Underneath most scientific findings may lie a hidden 'universe of uncertainty'

I often complained about this during my research career. Too often what the authors of an academic journal concluded would not be justified by their detailed research results. They would simply conclude what thery wanted to conclude, facts regardess. I stil read research reports at times -- mostly medical journals these days -- and the conclusions are still often junk

A hidden "universe of uncertainty" may underlie most scientific findings, especially in the social sciences, a new study suggests.

When scientists used the same data set to answer a specific hypothesis — that immigration reduces support for social policy — dozens of researchers produced completely different results, according to a new study, published Oct. 28 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The finding suggests it may be very hard to be confident in findings in some of these fields, since even small changes in initial choices could yield dramatically different results.

In the new study, Nate Breznau, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bremen in Germany, and colleagues asked 161 researchers in roughly six dozen research teams to test a common hypothesis: that immigration reduces support for government social policy. This question has been asked hundreds of times in the social science literature, and the results have been all over the map, Breznau told Live Science.

As a baseline, they gave the research teams data from six questions related to government policy from the International Social Survey Programme, a broad data set that tracks policy differences across 44 countries.

Then, they asked the teams to use logic and prior knowledge to develop models to explain the relationship between immigration and support for government social services.

For example, one group might predict that an increased flow of immigrants to a country raises competition for scarce resources, which, in turn, decreases support for social services. The research teams then had to decide what types of data to use to answer that question (for instance, the net influx of immigrants to a country, the gross domestic product, or the average or median income in different regions), as well as what types of statistical analyses they would use.

The research groups' findings mirrored the literature overall: 13.5% said it wasn't possible to draw a conclusion, 60.7% said the hypothesis should be rejected and 28.5% said the hypothesis was correct.

Breznau’s team then used their own statistical analysis to try to understand why different groups came up with such different conclusions.

They found that neither bias nor inexperience could explain the variance. Rather, hundreds of different, seemingly minor decisions may have shifted the conclusions one way or another. Even more surprising, no set of variables seemed to tip the outcomes one way or another, possibly because there simply wasn't enough data to compare the different models. (There was one limitation of the study: The authors' analysis itself is a statistical model and thus is subject to uncertainty as well.)

It's not clear to what extent this universe of uncertainty plagues other sciences; it may be that astrophysics, for example, is simpler to model than human interactions on a grand scale, Breznau said.

For instance, there are 86 billion neurons in the human brain and 8 billion people on the planet, and those people are all interacting in complex social networks.

"It might be the case that there are fundamental laws that would govern human social and behavioral organization, but we definitely don't have the tools to identify them," Breznau told Live Science.

One takeaway from the study is that researchers should spend time honing their hypothesis before jumping to data collection and analysis, Breznau said, and the new study's hypothesis is a perfect example.

"Does immigration undermine support for social policy? It's a very typical social science hypothesis, but it's probably too vague to really just get a concrete answer to," he said.

A more specific or targeted question could potentially yield better results, Breznau said.

https://www.livescience.com/uncertainty-in-scientific-studies

********************************************************

The crypto meltdown

In June, the collapse of Terra Luna shook the foundations of the cryptocurrency sector. The contagion that followed drove a handful of other major firms, including Celsius, Voyager, and Three Arrows Capital out of business. But assumptions that the worst had come to pass, and that the wheat had separated from the chaff, were premature. The bankruptcy filing of FTX has even more fundamentally damaged perceptions of the asset class, and sent valuations tumbling to lows not seen in several years.

Comparisons with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Enron Corporation were inevitable, but underestimate the proportional magnitude of the disaster. While Lehman was emblematic of the impact of subprime investments on the financial sector, and Enron of off-balance-sheet financing among newfangled energy companies, the FTX fiasco calls into question the entire crypto complex. In fact, the FTX situation more closely resembles the crisis at MF Global some years ago, which involved a proprietary trading division dipping into customer accounts to meet funding requirements. Alameda Research, allegedly a crypto-trading firm, appears to have not traded, but rather made venture capital investments, allegedly transferring and using FTX customer funds for various corporate purposes.

FTX (and Alameda) founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) saw a rise describable only as meteoric. The firm, started in 2019, was recently valued at over $30 billion. SBF was a 30-year-old billionaire, quickly compared with Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and JP Morgan. For a time, FTX was inescapable: The logo was affixed to the shirts of Major League Baseball umpire uniforms and plastered on the Miami Heat arena. Tom Brady, Gisele Bunchen, Steph Curry, and other celebrities had advertising and marketing deals with the firm. And with the kind of irony that only financial markets provide, a Super Bowl commercial (cost: $30 million) in January 2022 featured actor Larry David responding to the assertion that FTX is “safe and easy” with “I don’t think so.” Life does indeed imitate art, at times. The firm is now bankrupt, assets are lost and missing, and SBF seems, as of this writing, to be in hiding.

The FTX implosion, on top of other debacles and hacks this year, has led some to question whether there’s “anything about crypto that is as it seems.” Indeed, SBF’s humble, geek-chic image (unruly hair, unpretentious attire, driving an unremarkable vehicle) presents a picture of guilelessness.The emergence of a simple (if highly analytical) figure using cryptocurrency trading to selflessly tackle changing the world was no doubt irresistible to an increasingly left-leaning financial establishment. A fawning article at Sequoia Capital was quickly deleted as revelations regarding FTX emerged, but has been retrieved via web archive. Printed, it runs to over 30 adulating pages.

At odds with that narrative are a private jet, a sprawling penthouse in the Bahamas, and millions upon millions of dollars spent on purchasing influence in Washington, DC. Various sources have reported that SBF’s political contributions have been to both sides of the aisle, which is certifiably correct: he gave just under $36 million to progressive candidates and $105,000 to conservatives.

Throughout 2022, SBF’s lobbying efforts focused on politicians supporting the crypto regulatory framework of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). That makes sense, as SBF had drawn up and promoted a regulatory plan which, unsurprisingly, favored FTX’ business model. But the heavy lobbying, which led to SBF being the second-largest donor in the 2022 midterms, may have had more pressing origins. As the Wall Street Journal reported on November 9th, FTX had been under investigation by both the Securities and Exchange Commission (the alternate regulator to the CFTC) and the United States Department of Justice, since the summer.

The rules he promulgated would’ve, by one account, given FTX and its subsidiaries “a monopoly.” It would also have done serious damage to the massive array of decentralized finance (DeFi) and other such firms built over the last few years. What is unique in this instance is the immediate response by those which the proposal would’ve hamstrung. SBF’s regulatory proposal was so shamelessly self-dealing that it precipitated the entire unraveling of his empire – financial, technological, and political. Tory Newmyer of the Washington Post chronicled the tipping point:

Many crypto die-hards viewed [SBF’s] overtures to Washington as a betrayal of crypto’s founding mission. That set the stage for his most formidable adversary–Changpeng Zhao [CZ], chief executive of Binance, a rival crypto exchange–to crush him with stunning and decisive swiftness. On Sunday [November 6th] Zhao announced that he was selling off his investment in FTX: $580 million of a crypto token FTX has been using to prop up its debts. ‘We are not against anyone,’ Zhao wrote on Twitter. ‘But we won’t support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs.’

CZ’s liquidation triggered a wider, more frantic exodus, and in turn, the discovery that withdrawal requests could not be met. An explicit attempt by an industry leader to erect insurmountable barriers to competition by commandeering legal and regulatory resources is far from unprecedented. But it certainly speaks to a sophistication that belies the ‘innocent visionary nerd’ role so actively marketed (see also Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, Adam Naumann of WeWork, and Vlad Tenev of Robinhood.).

A nearly identical version of this sleight of hand has been going on in the rapidly expanding influence of the purveyors of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) philosophies. There is, as well, a direct connection between SBF and ESG: the FTX Foundation. Acting as the major conduit of his “effective altruism” donations, the list of supported causes offers few surprises. It launched in February 2022 (roughly the same time as SBF’s Beltway pavement-pounding began) and planned to support selected causes to the tune of $100 million per year, up to $1 billion over the next decade. Climate change, animal welfare, future pandemic prevention (and other causes) were SBF’s primary focus.

It is impossible to square “effective altruism” with the surreptitious use of customer funds to cover costs and losses associated with personal, high-risk trading and investing activities. One use of customer funds was, evidently, a personal $7.3 million bet that Donald Trump would lose an election in 2024. For a businessman, long before saving the whales or shrinking carbon footprints, there is no “altruism” more fundamental than treating customer deposits with probity.

https://blog.independent.org/2022/11/18/ftx-sbf-esg/

*************************************************

Woke Healthcare Coming Down the Pike

As Joe Biden put it in a speech after the midterms, he has concluded that the people must like his policies since the red tsunami never appeared. So he’s doubling down on what he was already doing.

Just how will he do that after losing the House and potentially continuing to have a tie in the Senate? Through executive orders and through the overinflated power of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Biden proved from the get-go that he is not going to be shy about using executive orders, even if he doesn’t ultimately have the power to dictate some of those orders.

Through the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. ObamaCare, HHS is able to use the Section 1557 rule to force physicians and hospitals to perform abortions. HHS issued an advisory using the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) as justification for trying to re-nationalize abortion instead of letting it be legislated by the states post-Dobbs. According to National Review: “This notice advised hospitals and physicians that EMTALA required them to ‘stabilize’ ‘people in labor’ by performing emergency abortions. It pointedly stated that ‘when a state law prohibits abortion … that state law is preempted.’ It also declared that EMTALA’s anti-retaliation provision would protect physicians from discipline by their Catholic-hospital employers if they performed abortions in defiance of the Catholic Church’s Ethical and Religious Directives.”

In other words, HHS is attempting to circumvent SCOTUS and state law while infringing on the religious liberties of hospitals and physicians. It is truly despicable.

HHS is also using Section 1557 to advance gender transitions, more euphemistically known as “gender-affirming care.” Section 1557 can force medical establishments to provide a ballooning list of medical interventions for the gender-confused. It also will force insurance to pay for these medically unnecessary and harmful procedures. Not just for “transgender” individuals, either, but also for nonbinary-identifying individuals, eunuchs, and potentially someone identifying as disabled and hurting their healthy body to do it (transableism).

The radical gender ideology that is slipping ever further down the slope of madness is dictating our children’s education, dictating female safety, and now dictating our healthcare. This pathology is dragging our culture down into the abyss and destroying our younger generations. President Biden and HHS are happy to help this ideology along. What does that say about their leadership?

HHS and the president’s EOs also have major institutional backing. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, the American Academy for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health are all going to back up whatever this administration pushes. They are in lockstep.

Other institutions aiding and abetting this horrendous agenda are universities and medical schools teaching students that their highest prerogative is to fight back against systemic oppression in healthcare. The Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm” is seen as antiquated. These schools are also making sure their graduates are thoroughly indoctrinated in “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in order to set the stage for the excusing of racially discriminatory healthcare.

This ideological takeover of healthcare is furthering our cultural decline, making a mockery of our government’s checks and balances, making a joke of the academic integrity of our universities, and creating a healthcare environment that stifles the religious and moral concerns of physicians and patients.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/93056-woke-healthcare-coming-down-the-pike-2022-11-22

*******************************************************

Australia: Gay marriage has given our society little to celebrate

This week marked the fifth anniversary of Australia supporting same-sex marriage in a postal vote. Now we are being reassured by same-sex marriage advocates that “society has not fallen apart”.

Think again. If the punitive ­coercion suffered by people who did not support gay marriage ­during the period preceding the vote didn’t convince you that this was not just about marriage, but about the gradual imposition of a radical agenda on the whole of ­society, then look what has happened since.

If the dissolution of society as we know it was an exaggeration, a furious expression of frustrated Christians angry at seeing the social verities of the past falling away, people might start looking at their local school and see what sorts of things are being taught to their children. The notion that our sexual identity is fluid and not fixed is now accepted in most government schools, and challenging that view is impossible.

It has already been raised as a problem if a religious anti-discrimination bill is ever passed, and activists are now fixated on making it harder to challenge the trans agenda even in private and systemic Catholic schools. In Canada, despite assurances and a preamble to the law, Catholic schools are having a very difficult time teaching Catholic precepts on marriage and sexuality, and in the US many individuals and groups are being punished for what amounts to thought crime, prompting a conservative backlash.

The real problem with the Marriage Equality fight was the fight itself. It was never a civilised discussion in a civilised environment. It was bare-knuckle and nasty from the Yes side, from daubing vile slogans on church walls to ridiculing and denouncing people on social media. I know, I went through it. And it goes on.

It has spread beyond marriage, to the trans agenda. I recently wrote a column about a woman who started an app for women and girls called Giggle. This woman was threatened with a human rights action over the very nature of the people for whom her app was intended, women, by a transsexual person who thought they should not be discriminated against because they identified as a woman. These are the two great mantras of the new society” “Discrimination” and “Identity”. It will only get worse.

Go back to the case of Israel Folau. Freedom of expression was not available to Folau who as a believing Mormon did not support same-sex marriage. Not only did he lose his job as Australia’s star rugby player but other players who supported him and did not support SSM were told not to say anything. Meanwhile, those who supported the Yes vote were allowed to speak out. Rugby Australia undermined their freedom of expression about conscientiously held views, becoming, in effect, the arbiters of their conscience.

An even graver case was Archbishop Julian Porteous who, as a preliminary salvo to the same-sex marriage vote, was dragged before the Human Rights board in Tasmania for disseminating a booklet outlining Catholic teaching on marriage to Catholic students. The complainant was not protesting about the church’s ban on remarriage after divorce or any of the teachings about marriage and fertility tied to the vows which married Catholics must make. No, this was an opener in the battle for same-sex marriage. The agenda of the Equality movement was not about equality at all: it was about trying to muzzle the view that the family, based on a generative relationship, is the bedrock of society which has been common to all societies of all religious persuasions since time immemorial.

Meanwhile, the trans agenda has inserted itself into the centre of right think. Who says society as we know it hasn’t declined?

Consequently, the number of cases of well-meaning ordinary people being denounced on social media, or to the human rights apparatuses and even pushed out of positions for stating quite ordinary views on marriage, the family and sexual identity is increasing, and freedom of expression – and particularly of religious expression – is being undermined.

Andrew Thorburn is an ordinary man who happened to be at a church nine years before when his minister expressed moral views not in line with the Equality mantra. Thorburn is chair of the City on a Hill church, which Essendon football club pronounced has views in “direct contradiction to our values as a club”. So, a football club, assuming a prior moral authority to the church, forced his resignation as the club’s CEO.

Not surprisingly, it was this case that has awakened the general public to the danger that now awaits anyone. Not only could someone dig up a sermon a pastor gave nine years before and still hold you to account, but how long before, Torquemada-like, you are taken to the inquisitors of the board of the company for which you work, or the school where you teach, or any governing body?

It is well known that in most echelons of the public service various topics of conversation, especially those dealing with sex and family issues, are off the table. The endorsement of Thorburn’s removal by the AFL and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews highlights the frightening seriousness of this. It has made a mockery of the idea that we have equality of expression, and the real fault line is freedom of religion.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/gay-marriage-has-given-our-society-little-to-celebrate/news-story/4b4437e7f2ad5d8dad9087bc187668bd

****************************************

My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

*****************************************