Posts tagged…Evidence
Discounting the Intergenerational Report
Fri, Feb 12 2010"[H]ow often does the IGR [Intergenerational Report], in five pages vaunting public investment in infrastructure, use the term 'cost benefit analysis'? Not once. Clearly, suggesting that public investment only be undertaken when the benefits exceed the costs is no longer politically correct." Extract from Henry Ergas in The AustralianHenry Ergas is—as ever—right on the money. The 2010 IGR has…
Read more…Shorting common sense
Sat, Feb 06 2010I've previously noted that the policy of banning short-selling looked just like the sort of hunch driven regulation that hurts both the economy and common sense. Its prohibition of speculation on price falls was Canute-like.
Now here's some strong evidence that bans such as ASIC's had adverse impacts on precisely factor most needed in a crisis of market confidence: liquidity.
"The evidence…
Rahmstorf rebuffed
Tue, Jan 12 2010The Potsdam Institute physicist whose 2007 paper Ross Garnaut relied on for his assertion that "on the balance of probabilities" CO2-driven warming was accelerating dangerously, has been exposed as a scientific gadfly.
At the time of the publication of Garnaut's interim report, several well-qualified sceptics disputed Rahmstorf's projetions, including David Stockwell, Lucia Liljegren and Steve…
Let’s look at the data
Fri, Oct 30 2009
This is a very fine summary of the case that nothing very unusual is happening to the global climate and of the evidence—direct data, not proxies—that the IPCC projections are simply wrong about the key factor they say will result in alarming climate change (by the way that's not CO2)
Lindzen has a record that calls for attention. He has researched and taught atmospheric and climate science for…
Why Australia should not adopt an ETS
Tue, Oct 13 2009The mainstream media offer us nothing but politics on the question of whether the proposed Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) legislation should be adopted. Political calculation is less demanding for the journalists and offers readers an engaging melodrama. But the politics are no guide to a responsible decision on the ETS. In this post I review both the governments' stated reasons for the ETS and my…
Caloric restriction diet doesn’t work
Mon, Jul 13 2009Reports this week that a "nutritious but reduced-calorie diet blunts aging and significantly delays the onset of such age-related disorders as cancer…" are a perverse account of a study that showed no statistically significant effect of calorie restriction.
Sandy Szwarc shows that the supposed benefits appear only if the results are cooked by 'cherry picking' the trial's mortality records. She…
Manufacturing copyright ‘consensus’
Fri, Jun 26 2009
A fascinating analysis of a 'coalition of interest' at work—strategies often alleged but rarely detailed with such clarity.
Geist shows how three Canadian entertainment industry organizations have manufactured the appearance of widening concern over copyright piracy and growing evidence of its impact.
"It is not just that these reports all receive financial support from the same organizations and…
Plimer review: more from G Schmidt
Sat, May 23 2009Dr Gavin Schmidt has further criticisms of my review of Plimer (and of Plimer's book). I'm happy to reproduce them as emailed (presuming again that he has no objection). He has three main points concerning the Wegman 'cluster' analysis of the Mann authorial relationships; whether the Hockey Stick article was a 'fraud', and; whether Plimer's account of paleo-climate variability matters to current…
Plimer’s Heaven + Earth
Mon, May 18 2009
I have finally finished reading and skimming Ian Plimer's thick book Heaven + Earth. I found it admirable for being a comprehensive and intelligent account of relevant evidence on climate change. I did not like it so much for the writing, or for the organization of ideas in some places, but that's a quibble in light of the book's strengths.
Prof. Plimer's book looks like a text book (and weighs…
Evidence on obesity and HIV prevention
Mon, Apr 20 2009
Two notable evidence-based re-assessments of medical risk that deserve your attention—if only as antidotes to policy-based or dogma-based spin.
The first is a journal article by Katherine Flegal, a senior researcher at the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, who examines the evidence from a large study of the U.S. population on whether obesity is strongly linked to death from disease,…
Australia’s information deficit
Wed, Apr 15 2009
Australia is falling behind on access to data, thanks to apparently indifferent government at the Federal and State level—and it has nothing to do with proposed NBN. The United States, however, is moving ahead wth plans for the creation of a government-wide data access facility.
data.gov will be managed by Obama's 'Chief Information Officer', Vivek Kundra. Here is an example of what he has…
Evidence and muddling through
Wed, Apr 15 2009The difference is that 'muddling through' is a strategy bound to evidence, evaluation, and adaptation. In policy as in business entreprise, grand visions and definitive models, like 'settled science', call for commitment and resist new enquiry or contrary fact.
"Prof Lindblom contrasted what he called the ‘root’ method of decision-making with the ‘branch’ approach. The root method required…