You can't trust a scientist

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by Theoryofrelativity, Sep 27, 2006.

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  1. Theoryofrelativity

    Theoryofrelativity Banned Banned

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    deleted in protest to really poor moderation
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2007
    Theoryofrelativity, Sep 27, 2006
    #1

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  3. spuriousmonkey

    spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

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    Like who?
     
    spuriousmonkey, Sep 27, 2006
    #2

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  5. Theoryofrelativity

    Theoryofrelativity Banned Banned

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    Proff jessica Utts

    http://anson.ucdavis.edu/~utts/


    "SCIENTIFIC AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS
    Outstanding Faculty/Staff Award, Graduate Group in Epidemiology, UC Davis (2001)

    Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (1992)
    Fellow, Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1991)
    Fellow, American Statistical Association (1990)
    Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, UC Davis (1984)
    Magnar Ronning Award for Teaching Excellence, UC Davis (1981)
    Phi Beta Kappa, State University of New York at Binghamton (1973)
    PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS AND OFFICES (alphabetical order)
    American Association for the Advancement of Science
    Council Member representing Secction U (2006-08)

    Secretary of Section U (1995 – 2003)
    Chair, Section U (Statistics) Nominating Committee (1994 – 1995)
    American Statistical Association
    Chair-Elect, Section on Statistical Education (2006)

    Secretary/Treasurer, Section on Bayesian Statistical Science (2001-2003)
    Publications Officer, Section on Statistical Education (1999-2001)

    President, State College PA Chapter (1977 – 1978)
    International Biometric Society
    Chair, Finance Committee (2000-2004)

    President, Western North American Region (1986)
    Regional Committee (1982 – 1984)
    Program Chair (1983)
    Caucus for Women in Statistics
    President (1988)
    Institute of Mathematical Statistics
    Council Member (2000-2003)
    Treasurer (1988 – 1994)
    Assistant Program Secretary (1980 & 1989)
    International Statistical Institute
    Elected Member
    Parapsychological Association:
    Board Member (1989 – 2003 and 2005-2007)
    Phi Beta Kappa
    President of UC Davis Chapter (1984 – 1985)
    Society for Scientific Exploration
    Council Member (1987 – 1993)
    MAJOR CONSULTATIONS AND PANELS
    College Board Advanced Placement Development Committee – Statistics (1997-2003, Chair 2001-2003)
    Quantitative Literacy Design Team, National Council on Education and the Disciplines
    National Science Foundation, various evaluation panels
    National Institutes of Health, various evaluation panels
    Panelist to evaluate US Government, “Stargate” Program
    National Academy of Sciences, Panel on the Evaluation of AIDS Interventions
    Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Panel to Assess Defense Technologies
    National Park Service, Statistics Short Courses for Resource Management Trainees
    California Department of Health Services, Courses on Statistics for Groundwater
    SRI International Cognitive Sciences Program, Consultant
    California Public Utilities Commission, Consultant
    Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Consultant
    Hershey Medical Center, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Study, Consultant
    Television interviews with ABC News 20/20, ABC Nightline, Larry King Live, CNN Morning News, BBC and other local, national and international programs.
    EDITORIAL POSITIONS (Past and Current)
    Associate Editor, The American Statistician

    Associate Editor, Journal of the American Statistical Association (Theory and Methods)
    Associate Editor, Journal of the American Statistical Association (Reviews)
    Statistical Editor, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research
    MAJOR ACADEMIC SENATE APPOINTMENTS
    University of California, Davis and UC Systemwide

    Vice-Chair and Chair, University Committee on Committees (2002-2004)

    Vice-Chair of the Academic Senate (1994-1996)
    Chair, Faculty of the College of Letters and Science (1992-1993)
    Chair, Academic Senate Committee on Student-Faculty Relationships
    Chair, Academic Senate Committee on Teaching
    Chair, Academic Senate Committee on Distinguished Teaching Awards
    Chair, Committee on Committees
    CURRENT and RECENT GRANT SUPPORT
    Epidemiology Of Primary Biliary Cirrhosis, P.I.: Merrill Gershwin
    Funded by: National Institute Of Diabetes And Digestive And Kidney Diseases (DK056839)
    Period covered: 9/2000 – 8/2005
    Amount: $534,493
    Borage Oil And Ginkgo Biloba (Egb 761) In Asthma, P.I.: Merrill Gershwin
    Funded by: National Center For Complementary & Alternative Medicine (AT000637)
    Period covered: 9/2000 – 7/2005
    Amount: $384,062
    Engineering Emerging Urban Systems: Competing Land Uses and the Effects on Built and Natural Environments (with D. Niemeier)
    Funded by: National Science Foundation
    Period covered: 7/1/99 – 6/30/01
    Amount: $360,000
    Model Projects: Enhancing the Educational Environment and Opportunities for Women in Engineering, Math and Science (with D. Niemeier, A. Laub and P. Rock)
    Funded by: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
    Period covered: 7/1/97 – 6/30/01
    Amount: $525,000
    PH.D. STUDENTS SUPERVISED
    Matthew Wood, 1997
    Current Employment: Biostatistician, Stanford University

    Matthew Clark, 1988
    Current Employment: Yuba College, Woodland, CA"



    is she a woo woo or crackpot?
     
    Theoryofrelativity, Sep 27, 2006
    #3

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  7. spuriousmonkey

    spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

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    In what field is she a leader?
     
    spuriousmonkey, Sep 27, 2006
    #4
  8. leopold

    leopold Valued Senior Member

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    scientists are people, and just like every other profession there are good ones and bad ones.
    but science does have a very real advantage over teachers, police, polititians, and others, and that is peer review.
     
    leopold, Sep 27, 2006
    #5
  9. Theoryofrelativity

    Theoryofrelativity Banned Banned

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    peer review = old boys club = sheep


    you don't think J Utts is a good scientist Leo?
     
    Theoryofrelativity, Sep 27, 2006
    #6
  10. leopold

    leopold Valued Senior Member

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    leopold, Sep 27, 2006
    #7
  11. Theoryofrelativity

    Theoryofrelativity Banned Banned

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    see edit

    she is certainly no sheep
     
    Theoryofrelativity, Sep 27, 2006
    #8
  12. Theoryofrelativity

    Theoryofrelativity Banned Banned

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    Theoryofrelativity, Sep 27, 2006
    #9
  13. spuriousmonkey

    spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

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    I have seen her CV. it doesn't say she is a leader in anything. You are too easily impressed with bells and whistles.

    Show that she is a leader in a field.

    -----------

    haha...1 phd student ever.

    My boss has 10 walking around.

    -----
     
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2006
    spuriousmonkey, Sep 27, 2006
    #10
  14. spuriousmonkey

    spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

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    spuriousmonkey, Sep 27, 2006
    #11
  15. lightgigantic

    lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    About the Money


    When they say it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
    — Anon.



    By the turn of the century
    Talking about the money
    Replaced talking about the sex,

    Talking about one’s so-called
    Religious life, and all that
    Earlier yak about the psyche.

    Talking about the money
    Got down to it and captured
    The hunger, the hope

    The love, and the fear:
    Let me hear your money talk,
    Many sang.

    Money was a good time
    (What people want most is
    Good times and insurance?)

    And money picked up
    The garbage the following
    Morning. (Someone’s

    Got to do it and someone gets
    Money to do it.) There was
    Really nothing like talking

    About the money if you wanted
    To really get to know someone,
    To get to know what animated,

    What moved the American.
    Do me. Do it to me, honey.
    Do my money. Let’s get cynical:

    Let me hear your money talk.


    - Liam Rector
     
    lightgigantic, Sep 27, 2006
    #12
  16. Theoryofrelativity

    Theoryofrelativity Banned Banned

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    the thread is about the likes of you calling her a 'woo woo' because she concluded that PSI occurs, NOT becuase others are stopping her from publishing
     
    Theoryofrelativity, Sep 27, 2006
    #13
  17. Theoryofrelativity

    Theoryofrelativity Banned Banned

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    Theoryofrelativity, Sep 27, 2006
    #14
  18. Theoryofrelativity

    Theoryofrelativity Banned Banned

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    J Utts on subject of PSI

    http://anson.ucdavis.edu/~utts/air2.html#7.

    "AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EVIDENCE FOR P SYCHIC FUNCTIONING

    Professor Jessica Utts
    Division of Statistics
    University of California, Davis"


    "7. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

    It is clear to this author that anomalous cognition is possible and has been demonstrated. This conclusion is not based on belief, but rather on commonly accepted scientific criteria. The phenomenon has been replicated in a number of forms across laboratories and cultures. The various experiments in which it has been observed have been different enough that if some subtle methodological problems can explain the results, then there would have to be a different explanation for each type of experiment, yet the impact would have to be similar across experiments and laboratories. If fraud were responsible, similarly, it would require an equivalent amount of fraud on the part of a large number of experimenters or an even larger number of subjects.

    What is not so clear is that we have progressed very far in understanding the mechanism for anomalous cognition. Senders do not appear to be necessary at all; feedback of the correct answer may or may not be necessary. Distance in time and space do not seem to be an impediment. Beyond those conclusions, we know very little.

    I believe that it would be wasteful of valuable resources to continue to look for proof. No one who has examined all of the data across laboratories, taken as a collective whole, has been able to suggest methodological or statistical problems to explain the ever-increasing and consistent results to date. Resources should be directed to the pertinent questions about how this ability works. I am confident that the questions are no more elusive than any other questions in science dealing with small to medium sized effects, and that if appropriate resources are targeted to appropriate questions, we can have answers within the next decade"
     
    Theoryofrelativity, Sep 27, 2006
    #15
  19. Oniw17

    Oniw17 ascetic, sage, diogenes, bum? Valued Senior Member

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    ....and you said to take occasionally back...
     
    Oniw17, Sep 27, 2006
    #16
  20. spuriousmonkey

    spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

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    She is woo woo.
     
    spuriousmonkey, Sep 27, 2006
    #17
  21. Stryder

    Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    Firstly it's probably not a good idea discussing "Is this person a Quack" and then linking to their website. Okay you could probably ask that if you were intending on having some herbal remedy from some "Witch Doctor" and wanted to make sure they weren't going to poison you too badly, but to launch into someones life and career might cause alot of uneeded grief.

    As for "Psi" existing, I will never agree with people that believe they have "A Gift" purely because their "Gift" is not quantified by science. For instance communication through Radiology requires both energy and the creation of a waveformation, if the human mind had "Telepathy" then there would be some form of "Carrier", a waveform and obviously the individuals would be utilising energy at greater levels for longer distances.

    I can't rule out that the human mind might have some form of integrated telepathy system between neural clusters considering there are a number of very rare brain conditions that suggest there must be a different form of communication transit than just Axons. (i.e. detatched Hemispheres) However if based on radiology due to low energy levels the distance of transmittion would be measured in millimetres.

    Some things people will never agree on and you don't need Precognition to see that.
     
    Stryder, Sep 27, 2006
    #18
  22. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Being a respected leader in your field means that when you have a new idea, other leaders will give it the courtesy of a peer review. That is all it means.

    The difference is that if you do some research and write a report on it, regardless of whether it adheres to conventional theories or attempts to disprove the law of gravity, it will not be published in exalted circles but will first have to be reviewed by other graduate students at your university. If it looks to them like your scientific method is sound, then a committee of professors will review it.

    If you've already been through this process many times and have consistently shown that your work is both properly performed and produces valuable results (a corroboration of the law of gravity may reassure the world of your commitment to the scientific method but it doesn't do anything to advance science), then you reach the point where your work will be reviewed directly by the leaders in your field who are keeping an eye on you.

    Nonetheless the process is the same in the exalted upper levels as at the humble lower levels: Your work must conform to the very straightforward and easily verified rules of the scientific method, which are basically all about rigor. Your source materials must be available for examination, the steps in your work must be reproducible, and your conclusions must be the result of logical reasoning.

    Having achieved the status of a leader does not ever exempt one from this requirement. Leaders can make mistakes. They can also be dazzled by their own charms and skip steps they think are unimportant. They can even succumb to the temptation to manipulate public opinion, either to advance a noble goal like world peace or a disgraceful one like persecution of an ethnic group.

    One of my college professors, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling, was a luminary in the field of chemistry. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he was captivated by the growing concern for public health and was intrigued by the new fad of taking large doses of certain vitamins in the hope of preventing illnesses whose cures had been elusive. He published some research into the effects of vitamin C and used his fame and credentials to campaign for massive doses for everybody.

    It turned out that his research was a little soft on the scientific method. The defects were subtle and therefore difficult to explain to laymen. Basically his tests on people were not rigorous enough, failing to control for all variables and not using large enough test groups. Ironically the controversy is apparently not completely settled even after decades of more research--as a layman when it comes to biochemistry I can't decide whether the evidence for vitamin C's nearly magical properties is false or merely exaggerated, and as far as I can tell the leaders in the field don't quite agree on it either--but the point is that Pauling broke the rules by "publishing" (literally taking his conclusions to the public) without adequate peer review. At the time his work was simply sloppy and his conclusions were based at least partly on intuition rather than logic.

    Pauling was professionally chastised for this.

    The reason I use him as an example even though his case doesn't have a lot in common with Utts is that they both touch on the ability of scientists in the age of electronic communication and tabloid celebrity to bypass the peer review process and take their case directly to the public. Pauling was charismatic, tapped into our Flower Power bumper sticker philosophy of "questioning authority," and told us what we wanted to hear: doctors and the FDA don't know what they're talking about and you can get healthy by trusting the clerks with GEDs at your health food store.

    I've never heard of Utts so I don't know what her schtick is, but obviosly she has also managed to connect directly with laymen. I'd say she must have some sort of charisma because you've spent all this time trying to convince us that she's the victim of a witch hunt without summarizing her theories or the establishment's objections for us--a good start on the scientific method for the tertiary research of a BBS. The posters who came before me have blessedly done the research I now don't have to do and discovered that her credentials are shallow and her research is not voluminous.

    She is not even a Linus Pauling. She has not paid her dues and established her credibility. Her research must be reviewed by those in the outer circles of science and demonstrate both her commitment to the scientific method and her brilliant thinking that is likely to produce challenging results.

    You have shared with us a list of her papers. What you have not shared is the results of the peer reviews of those papers. What objections have her peers raised to the rigor of her scientific method? Is her research not well recorded and therefore difficult to evaluate? Is the methodology of her testing a bit on the slapdash side, with no control for extraneous variables or perhaps not even a control for cheating? Are her samples too small to draw conclusions from? Has she violated the rule of common sense that extraordinary assertions require extraordinary substantiation? Has she ignored Occam's Razor and chosen a complicated explanation for a phenomenon when a simpler one is available? Have others attempted to duplicate her work and failed to duplicate her results? Is her reasoning faulty? Does she succumb to the Number One Fallacy of our age, post hoc ergo propter hoc--correlation implies causation?

    Utts may be onto something, but you haven't shown us any reason to believe that. From what you've posted, I'd suggest that perhaps she hasn't shown her peers any reason either.

    One of our younger members recently started a thread on the question of why we should believe anyone. He couldn't quite grasp the point that believing someone on SciForums who tells you to take vitamin C for your cold is simply a matter of risk analysis and management in your personal life, and if the person has earned the trust of people who have earned your trust, it's a rational decision to accept the rather low risk of trying the remedy. (That example wasn't in the thread but I'm using editorial license to highlight the commonality of the threads.)

    If a celebrity scientist tells a whole nation to take vitamin C to prevent colds, the stakes are much higher. The fortune of entire industries, the faith of the citizenry in its institutions, not to mention the small matter of public health. To trust him because he's earned the trust of the nation's leading scientists, who have earned the trust of the department heads of major universities, who have earned the trust of the professor who taught your beloved high school chemistry teacher is the same process writ large. But when it is discovered that he has lost that trust--either by the human error of missing a step in his experiment or by the human weakness of assuming he was right before he quite finished proving it--those of us who call ourselves scientists have a duty bring this to the attention of the the laymen. The scientific method is self correcting. Errors can be discovered after work is published and approved, textbooks can be corrected, awards can be revoked, apologies can be issued, grants can be cancelled, miscreants can be fired. And a new generation of students has a great example of how science works even under the worst circumstances and continues its unstoppable quest for the truth.

    What we must not do is fall victim to personality cults. Too many scientists were reluctant to criticize Linus Pauling because he had the adulation of the media. You want to ignore the apparently well reasoned judgment of other scientists that Utts has not done her homework because she promises to deliver to you something that you want. Not a cure for the common cold but a rational basis for belief in the paranormal.

    Today's technology is yesterday's magic. Every line of scientific research into psychic phenomenon has been a failure, but that doesn't mean that someone won't succeed in the future. It would require a massive overthrow of many of what we take to be basic principles, but as Galileo and Columbus would remind us, that has happened before. (Although, to sober ourselves up a bit, not so much since the advent of the scientific method.)

    Utts is not being dismissed because she is doing unpopular work. She is being dismissed because she is doing unscientific work. If you have evidence to the contrary, please be a scientist and show it to us.
     
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2006
    Fraggle Rocker, Sep 27, 2006
    #19
  23. leopold

    leopold Valued Senior Member

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    first, what is PSI?
    second, don't confuse 'telepathy' with incredible perception.
    third, are you sure you aren't happehs sock puppet?
     
    leopold, Sep 27, 2006
    #20
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