How about difference-in-differences regression where one of two previously quite similar (probably neighboring) jurisdictions introduced a major change in qualifying for a pension or a similar old-age benefit? However, I don't know of any such cases.
But there are still co-founders. The article states: "Single LGBT adults were more likely to have a disability; to report lower physical, psychological, social and environmental quality of life; and to have experienced the death of a partner, especially among men." Not being married because your partner has died is certainly likely to be associated with unhappiness.
Also, I guess the control group we need is LGBT couples of a similar age when/where gay marriage was not possible - but that's complicated because of history (you'd be comparing with the 1990s or maybe the 2000s) and/or culture (comparing with more repressive regimes). Still tricky!
Also, are marriage and civil union so different that it'd be expected to make a huge impact? It's not like gay couples were forbidden from living like married couples before.
Maybe. But evolutionary speaking, the pathway to happiness should run something like
Your reproductive prospects and community standing are poor --> Less happy --> Do something --> You acquire a committed romantic partner --> The relationship is formally recognized with a ritual --> Your reproductive prospects and community standing are good --> More happy --> Chill
Gay marriage doesn't really improve community standing or reproductive prospects. The fact that they dissolve at higher rates than heterosexual marriages, particularly when children are involved, suggests this really does matter.
As someone who’s seen almost every episode of every Star Trek series, I enjoy Lower Decks even more than SNW. But I can admit that Strange New Worlds is probably a better show for most people.
There are two truly great moments of post-ENT Trek for me that speak to the spirit of TOS I had when watching as a kid: 1) George Kirk's sacrifice in the '09 movie. While the rest of Kelvin timeline has its issues, that moment was not one for me. 2) Pike's speech to the warring factions in the SNW pilot. I was hopeful for a Pike spinoff as soon as he was introduced in DISCO S2 because Mount clearly just has fun in the role, but that scene before a global audience on the edge...masterful.
Completely agree on the Star Trek stuff. I think one key trick Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds pinched from the Orville is a reappreciation that Trek is basically a workplace drama, and that the place to develop character and especially relationships is during downtime, while people are just chatting and goofing off. The natural cycle in life (even in war) are for people to build bonds during quieter times which then pay off in stressful times. (For real life example look at the US Army 'repple-depple' replacement system in WW2 where people were sent straight to the front with people they hadn't met before. Results were awful). Discovery and Picard's 'all drama, all the time' philosophy are fun for plot and action, but terrible for character work, and TV shows without interesting characters and relationships don't ever shine
To tie together two themes of this post, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks are great in part because they’re idealistic, optimistic, progressive visions in contrast to the doomer vibes of so much 2010s culture.
I think people really under estimate how dangerous the lack of diversity of thought is in the sciences right now. As the article mentions there is some reframing of findings and papers but it is generally not outright fraud. However this is much worse than people realize. For three reasons.
First, many academics that are not outright advocates have simply abandoned certain areas of study. I stopped studying race and policing because of it was too political and not a productive use of my time. Many academics has done similar things in politically sensitive topics if they are unwilling to toe the line politically. This leaves those areas of study to advocates.
Second, the methodological standards are screed such that if your findings are not consistent with the mainstream you get held to different standards. Again, this drives people who are unwilling to toe the line to study less political topics.
This leads to third issue, which is the most impactful. Science works a little bit like a survey. As long as you sample is not biased you can analyze the results and be reasonably confident in your findings. This is no longer the case for entire fields of study.
In any study you will get random variation i your results that are due to chance (this why there is p value). If there is even a small systematic bias, where people do not publish findings that are unpopular (or in fields that are dominated by activists just round file those findings) it does not take much to dramatically screw the results for the body of literature as a whole.
I think this is a much bigger Issue than people realize because it is just a bunch of small choices, made at the margins, that collectively skew entire areas of research.
I think of Roland Fryer (unpopular findings around use of lethal force and race), Matt Hickman at Seattle U (called out the DOJ for shoddy research related to race and use of force) or the James at WSU ( again unpopular findings around rave and use of force) and think who needs that kind of hassle. Now most of the above mentioned researchers just plug along and keep going because they are exceptional. But for less tenacious or gifted researches ( or untenures) this sends a message to stay in line. At the margins researchers fall into line or just research other things.
This has really made question certain fields of study. Hopefully I’m wrong.
I agree that science and scientific journalism is reaching a crisis. This Nature article documents nonreproducibility of scientific studies by other investigators.
Regarding man-made global warming, the arguments have persisted for 40 years and without a political champion. There is little question that the globe is warming in the current era, there has been a plethora of science which calls to question the role of CO2 and the greenhouse effect. (I do support alternative energy due the release of toxins and heavy metals associated with mining and burning fossil fuels.) What is disturbing is that there is a force with significant inertia which enforces this movement towards alternative energy which has yet to be identified. I fear there is a new era in which policy triumphs over truth. The parties and the mechanisms behind it are yet to be understood.
CO2 contribution to global warming, as a gas, appears to be quite small. Here are some interesting threads to follow up on. That the earth has had multiple periods of warming and cooling and glaciation well accepted. The wiki entry on Quaternary Glaciation has a nice graph correlating temperature and atmospheric CO2 over the course of 400,000 years. However it should be noted that CO2 rise follows the temperature rise, not preceding it. Note that for our current era, the warming period began approximately 10,000 years ago, which also is associated with a CO2 rise. Perhaps that last rising blip is associated with human industrial activity. It appears that our current existence happens to occur during the earth’s warming period.
Here are papers which compare earth surface temperature and atmospheric CO2 vs surface temperature and solar activity. Solar activity appears to have a much better fit.
Other interesting correlations? We are also in another catastrophic extinction event. Could humans be responsible through environmental pollution. Perhaps to a certain extent. But the extinction event began about 10,000 years ago in which there is the disappearance of large mammals including the mastodon, mammoth, ground sloth, and the saber-toothed tiger.
These correlations don’t prove causation, but there may be a common event which could explain it all.
This sounds like you would increase the error bar around any estimate of the optimal tax on net emissions. Seems reasonable to me that the estimate is uncertain. Possible for this reason or just political feasibility Nordhaus starts with a pretty low tax that only reaches "optimality" after some time. In reality we would want to be constantly adjusting it as more data accumulates and models improve.
Again, the ostensible reason for the carbon tax is to combat global warming, though there are many real benefits to moving away from fossil fuels. But I find this to be the real curiosity:
The two papers referenced above are responses in support of the Porter paper, which is behind a paywall. But for 30 years, the greenhouse gas theory was felt to be minuscule effect. Then Al Gore does a documentary in 2006, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Then some unknown higher mechanism puts into place a carbon tax, ESG investment score, and spawns an entire new industries poised to favor Elon Musk as he was barely getting into Tesla. Now if there was going to be a lobby group who had the deep pockets to fight this, it would be oil and gas. How and why they failed is a mystery. But here we are.
Regarding the tax scheme, as you suggest it begins with a low tax and then rises, similar as it was done in healthcare, when the penalties become onerous. My understanding is that the carbon tax is used to create tax credits or subsidies to purchase “green” cars and the like. So $3 gas is ok. But with time, it will rise to $4, 5, 7, 9, etc. One will have no choice at some point but to adopt an electric car and such. The alternative is to be forced out of the economy. As we all know, government programs never get smaller...
Regarding marriage & happiness: Instrumental variables regression is another way of getting at causality, but one needs to find an arguably valid instrument. My own recent research -- which you could google if you like, but the best-developed paper of mine on this is the one on the sensitivity of inference in multiple regression inference with respect to non-exogeneity in the regressors; google doi:10.3390/econometrics8010011. This work allows you to at least quantify whether your hypothesis test rejection p-value is robust to instrument validity flaws. {new paragraph} In any case, how about retail jewelry prices -- or diamond prices -- as an instrument for marriage rates? Wouldn't the diamond ring price be at least somewhat correlated with the marriage rate, but largely uncorrelated with that (unobserved) underlying factor driving happier people to be more likely to get married? Should I get an unwary grad student to look into this?
I've ben a super Star Trek fan starting as a kid since they first premiered TOS. Participated in the campaign to get TOS reinstated by the networks in the late sixties...
Yeah, SNW and Lower Decks are the best Star Trek of the 21st Century IMHO. (I just watched the first episode of the new Lower Decks season!). The crossover episode was so fabulous!
I'll have to give Picard 3rd season a try. I couldn't get thru the first season. I also struggled with the first few seasons of Discovery and gave up on that. Maybe I'll have to try it again someday.
But with SNW and Lower Decks, is so wonderful to see a can do and optimistic spirit of the future. It is so rare. We need so much more of that.
As a Star Trek fan myself, I definitely reccomend Picard Season 3 if you were a fan of the TNG series. You don't even really have to bother watching the first 2 seasons as 95% of the characters and plotlines were pretty much jettisoned.
Similar tastes to you, I think and I'm unsure if you would like Picard 3. Personally I liked seeing the TNG gang again, and Jeri Ryan was great as 7 of 9 again, but I disliked the melodrama it shared with Disco and Picard 1 & 2 and the whole grimdark ethos it shares with those shows (Starfleet are stupid, there's a hostage execution scene, the ending is very dark if you think about for more than 10 seconds). Also a couple of the TNG gang make very odd decisions which are not remotely in character.
In fairness, you don't really want to think about Starfleet or the Federation too deeply even in 90s Star Trek. Starfleet admirals and captains constantly go rogue; they attempt more than once to mount a military coup and take over completely, each time the only thing that can stop them is another Starfleet commander. The organization never seems to suffer any repercussions from any of that. And there's a lot of signs the Federation might be a totalitarian communist society, despite its protestations to the contrary. Like, outside of trivialities like an occasional bar, we don't really see businesses at any point and the Ferengi were originally meant to be menacing (because what's scarier than capitalists...).
Still, we ignore these things and get some fun out of it, so it's no big deal.
In England and Wales (which is most of the UK) there is reverse correlation: across roughly the same period, "average ratings of life satisfaction, feeling that the things done in life are worthwhile and happiness generally increased (improved) year-on-year"[1] while "The number of people getting married is at the lowest rate on record"[2]
But, there were things about Picard S3 that grated on me -- e.g., when Riker snapped at Picard. Just out of character. Still loved all of Picard, and agree that Strange New Worlds is the best (imho, since STNG)
I appreciate your nuanced view of Patrick Brown but I think he has done more to hurt the cause of climate science than help, if for no other reason than considering that most of the people that have come to his defense are contrarians, e.g. Matt Ridley, Bjorn Lomborg, and Roger Pielke Jr. , not to mention that conservative media is having a hay day.
Here are some different takes offered by what I consider moderate websites and blog sites.
Journal and publishing bias is just a fact. It used to be that even the Guardian knew that the whole enterprise was bent, they wrote a major investigative piece on it based on the hacked emails:
Academics viewing peer review more like a weapon in a battle than a process for improving accuracy is a long established problem that crops up frequently in climatology. Brown is only saying what's been obvious for years. Even decades ago when McIntyre was invited to be a reviewer for the IPCC, he requested the data for a paper that was being incorporated. The IPCC teams endlessly gaslighted him and he never was given the data. The hacked emails eventually showed a conspiracy behind the scenes to stop him, with climatologists calling him "Lord Voldemort" and saying they should be careful with their emails. They even told him wanting to review climate data was inappropriate for a peer reviewer.
I don’t understand the logic of your first sentence. How does getting support from particular people help or hurt the science? It seems to me that how prestigious journals respond to his critique is the true test. Do they make a point of publishing more complex, truer views or do they continue to publish impact papers using outdated implausible scenarios (as an example of sticking to the acceptable narrative)?
Put another way, his intentions were pretty clear—to improve the published research so that it is more reflective of reality rather than skewed towards an activist purpose. And his recommendations reflect that:
“But climate scientists shouldn’t have to exile themselves from academia to publish the most useful versions of their research. We need a culture change across academia and elite media that allows for a much broader conversation on societal resilience to climate.
The media, for instance, should stop accepting these papers at face value and do some digging on what’s been left out. The editors of the prominent journals need to expand beyond a narrow focus that pushes the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And the researchers themselves need to start standing up to editors, or find other places to publish.”
That is probably a fair criticism. Based on their reputations among mainstream climate scientists, I assumed that they would automatically jump to Brown's defense and not consider the "facts." I admit it is hard to get to the truth in matters such as this but here is what bothers me the most about the situation.
Brown defended his approach to the reviewers to leave certain variables out and then turns around and claims that the journal is biased based on the fact that he left those same variables out. You can't have it both ways. Further, the points made by his co-author, Prof Steven Davis, in the carbonbrief.org account give me pause:
------
He says that Brown “may have made decisions that he thought would help the paper be published, but we don’t know whether a different paper would have been rejected”. He adds:
“I don’t think he has much evidence to support his strong claims that editors and reviewers are biased.”
Davis says that he “wasn’t involved in strategic decisions to exclude factors from the study” and that Brown’s subsequent claims “took me by surprise”.
---------
I would encourage you to read all of my links to get a full appreciation of where I'm coming from.
p.s.
I'm a retired research engineer that worked with high-energy density scientists and fusion researchers for 34 years. I have a lot of respect for the integrity of those scientists and the scientific process of peer-review and publication. Is it perfect? No, but I have a lot more respect for people like Zeke Hausfather who work within the system to improve it. Skirmishes like this that play out in the court of public opinion detract from the main message of climate science, i.e. It's real, it's us, it's serious, but there is hope.
Thanks, I appreciate that. I must admit that our exchange has elicited some more self-reflection on my part but as I stated initially, I still believe Brown’s actions have done more harm than good because it has caused more polarization among the community. I feel the same way about many of the contrarians, e.g., Steven Koonin. He claims that he is trying to improve the science but I believe it just fuels more polarization and does very little to improve the science. I avoid Twitter/X because of the knee-jerk, emotional responses that it elicits. I try to find moderate voices that I trust, e.g., Zeke Hausfather and live there. As Vaclav Smil says, solutions never come from the extreme, they only come from the rational and reasonable middle. Neither doomsdayism or denial are helpful.
I still question Brown’s motivation and don’t respect his method. At the end of the day, the author is responsible for what gets published. He basically has added another single example of questionable, anecdotal evidence of bias that exists in scientific publishing but has done nothing to get at the extent, pervasiveness or seriousness of that bias. Some studies have tried to do just that in a more systematic way, e.g., https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-016-1880-1 . But again, as with many things, you have to read past the headline or title to get at the nuance.
p.s.
I just saw an article in WaPo by Shannon Osaka. One of the points that she makes that got lost in the fight over bias, is that Brown and company are trying to point out that in addition to mitigation and emission reduction we are going to have to get smarter about adaptation, e.g., taking more precautions to avoid major fires and planning for more severe weather, In e.g., hurricanes. Again, there must be better way to get your point across.
A year from now I doubt this particular episode will have much salience. It will be interesting to see forthcoming papers and their corresponding news releases in light of this issue though.
Hausfather is on my list of trusted voices. As is Pielke. I only saw one presentation by Koonin and wasn’t impressed. Interestingly both Hausfather and Pielke were instrumental in building off and publicizing Justin Richie’s important takedown of RCP8.5 (when, I might add, most of the mainstream climate community’s first instinct was to dig in, slander and resist — groupthink is a thing).
I remain skeptical of Pielke but that could be a bias influenced by another voice that I trust, Ken Rice, aka, andthentheresphysics.com. He is quite critical of Pielke in general but does on occasion listen to what RPJ has to say. I should probably do my own assessment.
Yes, thanks for the civil and extended conversation.
One, I don’t think he was holding out this one publishing experience of his as dispositive proof. More like a good jumping off point to highlight a known issue in academic publishing in general but amplified where it concerns a politically sensitive topic like climate.
Two, my preferred response from the climaterati would have been one of either silence or introspection. Their, in my view, over-reaction actually served to buttress Brown’s point — that you need to toe the line on climate research, that it should broadly serve *the cause*.
Cool Noah. Ironically for your example, "basket-weaving" and all things weaving of slighter higher complexity than current textile machines, is where you might see very cool gains in productivity in the near future with AI ("AI-weaving") - so there also gains will outpace the real-estate sector.
Gay marriage legalization as a natural experiment?
That could be a good one!!
How about difference-in-differences regression where one of two previously quite similar (probably neighboring) jurisdictions introduced a major change in qualifying for a pension or a similar old-age benefit? However, I don't know of any such cases.
Yeah, I was thinking of something like that.
This study suggests that the happiness effect works for gay couples: https://www.washington.edu/news/2017/04/13/married-lgbt-older-adults-are-healthier-happier-than-singles-study-finds/.
But there are still co-founders. The article states: "Single LGBT adults were more likely to have a disability; to report lower physical, psychological, social and environmental quality of life; and to have experienced the death of a partner, especially among men." Not being married because your partner has died is certainly likely to be associated with unhappiness.
Also, I guess the control group we need is LGBT couples of a similar age when/where gay marriage was not possible - but that's complicated because of history (you'd be comparing with the 1990s or maybe the 2000s) and/or culture (comparing with more repressive regimes). Still tricky!
Also, are marriage and civil union so different that it'd be expected to make a huge impact? It's not like gay couples were forbidden from living like married couples before.
> there are still co-founders
Every relationship needs co-founders ;)
Maybe. But evolutionary speaking, the pathway to happiness should run something like
Your reproductive prospects and community standing are poor --> Less happy --> Do something --> You acquire a committed romantic partner --> The relationship is formally recognized with a ritual --> Your reproductive prospects and community standing are good --> More happy --> Chill
Gay marriage doesn't really improve community standing or reproductive prospects. The fact that they dissolve at higher rates than heterosexual marriages, particularly when children are involved, suggests this really does matter.
As someone who’s seen almost every episode of every Star Trek series, I enjoy Lower Decks even more than SNW. But I can admit that Strange New Worlds is probably a better show for most people.
There are two truly great moments of post-ENT Trek for me that speak to the spirit of TOS I had when watching as a kid: 1) George Kirk's sacrifice in the '09 movie. While the rest of Kelvin timeline has its issues, that moment was not one for me. 2) Pike's speech to the warring factions in the SNW pilot. I was hopeful for a Pike spinoff as soon as he was introduced in DISCO S2 because Mount clearly just has fun in the role, but that scene before a global audience on the edge...masterful.
Any lamentations for what could have been with Axanar?
Completely agree on the Star Trek stuff. I think one key trick Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds pinched from the Orville is a reappreciation that Trek is basically a workplace drama, and that the place to develop character and especially relationships is during downtime, while people are just chatting and goofing off. The natural cycle in life (even in war) are for people to build bonds during quieter times which then pay off in stressful times. (For real life example look at the US Army 'repple-depple' replacement system in WW2 where people were sent straight to the front with people they hadn't met before. Results were awful). Discovery and Picard's 'all drama, all the time' philosophy are fun for plot and action, but terrible for character work, and TV shows without interesting characters and relationships don't ever shine
On marriage and happiness, let me settle it:
A happy marriage makes you happier; an unhappy marriage makes you less happy.
robertsdavidn.substack.com/about
To tie together two themes of this post, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks are great in part because they’re idealistic, optimistic, progressive visions in contrast to the doomer vibes of so much 2010s culture.
So far DS9 still has the Trek crown in my book, but if the current trajectory of SNW continues, it will even surpass that high mark after 5-7 seasons.
I think people really under estimate how dangerous the lack of diversity of thought is in the sciences right now. As the article mentions there is some reframing of findings and papers but it is generally not outright fraud. However this is much worse than people realize. For three reasons.
First, many academics that are not outright advocates have simply abandoned certain areas of study. I stopped studying race and policing because of it was too political and not a productive use of my time. Many academics has done similar things in politically sensitive topics if they are unwilling to toe the line politically. This leaves those areas of study to advocates.
Second, the methodological standards are screed such that if your findings are not consistent with the mainstream you get held to different standards. Again, this drives people who are unwilling to toe the line to study less political topics.
This leads to third issue, which is the most impactful. Science works a little bit like a survey. As long as you sample is not biased you can analyze the results and be reasonably confident in your findings. This is no longer the case for entire fields of study.
In any study you will get random variation i your results that are due to chance (this why there is p value). If there is even a small systematic bias, where people do not publish findings that are unpopular (or in fields that are dominated by activists just round file those findings) it does not take much to dramatically screw the results for the body of literature as a whole.
I think this is a much bigger Issue than people realize because it is just a bunch of small choices, made at the margins, that collectively skew entire areas of research.
I think of Roland Fryer (unpopular findings around use of lethal force and race), Matt Hickman at Seattle U (called out the DOJ for shoddy research related to race and use of force) or the James at WSU ( again unpopular findings around rave and use of force) and think who needs that kind of hassle. Now most of the above mentioned researchers just plug along and keep going because they are exceptional. But for less tenacious or gifted researches ( or untenures) this sends a message to stay in line. At the margins researchers fall into line or just research other things.
This has really made question certain fields of study. Hopefully I’m wrong.
I agree that science and scientific journalism is reaching a crisis. This Nature article documents nonreproducibility of scientific studies by other investigators.
https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.19970!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/533452a.pdf
Regarding man-made global warming, the arguments have persisted for 40 years and without a political champion. There is little question that the globe is warming in the current era, there has been a plethora of science which calls to question the role of CO2 and the greenhouse effect. (I do support alternative energy due the release of toxins and heavy metals associated with mining and burning fossil fuels.) What is disturbing is that there is a force with significant inertia which enforces this movement towards alternative energy which has yet to be identified. I fear there is a new era in which policy triumphs over truth. The parties and the mechanisms behind it are yet to be understood.
"calls to question the role of CO2 and the greenhouse effect." Do you mean the size of the effect or that there is an effect at all?
CO2 contribution to global warming, as a gas, appears to be quite small. Here are some interesting threads to follow up on. That the earth has had multiple periods of warming and cooling and glaciation well accepted. The wiki entry on Quaternary Glaciation has a nice graph correlating temperature and atmospheric CO2 over the course of 400,000 years. However it should be noted that CO2 rise follows the temperature rise, not preceding it. Note that for our current era, the warming period began approximately 10,000 years ago, which also is associated with a CO2 rise. Perhaps that last rising blip is associated with human industrial activity. It appears that our current existence happens to occur during the earth’s warming period.
Here are papers which compare earth surface temperature and atmospheric CO2 vs surface temperature and solar activity. Solar activity appears to have a much better fit.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255583630_Solar_Changes_and_the_Climate
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2005GL023429
Other interesting correlations? We are also in another catastrophic extinction event. Could humans be responsible through environmental pollution. Perhaps to a certain extent. But the extinction event began about 10,000 years ago in which there is the disappearance of large mammals including the mastodon, mammoth, ground sloth, and the saber-toothed tiger.
These correlations don’t prove causation, but there may be a common event which could explain it all.
This sounds like you would increase the error bar around any estimate of the optimal tax on net emissions. Seems reasonable to me that the estimate is uncertain. Possible for this reason or just political feasibility Nordhaus starts with a pretty low tax that only reaches "optimality" after some time. In reality we would want to be constantly adjusting it as more data accumulates and models improve.
Again, the ostensible reason for the carbon tax is to combat global warming, though there are many real benefits to moving away from fossil fuels. But I find this to be the real curiosity:
The two papers referenced above are responses in support of the Porter paper, which is behind a paywall. But for 30 years, the greenhouse gas theory was felt to be minuscule effect. Then Al Gore does a documentary in 2006, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Then some unknown higher mechanism puts into place a carbon tax, ESG investment score, and spawns an entire new industries poised to favor Elon Musk as he was barely getting into Tesla. Now if there was going to be a lobby group who had the deep pockets to fight this, it would be oil and gas. How and why they failed is a mystery. But here we are.
Regarding the tax scheme, as you suggest it begins with a low tax and then rises, similar as it was done in healthcare, when the penalties become onerous. My understanding is that the carbon tax is used to create tax credits or subsidies to purchase “green” cars and the like. So $3 gas is ok. But with time, it will rise to $4, 5, 7, 9, etc. One will have no choice at some point but to adopt an electric car and such. The alternative is to be forced out of the economy. As we all know, government programs never get smaller...
Regarding marriage & happiness: Instrumental variables regression is another way of getting at causality, but one needs to find an arguably valid instrument. My own recent research -- which you could google if you like, but the best-developed paper of mine on this is the one on the sensitivity of inference in multiple regression inference with respect to non-exogeneity in the regressors; google doi:10.3390/econometrics8010011. This work allows you to at least quantify whether your hypothesis test rejection p-value is robust to instrument validity flaws. {new paragraph} In any case, how about retail jewelry prices -- or diamond prices -- as an instrument for marriage rates? Wouldn't the diamond ring price be at least somewhat correlated with the marriage rate, but largely uncorrelated with that (unobserved) underlying factor driving happier people to be more likely to get married? Should I get an unwary grad student to look into this?
Unfortunately diamonds are a cartel with entirely false limitation of supply so I'd be skeptical.
I've ben a super Star Trek fan starting as a kid since they first premiered TOS. Participated in the campaign to get TOS reinstated by the networks in the late sixties...
Yeah, SNW and Lower Decks are the best Star Trek of the 21st Century IMHO. (I just watched the first episode of the new Lower Decks season!). The crossover episode was so fabulous!
I'll have to give Picard 3rd season a try. I couldn't get thru the first season. I also struggled with the first few seasons of Discovery and gave up on that. Maybe I'll have to try it again someday.
But with SNW and Lower Decks, is so wonderful to see a can do and optimistic spirit of the future. It is so rare. We need so much more of that.
As a Star Trek fan myself, I definitely reccomend Picard Season 3 if you were a fan of the TNG series. You don't even really have to bother watching the first 2 seasons as 95% of the characters and plotlines were pretty much jettisoned.
Similar tastes to you, I think and I'm unsure if you would like Picard 3. Personally I liked seeing the TNG gang again, and Jeri Ryan was great as 7 of 9 again, but I disliked the melodrama it shared with Disco and Picard 1 & 2 and the whole grimdark ethos it shares with those shows (Starfleet are stupid, there's a hostage execution scene, the ending is very dark if you think about for more than 10 seconds). Also a couple of the TNG gang make very odd decisions which are not remotely in character.
In fairness, you don't really want to think about Starfleet or the Federation too deeply even in 90s Star Trek. Starfleet admirals and captains constantly go rogue; they attempt more than once to mount a military coup and take over completely, each time the only thing that can stop them is another Starfleet commander. The organization never seems to suffer any repercussions from any of that. And there's a lot of signs the Federation might be a totalitarian communist society, despite its protestations to the contrary. Like, outside of trivialities like an occasional bar, we don't really see businesses at any point and the Ferengi were originally meant to be menacing (because what's scarier than capitalists...).
Still, we ignore these things and get some fun out of it, so it's no big deal.
In England and Wales (which is most of the UK) there is reverse correlation: across roughly the same period, "average ratings of life satisfaction, feeling that the things done in life are worthwhile and happiness generally increased (improved) year-on-year"[1] while "The number of people getting married is at the lowest rate on record"[2]
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/april2021tomarch2022
[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/articles/marriageandcivilpartnershipstatusenglandandwalescensus2021/2023-02-22
There is so much good in this post I can hardly stand it.
The "everything has to be doom" is so damn key:
https://www.mattball.org/search?q=doom
<spoilers>
But, there were things about Picard S3 that grated on me -- e.g., when Riker snapped at Picard. Just out of character. Still loved all of Picard, and agree that Strange New Worlds is the best (imho, since STNG)
I did think that Riker snap was out of character.
Maybe the deterioration in Jonathan Frackes' face reflects a parallel deterioration in frontal cortex emotional control. 🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷
I appreciate your nuanced view of Patrick Brown but I think he has done more to hurt the cause of climate science than help, if for no other reason than considering that most of the people that have come to his defense are contrarians, e.g. Matt Ridley, Bjorn Lomborg, and Roger Pielke Jr. , not to mention that conservative media is having a hay day.
Here are some different takes offered by what I consider moderate websites and blog sites.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-scientists-pour-cold-water-on-claims-of-journal-bias-by-author-of-wildfires-study/
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2023/09/07/they-made-me-do-it/
I am a big fan of Zeke Hausfather, Brown's predecessor at thebreakthrough.org He weighed in on twitter without really getting down in the mud, https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1699820551236428254?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Finally, you might want to read an op-ed that Patrick Brown wrote for thebreakthrough.org back in April. https://thebreakthrough.org/journal/climate-change-banned-words/science-climate-change In hindsight, one might wonder if this whole act/stunt was premeditated. In my opinion, in trying to clean house or make his point he has basically thrown climate science under the bus.
Journal and publishing bias is just a fact. It used to be that even the Guardian knew that the whole enterprise was bent, they wrote a major investigative piece on it based on the hacked emails:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review
Academics viewing peer review more like a weapon in a battle than a process for improving accuracy is a long established problem that crops up frequently in climatology. Brown is only saying what's been obvious for years. Even decades ago when McIntyre was invited to be a reviewer for the IPCC, he requested the data for a paper that was being incorporated. The IPCC teams endlessly gaslighted him and he never was given the data. The hacked emails eventually showed a conspiracy behind the scenes to stop him, with climatologists calling him "Lord Voldemort" and saying they should be careful with their emails. They even told him wanting to review climate data was inappropriate for a peer reviewer.
https://climateaudit.org/2007/03/28/accessing-hegerl-data/
None of this looks like the fantasy ideal of science we are sold by Star Trek.
I don’t understand the logic of your first sentence. How does getting support from particular people help or hurt the science? It seems to me that how prestigious journals respond to his critique is the true test. Do they make a point of publishing more complex, truer views or do they continue to publish impact papers using outdated implausible scenarios (as an example of sticking to the acceptable narrative)?
Put another way, his intentions were pretty clear—to improve the published research so that it is more reflective of reality rather than skewed towards an activist purpose. And his recommendations reflect that:
“But climate scientists shouldn’t have to exile themselves from academia to publish the most useful versions of their research. We need a culture change across academia and elite media that allows for a much broader conversation on societal resilience to climate.
The media, for instance, should stop accepting these papers at face value and do some digging on what’s been left out. The editors of the prominent journals need to expand beyond a narrow focus that pushes the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And the researchers themselves need to start standing up to editors, or find other places to publish.”
That is probably a fair criticism. Based on their reputations among mainstream climate scientists, I assumed that they would automatically jump to Brown's defense and not consider the "facts." I admit it is hard to get to the truth in matters such as this but here is what bothers me the most about the situation.
Brown defended his approach to the reviewers to leave certain variables out and then turns around and claims that the journal is biased based on the fact that he left those same variables out. You can't have it both ways. Further, the points made by his co-author, Prof Steven Davis, in the carbonbrief.org account give me pause:
------
He says that Brown “may have made decisions that he thought would help the paper be published, but we don’t know whether a different paper would have been rejected”. He adds:
“I don’t think he has much evidence to support his strong claims that editors and reviewers are biased.”
Davis says that he “wasn’t involved in strategic decisions to exclude factors from the study” and that Brown’s subsequent claims “took me by surprise”.
---------
I would encourage you to read all of my links to get a full appreciation of where I'm coming from.
p.s.
I'm a retired research engineer that worked with high-energy density scientists and fusion researchers for 34 years. I have a lot of respect for the integrity of those scientists and the scientific process of peer-review and publication. Is it perfect? No, but I have a lot more respect for people like Zeke Hausfather who work within the system to improve it. Skirmishes like this that play out in the court of public opinion detract from the main message of climate science, i.e. It's real, it's us, it's serious, but there is hope.
I found this reasonable. You might too https://tamingcomplexity.substack.com/p/are-scientific-journals-biased?publication_id=1598411&utm_campaign=1136572&r=d5wb0
Thanks, I appreciate that. I must admit that our exchange has elicited some more self-reflection on my part but as I stated initially, I still believe Brown’s actions have done more harm than good because it has caused more polarization among the community. I feel the same way about many of the contrarians, e.g., Steven Koonin. He claims that he is trying to improve the science but I believe it just fuels more polarization and does very little to improve the science. I avoid Twitter/X because of the knee-jerk, emotional responses that it elicits. I try to find moderate voices that I trust, e.g., Zeke Hausfather and live there. As Vaclav Smil says, solutions never come from the extreme, they only come from the rational and reasonable middle. Neither doomsdayism or denial are helpful.
I still question Brown’s motivation and don’t respect his method. At the end of the day, the author is responsible for what gets published. He basically has added another single example of questionable, anecdotal evidence of bias that exists in scientific publishing but has done nothing to get at the extent, pervasiveness or seriousness of that bias. Some studies have tried to do just that in a more systematic way, e.g., https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-016-1880-1 . But again, as with many things, you have to read past the headline or title to get at the nuance.
p.s.
I just saw an article in WaPo by Shannon Osaka. One of the points that she makes that got lost in the fight over bias, is that Brown and company are trying to point out that in addition to mitigation and emission reduction we are going to have to get smarter about adaptation, e.g., taking more precautions to avoid major fires and planning for more severe weather, In e.g., hurricanes. Again, there must be better way to get your point across.
A year from now I doubt this particular episode will have much salience. It will be interesting to see forthcoming papers and their corresponding news releases in light of this issue though.
Hausfather is on my list of trusted voices. As is Pielke. I only saw one presentation by Koonin and wasn’t impressed. Interestingly both Hausfather and Pielke were instrumental in building off and publicizing Justin Richie’s important takedown of RCP8.5 (when, I might add, most of the mainstream climate community’s first instinct was to dig in, slander and resist — groupthink is a thing).
Thanks for the civil conversation.
I remain skeptical of Pielke but that could be a bias influenced by another voice that I trust, Ken Rice, aka, andthentheresphysics.com. He is quite critical of Pielke in general but does on occasion listen to what RPJ has to say. I should probably do my own assessment.
Yes, thanks for the civil and extended conversation.
I would have two more points in reply:
One, I don’t think he was holding out this one publishing experience of his as dispositive proof. More like a good jumping off point to highlight a known issue in academic publishing in general but amplified where it concerns a politically sensitive topic like climate.
Two, my preferred response from the climaterati would have been one of either silence or introspection. Their, in my view, over-reaction actually served to buttress Brown’s point — that you need to toe the line on climate research, that it should broadly serve *the cause*.
I thought Robinson Meyer's interview was nuanced and tough but fair.
Cool Noah. Ironically for your example, "basket-weaving" and all things weaving of slighter higher complexity than current textile machines, is where you might see very cool gains in productivity in the near future with AI ("AI-weaving") - so there also gains will outpace the real-estate sector.
Tks - will check out Below Decks and Strange New Worlds. Enjoyed Picard 3.
Re: China. What it needs is a bigger service sector. Not sure that can happen without rule of law and property rights.
Yeah I'd say Picard seasons 1 and 2 were like a Patrick Stewart farewell tour that never ends.