Yes, your summary is excellent.
And I thank you for your entrance into this discussion, and I note that this isn’t the first time you have stepped in in similar circumstances. It’s appreciated.
As I say, far from a no-brainer, in the original thread the alternate explanation was offered that the numbers were a lie, the result of a conspiracy between the newspaper and the police.
In my read of the thread, his overarching point is that liberals are equally likely to deny science, and that it only appears otherwise because liberals predominate on this board. I asked you because you volunteered that you were “with Bricker on this one.”
Your original points 1 and 2 ( 1) The concealed-carry permits went into effect; 2) Crime rates didn’t rise) appear to be accurate.
Do you agree that the mere observation of 1 and 2 has nothing to do with science? By extension, do you agree that accepting or rejecting 1 and 2 has nothing to do with science?
This was not directed at me, I realize, but tracking numbers is not science. Surely you don’t consider the inventorying that I did during my days working at Target as science, do you?
What they purport to do or not do with the data is entirely independent of whether it is science.
Honestly, I don’t see how.
Hypothesis: Allowing guns into bars will increase shooting crimes.
Experiment: Allow guns into bars.
Result: The number of shooting crimes did not rise.
Conclusion: The hypothesis is false.
Looks pretty reasonable to me. The very idea of guns in bars makes my skin crawl, but I accept the data as presented provided there isn’t anything questionable about the methodology.
That’s the thing. You came into this thread with a potentially valid related-to-the-op complaint, but upon examination of the thread you complained about, there was a single example of someone sane who returned and didn’t acknowledge. Der Trihs doesn’t count as an example of anything but a failure of the mental health system in this country.
I understand what you’re asking, to an extent. What I don’t understand is how two examples of a guy (one of whom is known to act insane) doubling down in the face of a years worth of statistics going the wrong way for them compare in any reasonable way to the topic of “science denialism”, aside from your occasional apparently compulsive need to prove the SDMB is generally a liberal bastion (which it is, mind).
Most of my reaction to this is my inability to consider Der Trihs as a serious poster. He literally doesn’t count for any arguments concerning the composition of the SDMB or the hypocrisy of any faction, since he isn’t IN any faction other than “insane”. FXMastermind and margin and a few others are also on that list.
To call it a strawman would be valid if the deniers never say that, but in fact they did, they came several times with the point that “we call it” or “they call it climate change now” the evidence and the testimony shows that it was a Republican political point, nowhere on the discussion the deniers did acknowledged that when confronted with the evidence.
Then your preconception doesn’t apply, glad that there is someone to tell you that.
Nitpick: not necessarily. It’s entirely possible that the number of shooting crimes did in fact increase due to guns in bars, but also decreased due to X, Y, Z factors over the same time period so that the total number doesn’t vary markedly. Just looking at the number of shooting crimes is not good enough to draw a conclusion re: the original hypothesis.
While technically following the scientific method under the loosest definition possible, it’s extremely pathetic. Also, I know that you were oversimplifying to be glib, but since this whole discussion is about unscience and science I’d like to use this opportunity to point out why the scientific method, even in well-meaning hands, get abused.
Okay, 1: What were you controlling for? Like what time of day were you doing this under, where were the bars located (incl. crime rate), what was the gun ownership level of the populace, etc..? Were the bars examined in this study allowed to ban gun-owners privately? What were the rates other crimes not immediately relevant to the study?
2: Over what time and location frame did you do the studies? Too long or narrow a timeframe for the study makes the experiment suspect and too narrow makes it useless.
3: And by far the most important one: what was the mechanism for guns in bars not increasing time rate? You need to answer this question even if you’re trying to prove a negative. If I hypothesized ‘the Baconator does not increase homicidal urges in adolescents 13-18’ and my experiment showed up ‘no’ it’s not a particularly fruitful experiment if I don’t explain why I don’t expect it to increase. I could say ‘the delicious bacon molecules surpresses the rage center of the human brain and refer to papers A, B, and C why this is so’ or ‘people get mega-pissed because the combination of cheddar and ketchup activate the amygdala’.
3 is really important. If you don’t have it it’s really hard to get other people to replicate, let alone improve on your experiment. Even if you do get useful data you’re not going to learn a lot. You’re going to be stuck at the ‘Baconator causes murderous rage out of the margin of error; as to why, I dunno!’ stage which while marginally helpful is still going to leave people who come after you pissing in the wind.
Speaking of statements that have the potential to make a scientist’s skin crawl:
You’re not going to hear many scientists talking glibly about “un(or in)controvertibly true facts”, especially when the subject matter is a data set whose collection took place over a finite period, by individuals who may or may not have used proper methodology, and which is subject to differenti interpretations.
Example: antivaccine activists point to reports in the VAERS database (a system where adverse events occurring around the time of vaccination can be reported to the government) as evidence supporting their claims. “There are scores of deaths and injuries linked to Gardasil vaccination! THose are incontrovertible facts that you must accept!!!”
Sorry, but the VAERS system does not discriminate as to the reliability of reporters, nor does the collection of its raw data allow us to separate correlation from causation. When the case reports are carefully analyzed, they do not implicate Gardasil; rather the “incontrovertible facts” demonstrate that Gardasil is a safe vaccine on a par with other vaccines.
Sorry to re-inject (oops) science into the discussion. You may now return to your fantasy world where concealed carry advocacy and the waistlines of Sports Illustrated models are “science”.
In a scientific world vaccines would be tested and studied for side effects, before they are used on millions of people. Hell, just study the first 100,000 kids that get the vaccine and learn what happens. The VAERS is about as unscientific a way to track side effects as you can get.
Yeah yeah, I know, it would cost too much money. The Pharma wouldn’t make a huge profit, and god fucking forbid you might find the rare case where a vaccine actually does kill or maim a few kids.
But it would be scientific.
Why it is so hard for you to find out first when VAERS is used? It is used after the vaccine had passed a very long period of testing.
VAERS is used after all that testing was done.
This is for a HPV Vaccine, which for some reason is one of the most controversial vaccines out there.
If that’s his overarching point, I disagree with it. But I’ll let him make that case separately. I don’t have to agree with any conclusion just because I agree with a couple of disparate facts.
I suspect that, at this point, you’ve said what Bricker was complaining about your not saying. That’s the only point on which I’ll say I agree with Bricker (not that I necessarily disagree with anything else–I’m just no completely clear on what the “anything else” would be).
I don’t entirely agree. It has something to do with science the same way that my saying “the lamp in my kitchen over the coffeemaker is on” has to do with science. It’s a simple observation, and such observations are the building blocks of science. If I concluded from this observation that coal-powered electricity is safe, then my fact–>conclusion is unscientific. Similarly, if Bricker is concluding from the two listed facts that concealed-carry permits don’t affect crime rates, I’d say that’s an unscientific conclusion. But the simple gathering of data, again, is a building block of science.
jackmanii, some facts are incontrovertibly true. Abraham Lincoln is dead (unless you engage in some “This is not a pipe” tomfoolery). Administration of the chicken pox vaccine according to CDC protocols drastically reduces a subject’s risk of infection by chicken pox. Fats have more calories per gram than carbohydrates. The fact that some people incorrectly claim that certain facts are incontrovertible doesn’t mean that no facts are incontrovertible.
(If, in the last paragraph, I phrased something poorly, I apologize–but I maintain that for any of the facts given, an expert in the field could phrase the fact fundamentally the same, using appropriate terminology, such that it would be incontrovertible).
As for the anti-vaccination hysteria, it’s slightly more sympathetic than garden-variety science denial because it involves the pweshus babiez; or rather, about the years vaccination becomes common is when people start noticing problems in children like autism. Moreover because humans have overactive and underdeveloped pattern recognition systems and a lot of people (mostly douchebags) live in a world where something just can’t be beyond the current and maybe permanent ken of humans to control… you get that. It’d just be sad and tragic, were it not for the serious policy implications.
It’s a strawman because it has nothing to do with the subject at hand, which is some people here like to jump to wrong negative conclusions with few facts. Which you have done almost perfectly. The fact that there are some people who deny established scientific facts due to some woo-woo idea of their own has zero to do with what I said.
Since you continue to prove it, I’m amazed you have the gall to say that. You have wandered far afield of the original subject, thrown about insults and set up strawmen all (apparently) trying to prove that no one on this board ever goes off on a tirade because they didn’t ask for any supporting information. Yet this is exactly what you are doing here.
Actually your point is the one that is irrelevant to the discussion, glad we figured that out.
As it is relevant to the discussion it is not an strawman, deal with it or step aside.
The rest is just whining from you.
I want to adopt a more conciliatory position here, so I am not reading any posts since my last, just in case there might be something to get me all het up. Ironically, perhaps, I think that I’ve been a bit more irritable since I’m in the midst of struggling to craft a proposal for scientific research funding. It may be that a painfully simplistic description of science caught me at a particularly bad time. Stepping away and working on something completely different allowed me time to think.
I’ve said many times here that I am an empirically driven person when it comes to evaluating issues, so of course I find any similar effort laudatory. There is certainly value in measuring the number of crimes as an empirical observation, rather than just speculating about what might be the case. It’s also completely foolhardy to reject a measurement like that unless there’s some good reason to doubt the method of measurement. Empiricism is necessary, but not sufficient, in my opinion, for science.
In terms of my own positions, I would have no problem accepting evidence that there’s no problems with genetically modified foods, or with nuclear power, and I am quite liberal. I’m quite willing to accept evidence that goes against what I believe about firearms.
In thinking about this further, I’ve thought of some other issues about which liberals seem predisposed to a position that is not consistent with the data. For instance, liberals seem to be quite ignorant about the evidence regarding the measurement of intelligence, and what utility such measurements have in reality. I wouldn’t say that they deny the science around it. When presented with it, they do not refuse to believe it, as far as I know. It’s fair to say, however, that it is not an easy sell.
Despite this, I’m quite comfortable saying that true, hard core denial of science is unquestionably associated with a conservative point of view. I can’t think of anything that comes close to the denial of climate change or of evolution. Furthermore, I think this extends to issues that are not scientifically resolved, like ideas such as tax cuts leading to good economic indicators.
Ad if you’re indiscriminate enough you can toss out anything as being “a building block of science”. Hell, speaking English could be viewed as a scientific endeavor, since English is often viewed as the universal language of science.
Try this one instead: an evidence-based approach is fundamental to science. Using such an approach does not mean one is engaging in science, but rather that one is using a tool integral to scientific pursuits and to critical thinking in general (on preview, I see that Hentor is making a somewhat similar point).
Our poor set-upon conservative-in-the-liberals’-den Bricker might have made the legitimate point that willingness to accept evidence-based scientific conclusions is not always accompanied by willingness to accept evidence-based findings in other realms, and that fervid political partisanship is a hindrance to using the evidence-based model. Rabid partisanship however makes one prone to error whether one is of the Left or Right, which is how a mostly rational poster can wind up looking foolish by making ludicrous and indefensible statements about what constitutes science.