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Scientific Enstupidment

Is tonight’s dorm room bull session topic. This starts to sound a lot like the way some people report the news and other people react to it. Among other things. Via the superlative John Hawks:  

In behavioral studies, an anomalous individual may be identified as an outlier and excluded from statistical analyses so as not to obscure otherwise meaningful patterns. In taxonomy, an anomalous specimen is usually assigned a unique name, which it retains unless or until new discoveries or new analyses of existing material support its placement within the range of variation of another known form.

Yeah, it took me a minute, too.  

Hawks leaves that hanging out there without comment.  But I think his point as an anthropologist in calling attention to this, based on a few things he’s written in the past, is that he finds it ridiculous that his numbskull taxonomist colleagues revert to new type every time they find a variation, given the high degree of variation out there.

Being a moron, I’m fascinated for starters by the notion that smart people are excluding facts in order to better understand reality. Given what kind of trouble anomalies are causing from Northern Illinois University to Baghdad. But I can see how it works.  Every car bomb does not an al Qaeda resurgence make, for example. On the other hand, what we often see in the news business is the enstupiding inverse, which is the exclusion of broader patterns from analyses which are based on attention-grabbing outlying anomalies. This goes beyond Hawks’ taxonomic example. It isn’t a matter of creating new and unique types to sideline anomalies.  They proclaim anomalies to be the norm and ignore the patterns. Take this, for example. Here’s a good one. Sometimes it so anomalous, it takes an anomaly to spot it. Uh oh, it’s not just the media and taxonomists.

In other business, Hawks informs that while National Geographic used to be your go-to place for hunter-gatherer T&A, it’s all about the gorilla porn now.

He’s also getting wonky about libidiousness. Don’t fret, there’s lap dancing. But watch out, there’s cousin love, too.

Topics: media, moronocy, science

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:55 pm on Friday, February 15, 2008

11 Responses to “Scientific Enstupidment”

1. The_Real_JeffS Says:
   February 15th, 2008 at 11:45 pm

   “…I’m fascinated for starters by the notion that smart people are excluding facts in order to better understand reality.”

   So am I, but more as a study of how expectations can be realized by applying personal bias to twisting, altering, or omitting inconvenient facts and theories. Or even a mere hypothesis. It’s what I called “Building Your Own Private Alternate Universe”*, a common trait amongst lefties, but I’ve observed it amongst a few wingnuts as well.

   ==========================
   *: This is also known as “The Make Yourself Feel Good Syndrome”, perhaps a case cause of [insert name here] Derangement Syndrome.

2. Robert Says:
   February 16th, 2008 at 12:04 am

   Oh, Sharon Begley. A complete moron masquerading as a science writer.

3. Dave Surls Says:
   February 16th, 2008 at 2:34 am

   “In behavioral studies, an anomalous individual may be identified as an outlier and excluded from statistical analyses so as not to obscure otherwise meaningful patterns.”

   How is this achieved in practice?

   One waves one’s magic behavioral studier wand and declaims loudly “Inconvenient data begone!”

   Presto! A new study is born.

4. Grimmy Says:
   February 16th, 2008 at 5:15 am

   Personally Alternativeized Cognizance Operation.

5. RebeccaH Says:
   February 16th, 2008 at 12:19 pm

   Forget all that. Tell us more about the gorilla porn.

6. tanstaafl Says:
   February 16th, 2008 at 12:43 pm

   …I’m fascinated for starters by the notion that smart people are excluding facts in order to better understand reality.

   You mean like building your own parameters into computer programs to “model” weather and then drawing conclusions about the state of the planet and (why stop there ?) the universe as a function of your design ?

   Never mind that the behaviors of weather/climate themselves may have little in common with your model.

   National Geographic (on “the channel”) has shown itself to be increasingly on the side of the weather meltdown cabalists.

7. Purple Avenger Says:
   February 16th, 2008 at 7:23 pm

   Must. Insert. More. Epicycles.

8. AHippler Says:
   February 16th, 2008 at 7:32 pm

   It is amusing to note the surprise with which some of us view the daily rising of the sun. That humans everywhere and at all times are not only capable of utter foolishness but practice it endlessly ought not to shock anyone over the age of seven. But when people abandon the idea of ‘original sin’ they often come to believe that humans are infinitely perfectible and can reach a point where they do not err.
   Usually, to achieve this point the would be perfecters decide that lots and lots of people must be killed if they will not accept the all wise leadership of those “who know” and they reinvent ’sin.’
   The ‘perfecters’ also while (logically) demanding absolutism usually propose (illogically) a relativism of values. The resultant social chaos then comes as a surprise to them and they are certain it is caused by those who do not bend to their will and they find justifications for controlling people in everything from sumptuary regulations to insisting that their opponents are responsible for weather patterns.
   Indeed, once you stop believing in God you do not then believe in nothing, you believe in anything. However such persons are rarely harmless, unfortunately they also then become unrestrained in their desire to make others believe in whatever they believe in that week.

9. Bart Says:
   February 17th, 2008 at 1:07 am

   At the risk of sounding arrogant and pedantic and possibly telling a lot of people what they already know, Purple Avenger is referring to the pre-Copernican (AD1543) notion that the heavens could be made to conform to a Church approved model of an Earth-centered universe by adding ever more complicated circles upon circles, like an out-off-control spirograph, to describe the observed motion of celestial bodies.

   Good one, mate. I think it’s fair to say that it is in the nature of hegemonic entities to seek to impose their own version of reality upon those under their thumb and to discount or suppress those evidences which contravene that reality. These days, the hegemon is no longer the Church, but there will always be something or someone to take its place.

10. Dave Surls Says:
    February 17th, 2008 at 2:40 am

    “Must. Insert. More. Epicycles.”

    Also…

    Must. Invent. Tachyons. Gluons. Quarks.

11. Dave Surls Says:
    February 17th, 2008 at 2:51 am

    “At the risk of sounding arrogant and pedantic and possibly telling a lot of people what they already know…”

    Don’t worry about it. I’m just thrilled that there are people out there who even know what an epicycle is.

    If I went down to the school where my wife teaches, and wrote down Avenger’s four words, I can guarantee you not one person there would have the slightest idea what Avenger was trying to say (though they could explain to you in detail why George Bush is the anti-Christ). Thank God, there are some educated and intelligent people out there, who not only actually know something, they actually get what it means.

    I am not alone!

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