Random Ramblings of a Raconteur

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Compared to what was reasonably to be expected, the effect reported by Besbris et al. is tiny. Rather than stressing it, their title had better indicated, that the widely held expectation is as good as refuted. They completely fail to tell us what the error bars in their figure 2 are supposed to mean. Standard deviation, standard error, range, quartiles – we’re not supposed to know. Neither do they discuss Read the rest of this entry »

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

Kendler et al. is highly relevant for divorce cases, where the courts’ custodial sentencing all too often deliberately creates fatherless households. As everyone can see, motherly love tends to burn strongest in those countries, mostly Germany and the USA, where custody is coupled to significant monetary entitlement. Naturally the incentive is strongest for less well educated women with prosperous husbands, i.e. those where father deprivation hurts most. Considering the size of the effect, this may well have measurable consequences on the national level.

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

And here we go again, and again it’s none other than the Journal of Archaeological Science. In Piqué et al. there are nine co-authors, several referees and an editor, who have all signed their names to passing the article and not a single one of them has noticed the figure (5) with no labels on the axes whatsoever and a caption Read the rest of this entry »

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

Something seems to be missing in Normile’s (unreferenced) description. X-ray imaging only works, because the anode is more or less a point source. Muons come from all sides, so you’d need a highly directional detector. How do you achieve that for something that nearly does not interact and can’t be shielded?

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

This week I look at two more studies about colorectal cancer. Brenner et al. 2009 is the source for Wikipedia’s number of 11.4 % advanced adenomas found in screening. Brenner et al. 2015 extrapolate the number of prevented cases to 180 000 (100k for men plus 80k for women) until death. For 4.4 million screenings Read the rest of this entry »