My Two Cents #105 – Science and Environment2 min read

Ive been down with the flu for the last five days, so haven’t posted, and still too tired to think much.  So here’s a link dump on some recent science and tech stuff.

• Why MOST modern published scientific studies are wrong – Robert Hotz of the Wall Street Journal’s Science Journal discusses why most scientific studies are tainted by sloppy analysis and wrong conclusions (now you can see why Why I Trust Science in Principle, but not in Practice)

These flawed findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal
misconduct, but from more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor
study design or self-serving data analysis. "There is an increasing
concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or
even the vast majority of published research claims," Dr. Ioannidis
said. "A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false
than true."

The hotter the field of research the more likely its published findings should be viewed skeptically, he determined. [good advice].

• How Not to Measure Temperature – Watts up with that? gives
  us more than 30 examples of how error and bias are being introduced
  into global temperature measurements through bad placement of
  government temperature sensors.
• IBM’s OpenOffice Competitor – We all hate Microsoft for their exorbitant prices for the Office Suite – but what can you do?  Well, if you are man or woman enough to run a Linux box, you can use Open Office (OK, so they now support Win and OSX).  Or you could use Google’s suite of very basic and underpowered online and free word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tool (think PowerPoint).  But now, IBM has released its own free version of it’s Lotus Suite (those who have used Lotus Notes in the past may shudder at having to be around that name again).  They promise that once out of beta, it will be an Enterprise-Class tool.  We’ll see.
• CO2 Emissions and the Ocean – whether or not you think global warming is a threat, new studies indicated that the hightened levels of CO2 may be acidifying the oceans and killing off marine life.  But again, the argument rages – is the change really something to be alarmed about, and do our models accurately reflect the actual effects, or are they skewed towards catastrophe?  May the argument continue (sigh).