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QUOTE PHOTOSHOPPED
Seeking to demolish innumerate and cowardly right-wingers over their criticism of the Lancet estimate, analytic philosopher Lindsay Beyerstein paraphrases Michelle Malkin (among others):
I just know the study’s wrong, but I can’t figure out how. Math people? (Michelle Malkin)
That stupid Malkin! Always so ditzy! Lindsay’s readers pile on:
“Shorter Michelle: Math is hard!”
“What a mindless lying twit Malkin is.”
“My god what a horrible nitwit she is.”
“Time to censors Bozos such as Malkin. Idiots abound.”
There’s one small problem here: Malkin didn’t write the item Lindsay linked to and (inaccurately) paraphrased. It was written by Allahpundit. See, there’s a clue in the top right of screen: “BY ALLAHPUNDIT”. Another clue: hotair.com isn’t michellemalkin.com. It’s revealing, perhaps, that Lancet believers can’t read newspapers or websites.
UPDATE. I shouldn’t be so mean to Lindsay. One of her readers has recently given me this excellent review: “I read his posts and seethe.” Although it’s possible the reviewer was reading another site ...
UPDATE II. A spitey fix from wrrrong grrrl Lindsay: “Correction: I incorrectly associated Michelle Malkin with AllahPundit’s innumeracy. I apologize.”
#4 deadman,
I don’t get the intensity of the hatred towards Michelle Malkin.
To the ever-tolerant multicultural Left, her conservative politics make her a race- and gender-traitor. Worse still, in their sick little minds, she is defiant about it. Those characteristics make all variety of racist and mysogynist insults fair game.
And we’re supposedly be the racist, sexist bigots.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 10 14 at 11:55 AM • permalink#1 cirby—You’re absolutely correct. Having taken statistics as an undergraduate, I always look for red flags on methodology, regardless of the study. Coffee causes Cancer? Snowmobile ownership in the US? Whatever the topic…This Lancet paper looks like a May Day parade.
#4 deadman—Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too. As much as (presumably) straight white males on the Right get attacked, women, gays, and “persons of color” who express Right of Center opinions get absolutely trashed—threatened, outed, abused with racist stereotypes…The last five years have really opened my eyes and make me positively ashamed and embarrassed that I ever bought into their cant.
“Time to censors Bozos such as Malkin” wrote some complete dolt on Lovely Little Lindsay’s site.
So wait, am I surprised when (A) a Lefty declares that censoring a “righty’s” opinion is the correct thing to do? (B) a Lefty suggests a female commentator is a stupid Bozo? (C) a Lefty gets the whole thing completely wrong in the first place? Nah.
Time to get the cluebat out for the Bozos, methinks.
Lindsey’s understanding of p-value only comes after drinking her t-test.
Posted by Some0Seppo on 2006 10 14 at 12:35 PM • permalinkJDB—yes, it’s awesome, in the bad sense of awesome, how anyone who differs from the Lefty consensus is a lesbo/fag/redneck/trashy/slut/tranny/Christo/Oreo/hypocrite/Twinkie etc., etc.
Malkin’s a Twinkie whore; Coulter’s a tranny slut; Rush is possibly all of the above. I don’t want to even consider what Tim might be…
Lefties: Tolerant until you don’t agree.
Like a bunch of bees swarming over what turns out to be a basket of plastic petunias.
#7: Coffee causes Cancer? I actually have proof that it doesn’t. In my possession is a lab study of coffee, and a list of scores of its beneficial effects, and the study completely dismisses the carcinogenic impact. There are even pictures of guys wearing white lab coats. It was prepared by the Brazilian Coffee Institute, so you can be sure those guys know what they’re talking about. Which is all a great relief to me, since I drink about a pint of espresso a day, plus regular American mud.
Cluster sampling properly is always problematic. If it’s difficult in the US, how hard must it be in Iraq? Add the fact of obvious researcher bias and what will you get? An article in Lancet. I haven’t looked at Lancet (just the article). If this was peer-reviewed I’d be really interested to see who the reviewers were.
Cluster sampling epidemology studies aren’t too bad in the case of infectious diseases. They are terrible in non-infectious situations. Does anyone here remember that the big hoorah over high-tension power lined and luekemia(? cancer, anyway) was based on the fact that *3* Swedish power linemen got leukemia over a 30 year period when only 1 would have been expected? This was then projected to thousands of possible cases in the US.
I’m sorry, but this is stupidity on stilts.
I suggest that next time Lancet studies clusters exclusively in the Kurdish area and then extrapolate to all of Iraq. That should give an interesting number.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 10 14 at 01:29 PM • permalink(sorry just had to do it)
Better than the one I was going to make about “showers”.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 10 14 at 02:48 PM • permalinkIt is always interesting to note the power of ideas. The Lancet is supposed to be a scientific journal, but all reason is quickly replaced with rationalizing when the ideals of the author, and his peers, run up against any facts that they don’t like. The ever malleable relativism of their “ethics” allows them to massage the facts until those facts fit their preconceived ideas. So much for science, and so much for any value that might have once been found in the pages of Lancet.
Oops! I lost the last paragraph. I’ll just add that it is the philosophers who teach the intellectuals, the intellectuals who teach the professionals, and the professionals who teach the rest of us. Look at what happens when a false ideas rule the mind (in this case the relativistic Kantian world of the Left). Lindsey represents the results of this trickle down philosophy at its worse.
I think we’re all missing the important question here.
Does Lindsay really have magic thighs?
Posted by Quentin George on 2006 10 14 at 06:31 PM • permalinkThere is a group of people, to which Tim Blair belongs, who feel they are not being heard. They have a sense of being persecuted. They have a sense that powerful forces, and large numbers of people, disagree with them. They believe they have truth on their side, if only people would listen. The problem, from the perspective of the TB faction, is that people aren’t listening to them.
Hmm…
The quote misattributed to Malkin is analogous to a lot of philosophy. The Lancet figure is a novel manifest implausibility while philosophical scepticism is artificial, but much philosophy consists of finding fault with apparently coherent arguments against manifest truths, and some philosophers have gone so far as to say that if someone denies that I’m sitting at a desk in conversation with comparable individuals with minds and wills, or that murder is wrong, I can assume there’s some defect in his reasoning even if I can’t immediately point to it and even though ideally I should be able to. I just know the denial’s wrong, but I can’t figure out why. Philosophy guys?
I loved this Arts graduate’s comment:
I love when people try to sound smart. I used to do that in middle school, make stuff as wordy and thesaurosy as possible. I am glad I grew out of that. It’s also much funnier if you subvocalize all that gobbley gook in the voice of the late-great Lionel Hutz.
Are you sure you grew out of it? Do you sound smart yet? Are you sure?
It sounds to me like the people who frequent Lindsey’s blog take things far too seriously. The denizens of Tim’s blog, on the other hand, are more like a group of regular customers to a Aussie pub. We drink, joke, laugh, and have a good time. If no one else listens to our carrying on, so be it.
But I must say the food sucks. I’m getting tired of Shepherd’s Pie. Doesn’t Australia have other good dishes?
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 14 at 11:25 PM • permalinkWronwright,
Weren’t you supposed to use the Tardis to bring in some Sicilian Smothered Beef from 5th Century BC Syracuse? I could swear that was what Richard said at the last Neocon cell meeting.I’ve heard there is an Aussie dish of a meat pie in pea soup with ketchup on it. Would you like to try that?
Tell Tim to get the barbie out and we’ll cook some steak and prawns. That should satisfy everybody.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 10 15 at 12:17 AM • permalinkWronwright, Weren’t you supposed to use the Tardis to bring in some Sicilian Smothered Beef from 5th Century BC Syracuse?
No. I. am. not. a. food. ferry. person.
(glares in the direction of that guy over there)
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 15 at 12:23 AM • permalinkMicky Lonie:
I’ve heard there is an Aussie dish of a meat pie in pea soup with ketchup on it. Would you like to try that?
The dish is called a Pie Floater BUT it most definitely doesn’t have ‘ketchup’ on it. At worst, it might have some tomato sauce on it (otherwise known as “dead ‘orse”).
A happy variant, as served by Harry’s Cafe de Wheels at Darlinghurst, Sydney, is a pie with mashed potato on top, which is shaped into a bowl. INTO that is poured the pea soup. BLISS!
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 10 15 at 12:50 AM • permalinkTalking about food is much better than talking about the turds on the left and their mono neurological ‘thought processes’. And its BECAUSE we talk about food in our threads that we will ultimately win the idealogical war.
The other lot will still be outside, in the rain, protesting about their body lice’s rights while we decide which expensive wine we’ll start our meal with.
Hey Michael, Wronwright - would you like some bush oysters?
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 10 15 at 12:57 AM • permalinkwronwright
But I must say the food sucks. I’m getting tired of Shepherd’s Pie. Doesn’t Australia have other good dishes?
You are disoriented again. Its England with the Shepherd’s Pies. What are you doing there? When you come back to Godzone’s, I can do you a very tasty camembert and spinach pie if you like.
Or how about a Tasmanian scallop pie. Hmmmmm….
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 10 15 at 02:54 AM • permalinkYeah, us neocons are sure stumped when it comes to that mathemajiggerypokery. Ain’t but a one of us innumerate bastards who knows what a T test is, or standard error, or skewness, or kurtosis, or chi-squared testing, or the difference between relative risk and odds ratio, or how to define a measure on a probability space, or what a sigma algebra is. Then there’s those epicene twats in PoliSci: they’re state of the art, speaking Truth to Power via they mad skillz in Probability Theory (acquired via Dummy’s Guides). It is to weep.
Posted by David Gillies on 2006 10 15 at 05:27 AM • permalink#36 SCD
You are disoriented again. Its England with the Shepherd’s Pies.
Bull crap. You obviously know nothing about Australia cuisine. I, on the other hand, went to an authentic Australia pub in Cincinnati and they had Shepherd’s pie on the menu. So kiss my boomerang you probable transplant from New Zealand.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 10 15 at 10:59 AM • permalinkI love Lindsay’s chirpy “That’s because we’re right” when someone accused her partisans as being “predictable to a tee.”
If they should win the House and Senate in November, they will be in charge. Let’s hope ten years from now, the Lindsays take responsibility for what happens next. (Have they taken responsibility for the aftermath in Vietnam yet? Waiting…)
Patricia, that whole Viet Nam aftermath thing was what happens when the righteous win. You know, can’t make the Ultimate SOcialist Omelet without breaking a few million eggs.
I did tell you about the Cambodian woman at work, yes? The one whose parents, teachers, were both “intellectuals,” so the entire family was taken to a re-education camp, where they ate insects and bark; whose mother, pregnant, delivered and a camp guard stomped the baby’s skull in (she said that her mother was too starved to have any milk in her breasts anyway, so the baby would have starved to death soon anyway); who were forced to labor 18 hours a day or more; who finally escaped and “boat peopled” their way to the U.S., aka in her words, “The Land of the Angels.” I did mention that here, yes? Should I mention that on Linday’s site?
wronnie:
So kiss my boomerang you probable transplant from New Zealand.I love it when you talk dirty! <takes another munch of breakfast vegemite on toast> But lay off the religious insults, will ya?
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 10 15 at 05:13 PM • permalink
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The thing I’ve seen around the net on the Lancet study is that the people who most support it seem to understand it the least, and do nothing but repeat the talking points handed down to them.
On the other hand, when you put forward a solid question, the first response is on the order of “The Lancet is a famous medical journal, and wouldn’t ever make a mistake or publish something stupid!”
...ignoring the MMR/autism debacle of recent memory…