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rogerglewis on December 22, 2019 at 11:47 am said:
The Median Isn’t the Message

by Stephen Jay Gould
Consider the standard example of stretching the truth with numbers—a case quite relevant to my story. Statistics recognizes different measures of an “average,” or central tendency. The mean is our usual concept of an overall average—add up the items and divide them by the number of sharers (100 candy bars collected for five kids next Halloween will yield 20 for each in a just world). The median, a different measure of central tendency, is the half-way point. If I line up five kids by height, the median child is shorter than two and taller than the other two (who might have trouble getting their mean share of the candy). A politician in power might say with pride, “The mean income of our citizens is $15,000 per year.” The leader of the opposition might retort, “But half our citizens make less than $10,000 per year.” Both are right, but neither cites a statistic with impassive objectivity. The first invokes a mean, the second a median. (Means are higher than medians in such cases because one millionaire may outweigh hundreds of poor people in setting a mean, but he can balance only one mendicant in calculating a median).

https://web.archive.org/web/20190722175456/http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_median-isn't-the-message.html

This wonderful piece from back in 1991 is very useful on Lies Damned Lies, statistics and the Dilettante tendency in Spinning doomster narratives.
I discovered it today playing with various online academic citation tools

http://tinyurl.com/w5fcev9

I am working on a fully annotated rebuttal promised earlier in the thread.

http://tinyurl.com/qms2csx

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Steven B Kurtz on December 22, 2019 at 12:50 pm said:
Re the reference of Sheldrake’s work which R.L. used when attacking science in his response to my 20 year old paper…from Wikipedia, :

Alfred Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942) is an English author,[3] and researcher in the field of parapsychology,[4] who proposed the concept of morphic resonance, a conjecture which lacks mainstream acceptance and has been characterised as pseudoscience.[5][6] He worked as a biochemist at Cambridge University from 1967 to 1973[3] and as principal plant physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in India until 1978.[7]

Sheldrake’s morphic resonance posits that “memory is inherent in nature”[3][8] and that “natural systems… inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind.”[8] Sheldrake proposes that it is also responsible for “telepathy-type interconnections between organisms.”[9][10] His advocacy of the idea offers idiosyncratic explanations of standard subjects in biology such as development, inheritance, and memory.

Morphic resonance is not accepted by the scientific community and Sheldrake’s proposals relating to it have been widely criticised. Critics cite a lack of evidence for morphic resonance and inconsistencies between its tenets and data from genetics, embryology, neuroscience, and biochemistry. They also express concern that popular attention paid to Sheldrake’s books and public appearances undermines the public’s understanding of science.[a]

Other work by Sheldrake encompasses paranormal subjects such as precognition, empirical research into telepathy and the psychic staring effect.[10][27] Sheldrake’s ideas, while lacking scientific acceptance, have found support in the New Age movement from individuals such as Deepak Chopra.[28][29][30]

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rogerglewis
on December 22, 2019 at 1:26 pm said:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Steven, it is you who is anti-science with your constant ad hominem and Appeals to authority. You asked for written paper will be finished by the end of today, Folks here are not interested in our dispute, you are welcome to comment on my Blogs or web sites and I would happily take you up on your offer to fly yourself at your expense to a forum with independent scientific experts to discuss the substance of the arguments. I will write to you separately on that invitation if you unblock me from your e-mail. Which you said you had done after a rather intemperate outburst.

austrianpeter
on December 22, 2019 at 5:31 pm said:
Thanks Steve, very instructive comment. My life-time experience tells me that there is something in what your man says. The problem with ‘science’ is that it is reductive; they try to explain ‘time’ by dismantling the watch.

I have studied science myself to ‘A’ level but ended up as an accountant: “we know the price of everything, but the value of nothing” and the profession is as much in the dark as economics IMHO. The big ‘4’ auditors have been proven corrupt to the core – and why not? – he who pays the piper chooses the tune.

So I think there is much for all of us to learn in nature and the universe. Perhaps ‘science’ will be able to explain the origin of DNA/RNA eventually, but I doubt it, lets get Quantum Theory sorted first and maybe even Fusion.

rogerglewis
on December 22, 2019 at 6:01 pm said:
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He studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, where he was a Scholar of Clare College, took a double first class honours degree and was awarded the University Botany Prize (1962). He then studied philosophy and history of science at Harvard University, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow (1963-64), before returning to Cambridge, where he took a Ph.D. in biochemistry (1967). He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge (1967-73), where he was Director of Studies in biochemistry and cell biology. As the Rosenheim Research Fellow of the Royal Society (1970-73), he carried out research on the development of plants and the ageing of cells in the Department of Biochemistry at Cambridge University. While at Cambridge, together with Philip Rubery, he discovered the mechanism of polar auxin transport, the process by which the plant hormone auxin is carried from the shoots towards the roots.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake Phd, has a doctorate in BioChemistry, https://www.sheldrake.org/about-rupert-sheldrake/biography
It is interesting whose ideas come under the scrutiny of those with a pseudo-religious agenda of their own to push and also to compare their qualifications, I have a Science degree myself and come from a Technological viewpoint in Sound Modeling and Building Guitar Pickups and Piezo Pick Ups, as well as DIgital and analogue control systems engineering.

If *anyone* can provide evidence for *anything* not physical (energy-matter-information), a Nobel Prize with ~ a million bucks will soon likely be theirs!

Happy Solstice
Steve

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rogerglewis
on December 22, 2019 at 7:02 pm said:
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Hannes Alfven already got one for his work on Plasma Cosmology more particularly for his work on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) Magnetism and The Electic Universe are outside of the Command and Control Model proposed by Those who would be Gods, Master of the Universe Doomsters. BAsically though Steven You are as Pauli said, Not Even Wrong.