Fractal Fumento

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Steve Reuland provides useful context for Michael Fumento’s recent discussion of the liberalization of science. Reuland does by actually reading the study Fumento discusses, and finding (and this is not surprising) that it does not say what Fumento claims it says.

The irony here is that Fumento accuses the study’s authors of slicing out data to make a political point. And then Fumento, with breathtaking audacity, commits the precise same sin.

This is not the first time. (Hat tip Tim Lambert for the fractal joke and the link.)

What Should Journalists Do?

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Good comments from James Annan that are both spot on and completely useless, I think, regarding what journalists should do with the latest hot results from Science and Nature:

I think the golden rule to remember is that a new item of research, even if it’s appeared in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal, is not in itself a new “truth” about the world. It is only the current opinion of a couple of researchers working in a particular area. It’s always worth bearing in mind that the researchers themselves might change their minds in a few months and even if they don’t, it is quite possible that the rest of the scientific community will decide they are talking nonsense and either criticise or (what is perhaps worse) ignore the study.

The obvious implication is that I should ignore the hot new paper that everyone’s talking about, and wait a couple of years to see how well it holds up in the long run. It would also be in the best interest of the trees if they’d all agree to stay short and didn’t have to waste all that energy on a big long trunk. But as soon as one grows a bit taller, it shades out the others, they die, and only trees with grow-tall genes make it through to the next round.

So everyone’s going to jump on the Bryden paper, unable to resist the chance for a “Europe in Deep Freeze” headline. Or the chance to blame global warming on trees.

It would be helpful to the whole discussion, I think, if the big journals wouldn’t publish splashy papers that contain small results, like the Bryden and methane papers. Those two papers are interesting examples of the problem – interesting and suggestive results with a lot more research needed to flesh out the details. We journalists seem incapable of distinguishing between such papers and the much more broad and solidified results. (Consider this an invitation to you climate science types in the audience to suggest a recent Science or Nature paper that meets this second criterion – or else argue that there really are no such things?)

Water Supplies in Africa

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Apropos a long and predictably unproductive comment thread, a new study published on line by Science today:

Using predicted precipitation changes, we calculate that decrease in perennial drainage will significantly affect present surface water access across 25% of Africa by the end of this century.

I don’t want to make too big a deal of this. I think Vörösmarty et al. were right six years ago when they wrote:

(R)ising water demands greatly outweigh greenhouse warming in defining the state of global water systems to 2025. Consideration of direct human impacts on global water supply remains a poorly articulated but potentially important facet of the larger global change question.

Whatever the global climate change component, natural variability on decadal scales along with population growth and movement pose serious problems.

Erdos, Lambert and Fleck

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Re the degrees of separation game, Tim Lambert points out that he’s got an Erdos number of three: Lambert – Stanton – Stinson – Erdos.

If you really bend the rules*, I’ve got an Erdos number of five: Erdos -> Peter Palfy->Jan Saxl->Pavel Etingof->Alexander Kirillov. Which means I’ve got a Lambert number of – what – eight?

Lambert – Stanton – Stinson – Erdos – Peter Palfy – Jan Saxl – Pavel Etingof – Alexander Kirillov – John Fleck.

Gavin’s won the beverage of choice with chain with four degrees of separation between McIntyre and Mann, and I’m still awaiting someone with the patience and energy to find the William Connolley-Luboš Motl links.

*And by “bend the rules,” I mean “make up a completely new set in order to allow this to happen”. Back in 2000 and 2001, I was volunteering on the GNOME project, and Sasha Kirillov and I co-wrote the GNOME users guide. To make this work, you’ve got to allow software documentation. But, as I said before, it’s my game. I get to make up the rules.

Go Brandon!

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A comment worth pulling out onto the front page, about the latest success of New Mexico’s own Brandon Leslie (this is distance running for those not familiar with the jargon):

Well it just keeps getting better for Brandon, He ran in the USA Mens X-C Championships on Feb 20 in the Bronx, NY, with bitter cold windy. He passed Abdi who dropped out and then placed 4 seconds behind Mat Garbielson to take 7th place, When it was all said and done and winners decided not to double, a spot on TEAM USA opened up for Brandon for the World XC Champiopnships to be held April 1-2 in Japan.
Go Brandon, We are all running in your shoes with you every step to the GOLD!

Daybook

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weather: That storm, she’s a flirt, but it’s pretty clear she’s not going to put out. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but there’s a story somewhere in the crazy psychotic way the dry weather is making us feel. Two days of measurable precipitation in Albuquerque since Nov. 1. Two.

music: The podGoober project’s gem of the day is John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Bonus gem is some lovely tenor saxophone work by Joe Henderson.

style: “Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.” S and W (I think I am not good about following this rule.)

word: obsequious: “obedient or respectful to an excessive degree”- This is a good way to characterize our bemused politeness Sunday on our bike ride toward the strange man in the white pickup who stopped to wait for us to cross. And wait. And wait.

spring: Not sure why, but the subject of Candy Maldonado came up the other day at work. A lifetime .254 hitter, he’s not the sort of ballplayer whose career one normally follows, but Lissa and I were living in LA and falling in love and going to Dodger games in the mid-80s when Maldonado was there. Lissa had a special secret Dodger stadium parking place, outside the ballpark on a side street. We used to go early and watch batting practice.