Am I wrong that we grow weary hearing about error-laden “climate change” science? I know I am, and have been. But what about you?
When Trump won the first time I celebrated, thrilled to tell any who would listen I wouldn’t have to write about this dismal topic again (not many would listen). Then, when Trump won a second time, it all came back. “Climate change” became mandatory to believe once more. Now he’s won a third time, and even though much lousy science continues to be produced, it seems all of us have better things to think about.
We might credit growing understanding of how bad apocalyptic “climate change” science has been—since the 1970s!—with the diminution of your interest. But I think the decreasing profits from selling incredibly inefficient yet gargantuan windmill and solar farms is a better reason. Oligarchs aren’t pushing as hard on these, or other “green” “solutions” because of diminishing returns, and so they don’t need “The Science” to back and provide cover for their moves as much.
But maybe I’m wrong, so I ask again: have we had our fill?
Part of the reason I kept covering it was because “climate change” papers made bold, easy-to-spot errors which all fell into the same categories over and over ad nauseum. My hope was to teach you how to spot these errors, which appear in many fields.
So my second question is: have we learned these lessons? I hope so. But I wonder.
I saw recently one of our guys who had expressed the usual, and correct, skepticism about “climate change”, yet who was sure cloud seeding and contrails caused the Texas flood. So I do wonder.
In any case, our third and main question is this: what about your own fields of expertise or interest?
Our concern is the evidence used to bolster theories which you find suspicious, wrong, or lacking. What is a popular theory or motivating idea which you believe is held too strongly, or incorrectly?
I want to collect more examples for use in Class and for illustrating how evidence in science works. And you, my dear readers, are the best people to ask. So please let me know. The more specific, the better.
For instance, don’t ask “Are seed oils bad?”, ask “This article or this paper says seed oils are good, but something doesn’t seem right.” (Hot take: seed oils vary in badness, but also show the incredible resiliency of the human body to eat nearly anything and live. Incidentally, the entire field of nutrition has difficulties.)
An up-and-comer is tying pesticides (or other chemicals) to nearly every malady. We did one of these last week. But then medical research always has ripe interest, for the obvious reasons. But what exact problems concern you?
We don’t want only medicine, or “climate change”, but a broader base. We’ve done everything from multiverses to electromagnetic drives to ESP and every kind of DIEing. But we haven’t done a lot. So let us know about your own areas or interests.
The point is, and will be, that the way evidence works is the same regardless of the field. The evidence itself changes, obviously, but how to tie evidence to theories and models, and even recognizing what are models, is the same wherever you go. Even in outside science, where the same things
I’ll read every comment and email, but I don’t always have time to respond directly to all of them.
Many thanks.
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Televised sports include commercials for sports betting which show the “probability” that some athlete will score a touchdown, kick a field goal, make a putt, etc. These probabilities are overlayed on video of the play as it happened. The “X” conditions are reduced to some simplistic summary of position on the field, length of putt, or similar gross condition. They seem to be advertising that their models can predict anything, but the commercial spot invariably prove their models are not skillful.
As I recall, you are not much of a sports fan, but this topic might entertain you as it seems to be characteristic of so many similar promotions.
Reading and history. Neither a science yet both fields (as taught in schools) introduce evidence to justify their conclusions. Meanwhile we see college graduates who cannot follow the argument of a newspaper op ed (written at an 8th grade level) and who think communism could work next time. What happened to education?
The idea that physics can replace philosophy.
This is an old one. For instance, Laplace said “Newton was the greatest genius that has ever existed, and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.” (Ch. 7 of Journey through Genius). Newton was able to model phenomena successfully, but he found *a* system of the world, not *the* system of the world.
Likewise, the idea that because physics can model time as an additional dimension (though one we can’t go backward in, more like half a dimension), then that’s it, we’ve pinned down exactly what time is, rather than modelling it in a restricted setting.
Another example, from the end of the Elegant Universe:
“Rather, just as we should allow our artist to work from a blank canvas, we should allow string theory to create its own spacetime arena by starting in a spaceless and timeless configuration.
The hope is that from this blank state starting point – possibly in an era that existed before the big bang or the pre-big bang (if we can use temporal terms, for lack of any other linguistic framework)- the theory will describe a universe that evolves to a form in which a background of coherent string vibrations emerges, yielding the conventional notions of space and time.”
What does time and space evolving from timelessness and spacelessness even mean? Physicists can make mathematical models, but space and time are real things, not just parts of a model. Just modelling something with some convenient mathematical theory doesn’t replace philosophical understanding, i.e., thinking about such things in their own terms.
I suspect that the success of the old physics was that it stuck close to nature. Even though some, like Laplace, exaggerated its success, at least it was based on something concrete. When physics goes into these vast wildernesses of speculation, it doesn’t transcend physics, its gets further away from what physics should be.
Social constructionism. Almost as obviously BS as man caused, catastrophic climate change.
Bad science is only a symptom of the stupidity (much of it willful) of the masses. Treat symptoms not causes. Blind trust of “experts.” Choose comfort and safety (based on blind trust) over freedom and calculated risks. Willful ignorance like not thinking that water runs downhill and is collected by rivers so lets build a house next to the river. “Trust your doctor.” Thinking is hard work so just accept the narrative. Government can be trusted. Abolish the police. Ignore conflicts of interest (big pharma). Don’t learn logic so one can accept logical fallacies. Trust narratives (e.g, climate change) regardless of its irrationality and honest data. Accept guesses from models as though the number are real data. There are no absolute standards — right? (Except the standard that there are no absolute standards). All of it depends on a failure to think logically and of ignorance regarding the true nature of evil (spiritual warfare). Please keep trying as you may win over a few people each week. Only God knows where the tipping point is.
It all started with that sloped forehead, Bill Nye. He diffused science into a maelstrom of wackiness. Now we have low IQ humans on the View quoting “science.” As a genuine scientist (applied physics, 31 granted patents) I have despised every time science is dragged into an argument. Its like bringing your big brother to a fight you know you cannot win on your own.
I won’t even start on how science has become a bona fide god in itself, worshipped by many. It is just a tool, ideally to improve the human condition on Earth, akin to a shovel. Nothing more.
“Political science” comes to mind as an illustrative fraud. After decades of watching, I think the entire field can be boiled down to one single, self evident, axiom. We are ruled by murderous, thieving psychopaths. Any additional true statements are just details or repetitions of Axiom One.
But I can’t let go of “Climate Change” quite so quickly. For the hundredth time I present this chart. It is based on records of the US Historical Climate Network, a subset of US temperature recording stations. The set is “the best of the best of the best” regarding most complete records, good siting, fewest instrumental changes, and stable surrounding areas. In other words, of all the temperature records we have, these should be the least likely to have need of any large or systemic adjustments to the measurements that were recorded. This chart was made by graphing the AVERAGE ADJUSTMENT made to measured temperatures for the entire Network, versus the CO2 level of the atmosphere for that year. Note also that the so-called “adjustments” were made decades, sometimes as much as a century, after the actual measurements. Obviously, the changes have never been explained by any substantive justification.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230115002156/https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/USHCN-Average-Temperature-Adjustments-Final-Minus-Raw-vs.-Atmospheric-CO2-1.png
Put simply, the SOBs have created an artificial two degree warming trend by making the past look colder, and the present look hotter. I have never had even ONE Climate Change adherent attempt to explain this.
(Chart was made by Tony Heller of realclimatescience.com)
I’m neither a mathematician or a statistician, although I have a degree in science (geology) and regularly work with numbers (analytical results, some basic statistics, etc.). I’ve either watched or read every one of your classes so far and although a lot of it has gone over my head it has also focused me on some basics. I’d like to post a short summary of a couple comments from a well known science skeptic website (no, not Sk. Sc.) to which I responded. I based my end comment generally based on some of the ideas on modelling, precision and reality from your classes. The original post had something to do with climate models. One well known poster whose itinials are N.S. is a mathematician (self-described) from Australia. Not sure who the other poster is. Anyway, summary of comments below. As here, my comments are labelled “Phil R.” I hope it copies over ok. I’m a techie luddite. Note the commenter TFN is implying that calculations ARE reality.
Original reply to a N.S. post:
0.047 degrees? That’s a lot of precision. The temperature of my room can’t be given to 0.001 degrees precision, as it varies by much more than than from one spot to another.
I’m not criticising Nick’s post. I’m just wondering what it means in reality to give that kind of number as the change in temperature.
N.S. Reply:
Your room isn’t the world. 0.047 is not a thermometer reading. It is the outcome of a calculation based on thousands of thermometers around the globe.
When you calculate a number, you should express it to whatever precision anyone is likely to want. Then they can argue about uncertainty, but they know what your calculation found.
TFN Comment:
That’s a lot of precision.
The filed UAH data is also expressed to 3 decimal places.
As Nick mentions, this is the result of mathematical calculations, not thermometer readings.
Reply to TFN:
As Nick mentions, this is the result of mathematical calculations, not thermometer readings.
So just wishful thing, unrelated to reality. Got it.
TFN reply:
So just wishful thing, unrelated to reality. Got it.
If you think mathematical calculations aren’t reality that explains a lot.
My reply to TFN:
Phil R
If you think mathematical calculations ARE reality, that explains even more.
Astronomy/Astro-Physics:
* Red Shift as a distance analogue
* Black Holes
* Gravity Waves
* Gravity controlling the structure of the universe while ignoring electrical forces yet electrical force is 10 exp39 greater than gravity
* Sun is a ball of gas yet surface appears to be a liquid
* Big Bang
Recently, I was interested in religious observance in Europe, both west and east. It’s surprisingly difficult to find good numbers on this. I found this article, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11135-020-01048-9 but as I was eyeballing it, I read this in the label for figure 1: “Implied probabilities of weekly church attendance”. At that point I realized I’m looking at models stacked on other models. I could have perhaps attempted to verify what has been done and determine how reliable the numbers are, but I didn’t have the time for that, and I never really did that before, and I wasn’t that interested in the first place. So I left the article behind, but that’s one idea on what can be done.
Psychology followed closely by Sociology. They are pretty neck and neck for the top sketchy positions.
Well I could mention nutrition and exercise science. Also drug discovery. I’m not sure statins actually help anybody, but I haven’t looked at the data myself. People make a lot of noise about CAC scores now, which seems all sciencey and measurable, and which uses fancy X-ray machines, but something like half the people with CAC=0 die of stroke or heart attack anyway.
I presently labor in obscure areas of machine learning: I’d say about half the papers before around 2010 were breddy gud. Not all sciencey like F=MA, but “has some good ideas.” Now it’s maybe 1/6 get a passing grade; the rest are airy-fairy baloney. A former colleague informs me computer science is worse: lots of fake publications making strong claims about novel hash table things having 50% better performance, but testing reveals that they do not, or only do under useless special conditions. This has apparently been going on for decades. I mostly just look at Knuth for ideas.
Astronomy has always been bad. I’m giving Halton Arp a re-read based on some recent results that state the cosmic microwave background were from old galaxies rather than big bangs.
https://x.com/atl_flaneur/status/1940019312456007713
Oh yeah, to my disappointment, I used to work for famous Stanford math guy who says the math papers get worse and more useless and obviously wrong every decade.
Do you find that your best ideas come when you take a shower, or a dump? And I’m not talking about just figuring out the answer to some banal question you have been struggling with recently. I am talking about your brain being on cruise control, not really focused on anything in particular, when suddenly an original idea comes out of nowhere and smacks you between the ears.
Where did that idea come from? Specifically, how did your brain make those connections? What synapses fired in what sequence to spring an original idea out of your casual thoughts and saturated brain?
So lets direct these musings to the consideration of AI becoming sentient. Or even developing an original idea. I hear over and over again, even from teenagers, about how things will change when AI becomes conscious. Since AI is just interpolation between models stacked on other models (thanks for the nomenclature hudbwu), with the sequence of events dictated by an encoded process, exactly how is a new idea going to be realized, let alone sentience.
Here’s some bad think from MIT and Princeton:
“PHYSICS DEMONSTRATES THAT INCREASING GREENHOUSE
GASES CANNOT CAUSE DANGEROUS WARMING,
EXTREME WEATHER OR ANY HARM”
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Lindzen-Happer-GHGs-and-Fossil-Fuels-Climate-Physics-2025-06-07.pdf
Artificial “intlligence”. These “AI” entities are machines. Software running on an electronic computer. They can never be intelligent, nor can they ever be sentient any more than can the bacon slicer machine at your local deli counter. AAARGH
I do not have a clue, but I am sooo impressed with so many replies and amazing understanding!
God bless, C-Marie
Anything to do with extraterrestrial aliens, aka God, visiting and messing with humans using their superior technology. Plenty of humans claiming to have had experiences, but none of it can be replicated on demand.
Libertarian theory claims people in business are mostly motivated by profit. Instead, I believe people in business are mostly motivated by constructing a pecking order so as to climb higher in it. Diminishing returns mean the better our physical survival needs are satisfied, the more people pursue pecking order over production.
Evolution.
As Stephen Jay Gould once sort of said, the lack of a single example in the fossil record of one species evolving into another is Evolution’s Achilles Heel.
Almost Anything by Teilhard de Chardin .
Now that I have thought more about this I think one of our biggest problems in all fields from climate science to politics and beyond is the confusion, sometimes deliberate, of correlation with causation.
My earlier post was longish and probably wasn’t that clear. I think two of the problems are a lack of understanding (or deliberate misuse) of accuracy, precision and rounding in measured data (e;g. average temps reported to 0.001 °C) and the persistent belief that numbers and models create reality rather than just being tools to help us understand reality.
The earth is a spinning ball orbiting the sun in a limitless vacuum.
Maybe. But maybe not. After seeing how easily fake & gay nonsense can pass for truth I’m willing to consider that it might be as it appears; flat, stabile, and lit by a sunny disc moving from east to west through the luminiferous (or aqueous) aether.
@ The True Nolan
RE: “After decades of watching, I think the entire field can be boiled down to one single, self evident, axiom. We are ruled by murderous, thieving psychopaths. Any additional true statements are just details or repetitions of Axiom One.”
No. That’s what 95+% of the masses “self-conveniently” love to believe.
The fact that “murderous, thieving psychopaths” rule is only ONE part of the equation. The pack of leading murderous, thieving psychopaths do not operate in a vacuum, and never have. There are 2 destructive human pink elephants in the room and they are MARRIED — carefully study the free scholarly essay “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room”… https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
The murderous, thieving psychopaths in power are in those positions and do what they do ONLY because of the mostly willful activities, or inactivities, of the majority of self-entitled “decent” or “good” or “awake” or “religious” people — the 90-95% of the herd — and because they do NOT really want the truth but comforting fantasies.
“Our current ‘state’ is the dictatorship of evil. We know that already, I hear you object, and we don’t need you to reproach us for it yet again. But, I ask you, if you know that, then why don’t you act? Why do you tolerate these rulers gradually robbing you, in public and in private, of one right after another, until one day nothing, absolutely nothing, remains but the machinery of the state, under the command of criminals and drunkards?” — from a White Rose Pamphlet, the ‘White Rose’ was a German resistance group fighting Hitler’s Nazi regime
Isn’t it about time for anyone to wake up to the ULTIMATE DEPTH of the human rabbit hole — rather than remain blissfully willfully ignorant in a narcissistic fantasy land and play victim like a little child?
Of course it is but…
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduces them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” — Gustave Le Bon, in 1895
Without a proper understanding, and full acknowledgment, of the true WHOLE problem and reality, no real constructive LASTING change is possible for humanity.
And if anyone does NOT acknowledge, recognize, and face (either wittingly or unwittingly) the WHOLE truth THEY are helping to prevent this from happening. And so they are “part of the problem” and not part of the solution.
If you have been injected with Covid jabs/bioweapons and are concerned, then verify what batch number you were injected with at https://howbadismybatch.com
“There are large numbers of scientists, doctors, and presstitutes who will sell out truth for money, such as those who describe people dropping dead on a daily basis as “rare” when it it happening all over the vaccinated world.” — Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D., American economist & former US regime official, in 2024
“Repeating what others say and think is not being awake. Humans have been sold many lies…God, Jesus, Democracy, Money, Education, etc. If you haven’t explored your beliefs about life, then you are not awake.” — E.J. Doyle, songwriter
LOL. Any science which strays from direct observation and carefully bounded description of reliably, objectively measurable objects and systems observable in the phenomenal world, i.e. pretty much everything that passes as science nowadays.
Here is a topic that seems suspicious to me: Meta-Studies. It seems that whenever some topic is highly controversial, a group of statisticians will tally up all the studies on each side of the issue, and then take a vote to see which side is right. The “vote” is a further statistical analysis that involves another model on top of all the models in the individual studies. Should we believe Meta-Studies? Here is one on linoleic acid and heart disease. Should we believe this?
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.118.038908
JRob, all a “Meta-Study” is is cherry picking from a large pool of studies (most of which can’t be replicated on their own anyway) to create sort of an “argumentum ad populum” BS result. :p
The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis might be worthy of exploring for bad science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis
– Fomenko’s claim that (ao) ancient astronomical publications and unexplainable parallels in history accounts show that our chronology upto AD 1500 is made up and probably completely wrong. (FYI the C14 method alledgedly is calibrated based on this erroneous chronology, and dendrochronology apparently admits to having 2 well-known ‘problematic periods’: appr 500 – 0 BC and appr 0 – 1000 BC…)
– ADHD vs genetically manipulated stuff in bread