Weird Science

Thank Ganesha It's Friday!

"Turn off the TV and pick up a book for a change!"

The "Studies Show..." Scam

In the annals of mental illness, one of my all-time favorites is the delusion that "science" has "proven" the correctness of entirely partisan political views. I suppose that sort of thing has been going on ever since the "scientific method" first gained widespread acceptance as a mode of intellectual inquiry, but it certainly seems to have become more commonplace. Probably an artifact of the Information Age.

Hardly a week goes by without a major scandal hitting the news about "scientists" pulling some sort of scam involving "studies" that turn out to be utter crap. Recent high-profile examples involved such politically-charged topics as genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), vaccines, fracking for oil, and (of course) guns.

The problem is by no means limited to the so-called "hard" sciences, either. The social sciences, in fact, may be even more riddled with this kind of nonsense.

The way real science is supposed to work is roughly as follows:

Apparently, a lot of researchers in the social sciences could use a refresher on the "gather data" part, since a staggering percentage of published, peer-reviewed social science "research" generates results that cannot be replicated.

And yet, people routinely pounce on these sorts of scams when they are reported in the media and use them to advance a political agenda. That the study's results seem implausible or even counter-intuitive doesn't matter in the slightest. What seems to matter most to many advocates is being able to throw down the "studies show" card
in debate as if it were the ultimate trump.

Real scientists are appalled by this sort of thing, of course...

"Seriously, how stupid are you people?"

Some people are very stupid indeed, Sir Francis...and they appear to outnumber the rest of us by an alarming margin...

Cartoonist Scott Adams is an expert at deftly skewering idiocy. Here, he does so to the slavish faith so many people have in "studies" and in what they purportedly "show"...

"Let me get this straight: A study showed that most studies don't show jack shit?"

Precisely...

And Then There Were Four

The 2015 Major League Baseball playoffs are down to the Final Four teams. The American League Championship Series between my beloved Kansas City Royals and the Toronto Blue Jays begins tonight in Kansas City, while the National League Championship Series between the Chicago Cubs and the New York Mets begins on Saturday in New York.

For those of us who follow the sport of baseball with near-religious fervor, baseball parks are the cathedrals where we worship. Herewith a glimpse of the venues that still have hopes of hosting a championship celebration...

Kauffman Stadium

Kansas City, Missouri

Rogers Centre

Toronto, Ontario Canada

Citi Field

Queens, New York

New York

Wrigley Field

Chicago, Illinois

"Kauffman Stadium is clearly the nicest of those."

It absolutely is, yes...

Higher Education

From the excellent comic strip Non Sequitur, by Wiley Miller, which you should read every day, as I do (even though Wiley is a squishy liberal).

Until Next Time...

In 1967, my hero Maynard Ferguson moved his family to Madanapalle, India in order to take a music teaching post at the Rishi Valley School. It was during this period of his life that he became a disciple of the Indian gura Sathya Sai Baba. For the remainder of his career, Maynard would incorporate Indian musical styles and themes into original compositions.

In January of 1983, Maynard recorded a performance of his touring big band at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. The album that resulted from that recording, Live From San Francisco, is one of his most popular, not least because of the unusually clear sound quality (not easy to achieve on live recordings, especially in those days).

Today's send-off from that 1983 show is Maynard's original composition "Ganesha," which incorporates a Hindu mantra focused on the deity Ganesha. Enjoy...