Tim Lambert
tlambert
Posts by this author
February 19, 2009
This post is some more notes on a reply to the badly flawed "Main Street Bias" paper.
The authors claim that it is plausible that the Lancet paper's sampling scheme could have missed 91% of the houses in Iraq. (That is, their parameter n, the number of households in the unsampled area divided by…
February 18, 2009
This is a guest post from John Mashey.
If there isn't some hidden gotcha (there might be, I'm no expert), it's one
of the best single things I've heard.
It's especially good for places with a lot of coal, who use concrete, who
are near the ocean, and might have use for softer water for desalination…
February 18, 2009
Pure Poison is a new blog covering the intellectual dishonesty of Australia's punditocrats. Tobias Ziegler covers Marohasy's response to Bond University's categorical denial of her claim that Jon Jenkins had been fired for his opinions:
But her most disingenuous statement was the following:
My…
February 17, 2009
Frank Tipler tells us:
Last year, Reid Bryson, the "father of climatology," and a leading AGW skeptic, passed away. Bryson's actual achievements are the hallmark of a genuine scientist as opposed to the work done by AGW advocates.
A true scientist demonstrates his knowledge by using it to make…
February 12, 2009
Eric Pooley writes about the consensus amongst economists on global warming. While they disagree on exactly what we should do, they agree on two things: the cost of inaction is much greater than the cost of action, and the cost of action is only about 1% of GDP. He concludes:
Journalists have…
February 12, 2009
Despiting having no supporting data, Lott claimed over and over and over again that merely brandishing a gun was sufficient to scare off a criminal 98% of the time. In 2002, he conducted a survey that he claims gave a very similar number -- 95%. But nobody can replicate this result. And by "…
February 12, 2009
After Lott's lawsuit against Freakonomics was thrown out of court, he tried for a doever by amending his complaint. The judge said no, so Lott appealed. And now he's lost the appeal as well.
More discussion at Volokh.
February 12, 2009
John Quiggin is running an appeal for donations to help the survivors of the terrible fires in Victoria. I've donated there.
February 10, 2009
Hey, remember Joanne Nova? Well she recently emailed Skeptico:
I recently received an email from Joanne Nova, who writes a blog where she claims global warming isnât caused by human created greenhouse gas emissions. In her first email to me she wrote âthere is no empirical evidence left that…
February 10, 2009
Zachary Roth was intrigued by this passage from a Fred Barnes column in the Weakly Standard:
Democrats couldn't hide their self-consciousness about the excesses of their own bill. Supporters made few TV appearances to defend it and rarely talked about specific spending items. Obama sounded like Al…
February 8, 2009
Russell Seitz sends me a poster he made for Heartland's denialist conference.
I wonder how long before Heartland put in on their own page?
February 8, 2009
As promised a little while ago, I've copied everything here and shut down the old blog. I've set up redirects so links to the old blog end up at the right place. Links to
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lott98update0.html#0112 Deltoid 0.0, using straight html, which looked like this,…
February 6, 2009
Debora Mackenzie, in the New Scientist reports on the AAPOR censure:
AAPOR charges that by refusing "to answer even basic questions" about data and methods, Burnham is preventing other researchers from evaluating his conclusions.
According to New Scientist's investigation, however, Burnham has sent…
February 6, 2009
Unfortunately, the Journal of Peace Research has published the badly flawed "Main Street Bias" paper. My earlier criticisms still apply, so I'm reposting them. Consider this the first draft of a reply to their paper.
The authors argue that main street bias could reasonably produce a factor of 3…
February 6, 2009
Bug girl writes about a new paper on insecticide resistance of bedbugs. It turns out the resistance mechanism (kdr) means that they are resistant to DDT and pyrethroids. She concludes:
DDT will be utterly useless against bed bugs, so people should stop asking for it.
We're going to need a lot…
February 4, 2009
I asked Mary Losch (chair of AAPOR's Standards Committee) to comment on my previous post
I have read your entry and would note that the links you provided did
not supply the questionnaire items but rather a simple template (as
noted in the heading). The Johns Hopkins report provides only…
February 4, 2009
The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) has put out a press release alleging that Gilbert Burnham (who is not a member of the AAPOR) violated the AAPOR's code of ethics. What did he do? Their press release states:
Mary E. Losch, chair of AAPOR's Standards Committee, noted that…
February 3, 2009
Now featured in the news section for Heartland's Denialist Conference is Frank Bi's parody video.
Check it out before they take it down!
Update: Show's over. They replaced the video.
February 3, 2009
Last year I wrote about Roger Pielke Jr's abuse of draft reports for point-scoring purposes. Coby Beck catches him doing it again:
His latest effort at sabotaging productive discourse on climate science and policy is a really low blow, putting to rest any lingering hopes one might have had that he…
February 2, 2009
Jim Prall writes:
I've been updating my 'faces of climate science' website, with an ever growing list of names and citation stats. I've just completed a big update in which I've tracked down nine open letters and declarations on climate - five 'inactivist' and four 'activist' - and added tags…
January 29, 2009
The usual denialists (e.g. The Register) are excited because some guy they never heard of before has joined Inhofe's merry band, writing:
"I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made."
M. J. Murphy has some information about Theon. It seems…
January 28, 2009
I asked the Bond University registrar about Marohasy's claim that:
For his opinion,
Professor Jenkins received an official reprimand from the Bond
University Registrar and then was informed last Friday that his
adjunct status had been revoked.
The registrar replied:
Dr Jenkins was a member of…
January 28, 2009
It seems like only yesterday we got to 10,000 comments and now John Mashey has posted the 50,000th comment, with more content than most blog posts. And here's his acceptance speech:
Thanks to all. I always hoped my efforts would be rewarded, although I never expected this!
CafePress is HQ'd about…
January 28, 2009
Gareth Renowden tells the story of Monckton & the case of the missing Curry.
January 25, 2009
Remember Jon Jenkins and his sixth degree polynomial fit? Well, Jennifer Marohasy is presenting him as a martyr for the denialist cause.
Interestingly Bond University has a new name for its business and IT faculties, The Faculty of Business, Technology & Sustainable Development, but apparently…
January 24, 2009
There are less than 100 comments to go before we reach 50,000 comments here at Deltoid. The tradition around here is for some sort of award, so if you are number 50,000 and you include a valid email address you will a prize something like this.
January 24, 2009
Who, who has won the coveted Creamy Baileys No-Bell Peace Prize for Science? I'm not going to give the surprise away, so click here to find out!
January 20, 2009
Eos has just published the results of a survey of 3146 Earth Scientists conducted by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman. The graph below shows the results for this question:
Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
The 97% of…