Random Ramblings of a Raconteur

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As long as science is a career not a vocation (and in many subjects outside of engineering and physics the only career), that career is mostly furthered by the number of publications, and publication favours positive results over correct ones, new results over replicated and established ones, clear-cut results over ambiguous ones, and precise results over meaningful ones, I see no solution to the problem of science. Read the rest of this entry »

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Borneman is little more than a credulous wall of verbosity. What stands out though is his completely uncritical retelling of the “Juliet” episode. It begins with a brother, who seeing he was only going to return from an orphanage six months later Read the rest of this entry »

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Nature has a nice review of the current state of Out of Africa II with well done lists of current primary literature.

I hadn’t seen Caron et al. before and find it a very convincing refutation of Higham’s critique.

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Ayres finds one more and a new consequence of antibiotic abuse, yet there’s still no sign of its abatement.

Piston and Hayden are related. If you don’t understand how it works, don’t use it, Read the rest of this entry »

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

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

I’m surprised at the space Arch.Inf. provide to Braune’s bit of esotericism. First off, by giving his MY to four significant digits he implies a precision in the order of a tenth of a millimetre. Then he goes on stating Read the rest of this entry »

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Barham highlights a problem not only for schools but for the changes I’ve seen in universities since the early eighties. Semester exams used to yield only passed or not passed while the grading for Vordiplom and Diplom (loosely BS and MS) came from oral exams covering everything from all years. Read the rest of this entry »

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As if widespread misuse of data dredging and applying single-outcome tests to multivariate analyses were not enough Nieuwenhuis et al. have uncovered yet another widely spread use of bad statistics. Read the rest of this entry »

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In de Mel the effects for women dissipate after ten months. They do so too for men and there is no discernible difference after 12, 15, 18, and 62 months. There is one at 22, 25, 30, 35, and 68 months but these inconsistent results seem spurious and random and can hardly be said to result from the intervention. Read the rest of this entry »

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The current issue of nature has a supplement for Alan Turing’s 100th birthday.