WhatFinger


Western civilization can not afford the public's doubt about the veracity of science or statistics. It can not afford professionals who ferment such doubts in the name of "correct ideology"

Debasing Statistics, Science's Mathematical Foundation, in the Service of a Leftist Agenda



Some of you whose undergraduate days are way behind may not realize that those in college today taking sociology, political science, anthropology or women's studies courses are taught as a primary method of research what is called critical social science. Namely that all science is value driven, the purpose of science is to "empower" the proletariat, and evidence is whatever promotes thought that liberates the "oppressed".
Obviously man made climate change, and how it is the "greatest threat" facing humanity today makes sense under the above paradigm. While science is under constant attack from the left today, I want to talk about statistics. Not only how essential it is to science, but the black eye it just received in a battlefield of interest to many readers here, the recent Israeli elections. After suffering close to the coldest winter on record, spring greeted de Blasio's progressive New York City with a snowstorm Friday. The brutal winter had a benefit though. Nights with single digit temperatures kept the murder rate an unbelievably mere 20% higher than last year. Remarkably good for a city with a demoralized and damaged police department. There were 332 murders in New York in 2013, the city record is 2245 murders in 1990, the Dinkins years. That record looks unbeatable, but then so did Babe Ruth's 714 homeruns when I was young, and I have great faith in de Blasio.

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The War on Science

But the winter did not do much good for the global warming narrative. Global warming is based on the progressive core principle that a politically correct agenda is all that counts and the only use of data is to promote progressive thought. The global warming agenda has in addition to its stated goal of wiping out capitalism and US autonomy, and in the process making a select few high ranking allies of the administration billions, an additional consequence of ridiculing science in the public perception. A tragic result, because only science produces objective results and progress, only science keeps up from dying in the mud. The war against science is supposedly waged by "conservatives", and Republicans. In truth conservatives talking abut kangaroos on Noah's ark only serves to discredit their reasoned arguments against global warming. That all life had a common ancestor 3.5 billion years ago is beyond serious dispute. But that does not mean the left accepts scientific evolution. Indeed that left has at least four problems with empirical evolution:
  1. Clinging to the discredited and false notion of group selection.
  2. Refusing to accept evolutionary psychology, the only scientific psychology, despite incontrovertible evidence for it, and instead maintaining a mystical belief that the human mind in alone in nature bares no effects of it evolutionary history.
  3. Going back to a de facto conception of fixed species when pushing their anti-capitalist conservationist/environmentalist agenda.
  4. Still having soft spot for Lamarckism/Lysenkoism when it suits their ideology.
Science writers Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell have correctly noted "if it is true that conservatives have declared a war on science, then progressives have declared Armageddon.‚"

The Israeli Polls

Mere days before the election all the polls in Israel were clear. "Warmongering" Netanyahu who had "insulted" Obama was going to be thrown out. British papers among others already had this headline. The polling consensus was Likud would garner about a mere 21-22 seats, while its opposition the Orwellian named "Zionist" Union would win 26-27. In fact as elections were getting closer, the Union lead was said to be widening. But Democrats, progressives, leftists and others in the anti-Semitic coalition would be in for a bitter shock. At exit polls and at the first counts pollsters were still babbling about "too close to call", Likud and its rival seemingly tied. but eventually the horrible truth was out. It was indeed the initially predicted landslide, but a landslide for Netanyahu. Likud had won 30 seats, the (not very) Zionist Union just 24.

What went Wrong for the Pollsters?

What had gone wrong for the pollsters, well paid, well trained, professionals? I know something about statistics, I know something about surveys and confidence intervals, and how they are gotten, having analyzed data both for academic and business purposes. Mistakes of this magnitude should not occur. If mistakes of this magnitude routinely occurred, statistics would be worthless. So what happened? Monumental and miraculous last minute changes in a totally unpredictable Israeli electorate? Is it just pointy headed mathematicians who know nothing, and might as well be tossing a die. I wish to demonstrate that nothing could be further from the truth, that statistics is simply the most important use of mathematics ever, indispensable for science, the only language of proof in science. Statisticians know what they're doing. They are able to give answers with rigorous mathematical precision to a given (high) level of certainty. Let us first look at a condensed history of statistics.

A Very Short History of Statistics

Statistics was born in a particular time and place, England 1892-1920. It was born in a in a particular mindset, that randomness and variability could be studied mathematically and decisions about populations could be made from samples. And it was created almost solely to understand mathematically a then relatively recent theory, evolution. Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), genius in many areas, wished to mathematically study a theory by a famous cousin of his, Charles Darwin. Karl Pearson (1857-1936) and Sir Ronald Fisher (1890-1962), solver of the "blending" problem and father of evolutionary genetics, both brilliant mathematicians, created modern statistical procedures to study evolution. I once got into hot water for mentioning this while teaching statistics at a college under Orthodox Jewish auspices and thus religiously creationist (and geocentric).

Statistics Proves its Value

When one of the pioneers of statistics died in 1936, he was already then eulogized as inventing the methods that were standard in business and science. A few years later, statistics aided the World War II effort, by helping crack the Enigma codes and solving what became known as the "German tank problem". British tank commanders, risking and losing their lives in battle, probably were not thrilled to be ordered because of requests by desk bound "boffins" to record all the serial numbers from all the components they could find on disabled or captured German tanks. But statisticians used these numbers to estimate German tank production far more accurately than could be gotten from conventional intelligence. Not long after that William Deming (1900-1993) an American statistician, brought "Statistical Product Quality Administration" to a war devastated Japan in 1950, helping to turn Japan into an economic world power in a decade. Without statistics there are no cell phones or medicines, no quality control or modern physics, in short no western civilization. I have used this quote by historian Theodore Porter before, but it bears repeating for its succinct summery of the place of statistics today as the "mathematical tool for analyzing experimental and observational data. Enshrined...as the only reliable basis for judgments such as the efficacy of medical procedures or the safety of chemicals, [or] industrial quality control...Statistical analysis has also come to be seen in many scientific disciplines as indispensable for drawing reliable conclusions from empirical results."

Trying to Make Sense of the Israeli Polls

Were the Israeli polling companies trying to do an objective job and turned out wrong by 10-11 seats because they goofed? This would certainly be a gross incompetence. The most charitable interpretation of the Israeli polling disaster was given by an article in the uber-leftist CNN website . The theory was that the pollsters, members of the Israeli cultural elite, inadvertently biased their sample too much to those like them, liberal, Tel Aviv centered, better educated, and underrepresented those in the poorer educated, more conservative outskirts. Possible, but haven't we heard about an error like this before? Yes, 1948, Dewey beats Truman. The culprit then was a phone poll, and the lack of taking into account that Republicans were richer and more likely to own a phone in 1948 than Democrats. But that was 67 years ago, polling was a baby, and it has become the textbook case of what not to do. In 2015 Israel is the most advanced country in the world in computer research, could its pollsters have repeated the classic seven decade year old greatest polling blooper of all time? Or is it more likely the polls were a deliberate agenda driven attempt by leftists to undermine the morale of Netanyahu supporters, and in making them think their cause was lost to switch their votes to other parties?

What Does this all Mean?

In 2004 polls showed Kerry ahead of Bush. When actual results did not match exit polls, I remember reading an article in a humanist journal that not only cried fraud, but proclaimed that the results of the poll should have constituted the election. Now leftists, in disbelief that a worldwide anti-Israel effort, failed to rid the White House of chicken****, are of course already accusing Likud of fraud. But, speaking of fraud, in addition to the question of whether US taxpayer state department money, and White House operatives, were illegally used to try to unseat Netanyahu, the methods and motivation of Israeli pollsters need examination. How much of their failure was wishful thinking unconsciously influencing the results, how much was deliberate fraud? Western civilization, with the freedom, tolerance, progress and high lifestyle it has afforded, depends on science, science depends on statistics. Western civilization is already on the ropes, it can not afford the public's doubt about the veracity of science or statistics. It can not afford professionals who ferment such doubts in the name of "correct ideology"


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Dr. Alexander Nussbaum -- Bio and Archives

Dr. Alexander Nussbaum has had articles in a number of magazines including articles on intelligent design and on the history of statistics and is a contributor to a personality textbook


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