects of Climate Change,” by economist Richard Tol. The paper came to my attention after I saw a notice from Adam Marcus that it was recently revised because … Continue reading
Recently in the sister blog. Yet another chapter in the continuing saga, Don’t Trust Polynomials. P.S. More here.
Someone pointed me to this post from Jonatan Pallesen: Frequently, when I [Pallesen] look into a discussed scientific paper, I find out that it is astonishingly bad. • I looked into Claudine Gay’s 2001 paper to check a specific thing, … Continue reading
A message came in my inbox from “The RetractoBot Team, University of Oxford,” with subject line, “RetractoBot: You cited a retracted paper”: That’s funny! When we cited that paper by Lacour and Green, we already knew it was no good. … Continue reading
Nick Brown pointed me to a new paper, “The Impact of Incidental Environmental Factors on Vote Choice: Wind Speed is Related to More Prevention-Focused Voting,” to which his reaction was, “It makes himmicanes look plausible.” Indeed, one of the authors … Continue reading
From the past few weeks at Retraction Watch: University of Washington (professor in the dentistry school attempting to dismiss a scandal involving conflict of interest in a promotion of homeopathic treatment) Stanford University (professor of engineering who sued a journal … Continue reading
Paul Alper writes: Here is sparkling evidence that Bayes theorem needs revision. The link points to a news article pointing to prominent figures in the Republican party and right-wing media circulating misinformation regarding the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of … Continue reading
Gur Huberman points to this document from Stanford math professor Brian Conrad, criticizing a recent report on the California Math Framework, which is a controversial new school curriculum. Conrad’s document includes two public comments. Comment #1 is a recommended set … Continue reading
The police department, is like a crew It does whatever they want to do In society you have illegal and legal We need both, to make things equal So legal is tobacco, illegal is speed Legal is aspirin, illegal is … Continue reading
Andrew Eggers and Justin Grimmer write: Lott (2022) introduces ‘simple tests’ of voter fraud and applies them to measure the extent of fraud in the 2020 election. Using the tests, Lott (2022) claims to have discovered 10,000 extra votes for … Continue reading
Retraction Watch links to this news article by James Heathers, who writes: It’s not that, under such conditions [coronavirus], a few bad studies were bound to slip through the net. Rather, there is no net. Peer review, especially when conducted … Continue reading
Last year my co-bloggers and I posted 565 entries on this blog. Here’s a list of all them, in decreasing order of number of comments. You can draw your own conclusions from all this. A tale of two epidemiologists: It … Continue reading
Tom Davies writes: I looked down on stats when I was at university, and now it’s the only area of maths which is of any use to me. And he points us to this amusing example: What’s great about this … Continue reading
James Lasdun reviews a book by Ariel Sabar telling the story of a conman who sold a fake Bible-related document to a Harvard professor, leading to academic publications and media publicity before the whole thing fell apart. The most amusing … Continue reading
1. Meta-story Someone pointed me to a news report of a statistics-based research claim and asked me what I thought of it. I read through the press summary and the underlying research paper. At this point, it’s natural to anticipate … Continue reading
Palko writes: I’m not sure what the best way to get the ball rolling here would be (perhaps a kickstarter?) but we need to have a strictly enforced rule that no journalist or pundit is allowed to mention the prisoner’s … Continue reading