Do you know what peer review (or refereeing is) and/or relates to?
Yes, do you? As your suggestion is rather misplaced. Ditto to the use of the word 'theory'.
Do you know what peer review (or refereeing is) and/or relates to?
I wish I could disagree!Has reason ever been a big part of politics? If reason ruled all, we would be ran by technocrats- industry and technical specialists. Rightly or wrongly, a huge part of politics is winning people over emotionally with some grandiose vision. We then act disappointed when for whatever reason, the dream doesn't come to fruition. Disillusionment sets in and the tide changes, we boot them out of office and a new arrangement forms, with slightly different ideals from before.
I think the fundamental thing is that we all want different outcomes, and have different visions for the society we'd like to see. There are usually injustices whichever direction is chosen, which generate emotional responses, which someone claims to have a cure for. The cycle repeats.
A theoretical ideal would be if our goals were more aligned, and we were in agreement about what was, and wasn't desirable. This is done for many subjects such as free speech, property rights etc (there are elements which oppose these, but generally speaking they are minor in significance in Britain). But we struggle to get past fundamental disagreement about the role of the state in important areas such as welfare, industry, taxes, and so on. The emotional pleas result from friction and conflict in these, and other areas.
Oh good so you know, Peer review is not restricted to scientific published papers and understand that I (and very few others) would lend what roff has said the word theory a scientific meaning but may offer it in the more general usage.Yes, do you? As your suggestion is rather misplaced. Ditto to the use of the word 'theory'.
Traditional post FUD run away, the presenters facebook is right there, publish away, he might learn something about data collection of the earth average temperature over the last few hundred years or change the discourse who knows!Not really wanting to go around in circles but he's not proposed a theory and has simply made a criticism re: how some data has been presented. To go off on one about peer review etc.. is misplaced that's all. I thought the point was obvious but seemingly not, no doubt you could pick a fight over this for the next two pages but I'm not particularly interested.
Your position is, asking someone who has an issue with a scientific presenter 'shutting down debate' with a person who believes NASA faked data on climate change to post their issues to the presenter's open web pages for review and right to reply, is not of a high enough standard for 'Speakers Corner' on OCuk? Wow.In this thread, OP posts asking whether or not we're entering an "age of unreason" and then lays down an incredible display of "unreason" when someone points out that - although they agree with the OPs point - some of his opening argument has some obvious flaws. I realise that isn't what you mean by "age of unreason" but the irony is amusing.
Moving to GD as this is far from SC material.
If you are moving this based on the above, you can at least explain what you or roff believed/stated the 'obvious flaws' in my post are, that would be reasonable no?In this thread, OP posts asking whether or not we're entering an "age of unreason" and then lays down an incredible display of "unreason" when someone points out that - although they agree with the OPs point - some of his opening argument has some obvious flaws. I realise that isn't what you mean by "age of unreason" but the irony is amusing.
Moving to GD as this is far from SC material.
As Dowie says its as much a data visualisation issue - if you zoom out a little more from the data used in that first graph he uses it looks something like:
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/EIKE_2.gif
Zoom out a bit more and its a blip downwards quite a bit from the long term average.
The dip is ascribed to natural factors connected to the period of the "little ice age" and subsequent solar minimums + volcanic activity - but the rising edge - which doesn't cross the average until about 75% of the way along the graph is often used to illustrate a trend in climate change usually in the context of anthropogenic forcing as if climate change starts at the bottom of that dip onwards.
To illustrate it another way the same kind of data and presentation of it is used here to show the effect on glaciers - as if the start is in 1862 and climate change has progressively stripped it back in a dramatic fashion:
https://youtu.be/7Ra1qugDXsU?t=120
But when you look at the actual raw numbers the data doesn't have a linear regression like the video illustrates - and infact the 300 year average is much further up with the 1862 an unprecedented extent of glaciation in modern history (my annotations in red):
http://i.imgur.com/6UWRE6O.jpg
The point being in this context if we want to see an age lead by reason then it comes from both sides of the fence - things like this don't help to forward the case for reason when they mostly seem to be utilised to shut down debate and silence dissent using what has to be intentional representation of the data towards a specific picture.
To be clear I'm not denying climate change here - if you look at the last part of the data - since 2010 especially there has been a worrying change that certainly shouldn't be ignored.
Back to the context of government I think one of the problems is you can manipulate statistics to support almost any argument or position and this has eroded people's trust in facts and reason.
Politically it appears increasingly popular to deny reason and push emotion above evidence!
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/16/qa-brian-cox-brings-graphs-malcolm-roberts
After Grenfell I proposed the most important question is "What evidence and reasoning was a large budget given to clad tower blocks", people have suggested insulation as a reason, I can find no evidence/calculations that in energy/financially cladding tower blocks over housing was efficient and the debate hasn't seemed to even consider the wider problem that perhaps unreason has been part of government for sometime, are lessons really learned by leaders?
Dr Cox has been vocal over concerns that people seem to increasingly discount experts and evidence in political debate, have we entered an increasingly unreasonable period or alternatively has this approach always been dominant in politics and government, the third option that evidence and reason are well handled by government seems unlikely at this point, but what do others think?
Some unreason above?Seems less wild than NASA purposefully skew results, more explanation of why you are correct and the international panels of scientists in the field are wrong may be required for me to change position!
snip
It is an interesting point, the development of the world wide web was effectively motivated by a need to make academic publishing/discussion more widely available and to provide hyperlinks for referencing.There is a whole mass of information from unverified sources these days. Seemingly there is so much of it, that people have difficulty identifying what is genuine or not. You can spout out anything and if it's forceful enough, or argued well enough, someone will believe it, even if they can't provide any credible evidence.