Random Ramblings of a Raconteur

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Fashionable hypotheses conforming to the prejudices of New Age psycho-babble have an easy ride into the most prestigious journals. It is a refreshing change to see Gerber et al. putting them to the test for once.

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Education leads to brain tumor – what a feast Khanolkar et al. have served up to the yellow press. Of course it’s only an observational study and the relative risk of only 1.2 is generally dismissed by serious science, but who cares. In the primary article, not the yellow press rehashes, higher education also boils down to money and socio-economic status and right at the end we find the true explanation: (more…)

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Lots of stuff from diverse areas this week but nothing I could add a meaningful comment to.

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Conley et al. would have been relevant a decade ago when they find that observable facts and phenotypes have no measurable genetic correlates. We now know, that no heritable trait seems to have them and that our understanding of genes and heritage is seriously incomplete. Thus the far reaching conclusion they draw from their non-result is unwarranted.

And even if it were not and if we take their result at face value, (more…)

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An important study by Andriole et al. on the efficacy of testing for prostate cancer has just been withdrawn. It has turned out that 80 % of the control group, assumed not to have undergone precautionary testing, has been privately tested too. So yes, the original report was partially wrong. But is it invalidated? (more…)

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So half of all responding scientists can’t reproduce their own results and over two thirds those by others, but less than a third accept they might probably be wrong, according to Baker? What’s going on here? If I repeatedly let go of an apple in midair and it refuses to fall, shouldn’t that (more…)

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As real data Anagnostou et al.’s results carry more weight than model gaming does. But then carbon dioxide’s warming potential has never been doubted as such. Interestingly the lowest of all the values shown is way above 500 ppm and, if that was sufficiently low to start the ice sheet development in Antarctica then, in spite of the hysteresis due to ice’s albedo feedback, there’s little reason to assume the same concentration today will melt it all away again.

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I don’t know what it is about psychology and such, but Luby et al. is another classic example of pure junk science. On the unexpected plus side, they do plot data for once, but then their diagrams’ legends have no units and don’t explain, what exactly is shown. What they find is a tiny effect whose significance is statistical only – the whole difference between the extreme ends of the range comes to about a third of the (estimated, no values given) standard deviation and is driven by a few outliers alone. (more…)

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The more isotope studies developed, the more ambiguous and less meaningful their results became. It seems that Naito et al. have found a new way forward with their analysis of single amino acids instead of bulk collagen.

Apologies for the prolonged leave of absence – moving house absorbs an inordinate amount of time, but now things are beginning to drift back to normal.

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Sex and gender are both purely social concepts and open to free and unconstrained reinterpretation. From reading Vikbladh it seems that the utter nonsense of this idea is finally beginning to dawn on even the artsy chattering classes. (more…)