Noted But Not Null

"As a scientist you are taught not to answer questions, but to question answers." — Anonymous

May we all find the wisdom to do the same.

Of late Sandy has been writing, apparently from Industry talking points, against proposed health insurance reforms. It was a double loss then to find her ignoring contrary arguments and asserting exaggerations and distortions as facts to reinforce fear and uncertainty. It is a pleasure to find her back in the science shop where the clarity of her writing about methodology and data versus abstracts and press releases is a joy and needed anodyne to the media hysteria that rules our discourse.
--ml

The Aether Asks

Surgeon General Koop looks for a new war for the Public Health warriors. Chooses Fat People. Lots of trees die. Electrons are splatted against high tech antennas near you. New twenty seven color presses are sold to Glossy Magazines. Etc. Etc. Etc. and so on ad infinitum.
So Meagan McArdle interviews Paul Campos for the Atlantic. A world of bloggers famous, infamous and nebbish wade in (even Dum Luks) with every ceivable (con and incon) position, pov, and measured incendiarical remark.
One remark that flies by is the notion that Insurance companies -- as a matter of business survival -- measure the cost of risk factors to a nicety of accuracy lest they lose money. Therefore, since they charge a high premium to fat people, it is obvious, despite the most credible scientific studies to the contrary (See the Obesity Paradox series for chapter and verse), that fat people cost a lot of health care.
Mull that one.
Consider that insurance companies, like other casinos, expect to take in more money than they pay out. So of course they would charge a high premium to someone they knew was terminally ill. But... they want to be your pal so you continue to send in your premium. So rather than be seen to turn the oldster with terminal gaffufleitis out into the cold they look around. Who is an easy mark? Somebody who everybody knows is a health risk but who statistically has less illness than other people? Why fat people! So you raise their premiums to pad the P&L, just in case your cousin's kid didn't didn't do as well on that actuarial course as claimed.

Wha... I'M being cynical?
No way. Cynical would be if I claimed they paid for the marketing that supports the war on obesity.

oh.

wait...

--ml

A Lonely Voice Cries Out In The Wild

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Biology Lab by the Dozens

Scene: A bucolic college in Ohio, one of three thousand seven hundred and forty eight "Harvard's of the west" ...
Time: The peak of the Kennedy Years, before Johnson passed all his legislation.

In a small Science lab/lecture hall very late in June or early in July when humidity has exceeded temperature to the nth degree, a smattering of ca-twenty-year-olds forgather. They are attired in sandals of all descriptions, shorts and tees, Indian cotton, and the studiously off hand serape.
It is their first lab for Bio 101, i.e.: The real world for naiv imbeciles.
Seated on the black stone counter is a buxom daughter of a successful Valkyrie. Six foot in an age of five foot seven. Blond ropes in braids any lynch mob would die for (so to speak) on her head. In khaki shorts, and a light Norwegian sweater, She sits cross legged.
After the routines of pedagogy are complied with she begins the lab. Her clear eyes, that shame the welkin's hue, lose focus in the mists of last night. She heaves a great, welcome, sigh. Her lips part into a wide display of even, white, seraphic dentition, and announces:

Sex is wonderful.

The truth of this overwhelms me.
Even now.
Blessings upon her.
--ml
tags: aphorisms, , Dum Luks Stockpot, science

Ah So-o-o-o Desu ka?

Gad, I admire John Hawks!

The reason, at least in my mind, is that science is never unanimous. Consensus itself is a meaningless concept in science. Even a crank can be right, if his predictions come true. Science depends on the concept of testability, which in my mind makes it the most special system of knowledge ever devised. It is good that science is conservative, and it is good that it is slow, because both these things contribute to claims being tested properly.

Read the whole thing -- not to be ashamed for assuming so much too soon. but to learn how to have true patience.
If only I could. Sigh.
--ml
tags: what is science, Dum Luks Community

Analects of Management XXVI

How to become a consultant

1933 was a frenzied year for Earle. After he earned his Masters in chemistry from MIT he married Dorothy, dropped out of MIT's Doctoral program and got a first job as a chemical engineer for the Union Paste Company.
His first day on the job he got the plant tour with emphasis on the research lab where he would be working.
"Now, here is the problem we really hope you will solve," his boss said. "This is our best new glue. It's brand new. It does every thing we want it to do in terms of application ease, strength and reliability. It is inexpensive to manufacture. There is only one problem. It is green. Every one knows that glue is brown. This stuff is a green so putrid that the sales department won't even try to offer it."
Somewhat diffidently Earle spoke, "Have you tried putting a red dye in to make it brown?"
No they hadn't. Once they did, it worked and the new product was a great success. Earle more than made his first year's salary for the company his first day on the job by applying a knowledge of color mixing he acquired in kindergarten.
Earle told me that a consultant's job is to get the client to restate his question in such a way that it answers itself.
--ml
tags: aphorisms, science, what is science