Seth's Blog

• World Health Organization opposes effective herbal malaria remedy
• Increasing potassium intake reduces blood pressure and risk of stroke (experimental evidence)
• How to clearly distinguish thermometer and proxy temperature records.
• Conversation with Edward Jay Epstein about his new book Annals of Unsolved Crime.
• The flavors of fermentation (WSJ). “Recreating naturally occurring fermented flavors in a lab isn’t easy, experts say. “What I marvel the most about is the complexity, especially with something like kimchi,” says Paul Ricciardi, an IFF flavorist.” I believe we like complex flavors so that we will eat more fermented food.
• Ada by Vladimir Nabokov, annotated
• Patient-powered health (BMJ)

Thanks to Dave Lull and Ashish Mukharji.

The person who assembled and disseminated the Climategate emails has now explained his or her actions:

The first glimpses I got behind the scenes did little to [increase] my trust in the state of climate science — on the contrary. I found myself in front of a choice that just might have a global impact.

Briefly put, when I had to balance the interests of my own safety, privacy\career of a few scientists, and the well-being of billions of people living in the coming several decades, the first two weren’t the decisive concern.

It was me or nobody, now or never. Combination of several rather improbable prerequisites just wouldn’t occur again for anyone else in the foreseeable future. The circus was about to arrive in Copenhagen. Later on it could be too late.

Most would agree that climate science has already directed where humanity puts its capability, innovation, mental and material “might”. The scale will grow ever grander in the coming decades if things go according to script. We’re dealing with $trillions and potentially drastic influence on practically everyone.

Wealth of the surrounding society tends to draw the major brushstrokes of a newborn’s future life. It makes a huge difference whether humanity uses its assets to achieve progress, or whether it strives to stop and reverse it, essentially sacrificing the less fortunate to the climate gods.

We can’t pour trillions in this massive hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor and pretend it’s not away from something and someone else.

If the economy of a region, a country, a city, etc. deteriorates, what happens among the poorest? Does that usually improve their prospects? No, they will take the hardest hit. No amount of magical climate thinking can turn this one upside-down.

It’s easy for many of us in the western world to accept a tiny green inconvenience and then wallow in that righteous feeling, surrounded by our “clean” technology and energy that is only slightly more expensive if adequately subsidized.

Those millions and billions already struggling with malnutrition, sickness, violence, illiteracy, etc. don’t have that luxury. The price of “climate protection” with its cumulative and collateral effects is bound to destroy and debilitate in great numbers, for decades and generations.

Conversely, a “game-changer” could have a beneficial effect encompassing a similar scope.

If I had a chance to accomplish even a fraction of that, I’d have to try. I couldn’t morally afford inaction. Even if I risked everything, would never get personal compensation, and could probably never talk about it with anyone.

I took what I deemed the most defensible course of action, and would do it again (although with slight alterations — trying to publish something truthful on RealClimate was clearly too grandiose of a plan .

Even if I have it all wrong and these scientists had some good reason to mislead us (instead of making a strong case with real data) I think disseminating the truth is still the safest bet by far.

From my point of view, the best thing about the Climategate emails is that they were more evidence that mainstream thinking about something can be grossly wrong — that a “crazy” position can be right. My self-experimentation taught me this over and over (e.g., the Shangri-La Diet).

• Johnson & Johnson executives knew about problems with hip implant but did not tell doctors and patients. Surely an example of a larger problem.
• Evidence that smell involves quantum physics. A theory that almost all smell scientists reject.
• From 210 to 160 pounds via the Shangri-La Diet, and still losing.
• In this history of the NFL’s response to brain trauma, doctors, such as Elliott Pellman, acted far more often against player protection than for player protection.
• The Sierra Club has taken lots of money from gas companies. Which makes sense. If you have a lot of money to spend, should you give it to those who agree with you or those who disagree with you? Which recipients will change more per dollar? Peter Gleick failed to understand this. Noam Chomsky is even more confused.
• Overweight associated with lower, not higher mortality. “Relative to normal weight . . . grades 2 and 3 obesity were associated with significantly higher all-cause mortality. . . . Overweight [25 < BMI < 30] was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality.”

The title comes from Andrew Montford’s new book Hiding the Decline (copy given me by author) about Climategate. From an introductory section:

When the figures were published the extraordinary lack of data underlying the blade of the Yamal hockey stick caused a minor sensation. In fact the high point at the end of the graph was shown to have been based on only four trees, and only one of these had the hockey stick shape. McIntyre dubbed it ‘the most influential tree in the world’.

Most of Hiding the Decline is about the inquiries that followed Climategate. I enjoyed reading about smug powerful people making fools of themselves and the fairy-tale-like consternation created by two unlikely events: 1. A non-scientist (Steve McIntyre) gets involved in the global warming debate. As in a fairy tale, McIntyre is free to speak the truth. In particular, he is free to question. Professional climate scientists cannot speak the truth for fear of career damage. 2. The release of the Climategate emails. As in a fairy tale, a sudden burst of truth about bad behavior previously hidden. (more…)

• American Geophysical Union honors Peter Gleick.
• What does using SPSS say about you? (Via Marginal Revolution). I disagree that R users “do not care about aesthetics.” R can make much nicer graphs than other packages.
• Does the Daily Mail website get 100 million unique visitors per month? If so, did Michael Jackson sell one billion records?
• IRB difficulties, social science division
• Unsafe injections: “This can’t happen in the United States, this is a Third World thing.”
• What medication was Lanza on? “It may well turn out that knowing what kinds of guns he used isn’t nearly as important as what kind of drugs he used.”
• Aaron Swartz in his own words.

Thanks to Patrick Vlaskovits.

• ALS patients test promising chemical, collate the results themselves.
• Did you know about “side letters”? New ways that Hollywood makes money by Edward Epstein.
• Parents have stronger immune systems than non-parents.
• Does sewer work improve your immune system? ” Sewer workers think so. “The [sewer workers] that Mayhew met were strong, robust and even florid in complexion, often surprisingly long-lived–thanks, perhaps, to immune systems that grew used to working flat out–and adamantly convinced that the stench that they encountered in the tunnels [while searching for valuable stuff, such as coins] “contributes in a variety of ways to their general health.”
• Steve McIntyre tries to get Science and PNAS to enforce their data archiving policies. Thompson = Lonnie Thompson, an Ohio State climatologist.

Thanks to Adam Clemens, Melissa McEwen, and Navanit Arakeri.

• criticism of Richard Florida
• tea drinking associated with reduced risk of stroke
• James Lovelock changes his mind about global warming. “Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing.” . . . He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence.”
• The American Psychiatric Association suppresses criticism of the forthcoming new edition of its diagnostic manual, the DSM. (The new edition is DSM 5). The more arbitrary, top-down and evidence-ignoring the actions of health professionals, the greater the value of personal science (= finding out for oneself). Here are criticisms of the new edition.
• More about autism and ultrasound
• Nora Ephron misses butter and bacon

Thanks to Bryan Castañeda and Alex Blackwood.

• interview with Sandor Katz about his new book The Art of Fermentation
• How well do climate models predict?
• Bryan Caplan reviews a book about twins separated at birth.
• UC Davis professor harassed after he criticizes prostate cancer screening. “[UC Davis] officials said the dispute should have been handled internally and that Wilkes should not have published his concerns in a public forum.”
• Andrew Gelman chooses five books about politics.

Thanks to David Cramer.

• A good example of how misleading drug-company-sponsored analyses of drug trials can be. Independent reanalysis by Daniel Coyne, a professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, reached opposite conclusions. Good work, Coyne.
• Coke contains a carcinogen.
• “I used sunflower seeds to lose weight.” Someone else used them to reduce addictions. The link between the Shangri-La Diet and reduction of non-food addictions (smoking, coffee) fascinates me. People start SLD to lose weight and say they become less addicted to smoking, coffee drinking, and so on. One possibility is that by reducing hunger, SLD reduces discomfort. Addictions gain strength from discomfort, often resemble self-medication.
• Steve McIntyre replies to Gavin Schmidt’s claim that McIntyre’s beliefs resemble “classic conspiracy theory”. I used to watch a lot of football — when the 49ers won most of their games. (I am a classic fairweather fan.) I get a similar pleasure reading Steve McIntyre’s posts as I did from watching 49er games.
• Congratulations, UCLA press office! A study that measured the effect of omega-3 by comparing two groups of rats — one gets omega-3, the other doesn’t — is called a study about the evils of fructose (both groups got a high-fructose diet). I am surprised the scientists involved didn’t object to this misrepresentation. The study supposedly shows — according to the press office — that fructose is bad because performance went down when the rats were switched from standard lab chow to a high-fructose diet. Let’s say you start with a diet (standard lab chow) that has a barely adequate amount of omega-3. You feed both groups lab chow for several months. Then you do an experiment in which both groups get 60% of their calories from the lab chow and 40% of their calories from a diet that contains no omega-3. Performance is likely to decline due to insufficient omega-3 no matter what the new diet contains.

Thanks to Tim Beneke.

After noting that James Hansen’s 1988 climate model predicted too much warming in the subsequent 22 years, someone at Skeptical Science concluded:

The main reason Hansen’s 1988 warming projections were too high is that he used a climate model with a high climate sensitivity, and his results are actually evidence that the true climate sensitivity parameter is within the range accepted by the IPCC.

There is no consideration of the possibilities that (a) one or more other parameters were wrong or (b) the model — aside from parameter values — is wrong (e.g., it oversimplifies). Surely you are joking, Mr. Skeptical Science.

Thanks to Phil Price.