Posted inStatistics
How Effective Was This Year’s Flu Vaccine?
A reader asks, was this year's flu shot effective? Short answer: Looks to be, but there is no definitive way to know. In order to know definitively for any one…
Posted inStatistics
Global Warming Causes Death
Work is catching up to me this week, so today only the briefest of reports, with the promise of a return to regularity after this weekend. Also keep those post…
Posted inFun
Ecoheroes For the Climate Join Global Warming Superheroes!
Remember Global Warming Superheroes? A site where I---cough, cough---made villain of the day? While glancing through my logs, I was led to Timberati: Reasonably green thoughts. The folks there were…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Why Memes Are Stupid: The Short Version
In 1976, in his The Selfish Gene, a book which revealed that most of us are slaves to our genes, biologist Richard Dawkins "discovered" the meme which, in one definition,…
Posted inCulture
City Of Free Love To Ban Circumcision
An enraged citizen's group in San Francisco has submitted legislation that, if passed, would ban abortion---no, wait. I have that wrong. They would ban circumcision. In a fit of Enlightenment…
More Bad Language
We've already done issue (as an asinine synonym of problem), raising awareness (rampant self regard combined with the belief of education as panacea), questions raised (a cheap journalistic trick). Today…
Posted inStatistics
Increasing Replication Of Un-Reproducibility In Science
Best science picture of the year, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal (and thanks to reader Dan Hughes): In just the last decade---ten mere years---the number of "peer-reviewed" journal articles…
Posted inCulture
Blasphemy Contest winner announced
Still settling in here in the land of endless (and depressing) sunshine. More on climategate coming shortly. Two months ago, the Center for Inquiry sponsored a Blasphemy Contest. The results…
