Expert Bias

An acquaintance of mine semi-recently wrote that he has learned one thing in his years of trying to follow "expert opinions." This is that while the experts almost certainly have their biases, he surely has his own, and his are probably much worse off, much harder to see around, and much more likely to give in to error.

After mulling it over for some months, I have three thoughts about this.

The first is that there is certainly some credence to this notion. It also gives an interesting twist to Matthew 7:5 and Luke 7:42:

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye" (Luke 6:41-42).

The second is to wonder who gets to decide who the experts are. There are biases in that process, too. Is it those who have a degree, or especially an advanced degree? Certainly some such people should be experts, but then again there are those who have studied the problem on their own--and whose funding (read: livelihood) is unlikely to depend on the answer they give.

The third is to note that the experts do in fact still have biases, often systematic ones, and at time ones which are unwarranted. Funding is an easy example, but there are plenty of others. The "experts" in psychology state that homosexuality is not (ever) a mental disorder (or a moral one--but they never admit this)--but at this time one of the requirements for becoming a certified (read: licensed, degree-holding) expert in psychology is to state that homosexuality is not a mental disorder. Meanwhile, the "experts" who write textbooks on embryology once universally stated that an unborn child was in fact still a fully human child--right up until 1973, when the Supreme Court decided otherwise. Suddenly the textbooks altered their phrasings--hardly an unbiased point.

Catcalling and Bad Methodology

I've had occasion to post something about the infamous "catcalling" video set in New York (and some of its spin-offs and derivatives). I never really thought of it as a particularly well-done experiment (if it can be called that). The experiences of a single fairly attractive white woman wearing slightly provocative (but not overtly so) clothing strolling through a few streets in a single city and then sifting the footage and pairing it down to 2 minutes sounds more like selective anecdotes than actual data, even for sociology.

And so here is a sociologist explaining why that is. Some choice samples of the piece:

In effect, this was a research project, and it had an implicit research question (“Do conventionally attractive white women get verbally harassed in New York?”) and produced an answer: the video. However, in doing so without any reflection on its own method, it amply demonstrates the crucial substantive and political importance of research methods.... 

The Hollaback video also shows why “data” without theory can be so misleading—and how the same data can fit multiple theories. Since all data collection involves some form of data selection (even the biggest dataset has selection going into what gets included, from what source), and since data selection is always a research method, there is always a need for understanding methods.... 

Removing the means of implicit biases can be eye-opening. For example, after decades of lack of women in major orchestras, some big symphonies started doing their interviews blind — musicians played their instruments behind a curtain. Lo and behold, women, previously greatly lagging in professional employment in symphonies, started being evaluated as performing much better.

Data without theory is without context--but beware the biases in the theory!

Newton's Third Law and Causes Prior to Effects

Newton's Third Law is often paraphrased that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. A more thorough stating of this law is that if object 1 applies a force on object 2, then this will simultaneously cause object 2 to apply a force of equal magnitude but on the opposite direction back on object 1. Thus, if I push on my desk with my hand, it might be said (and rightly) that I am causing there to be a force exerted from my hand onto the desk, and that this pushing also causes a second force to be exerted from the desk back on my hand.

However, the two forces spring into existence simultaneously, and then begin once I begin to push on the desk. Therefore, a cause does not necessarily precede an effect in time. It is therefore to be concluded that logical priority does not imply temporal priority.

TMM: A Few Thoughts On Research at the Small College Level

I thought  would have more time to write now that I am finished with graduate school. Not a lot more, mind you, but at least a little more. It turns out that being a new professor is a lot of work, even when your main responsibilities are just teaching classes. Or maybe I put a little too much effort into preparing my lecture notes: I seem to be the only one who regularly stays here until 7, 8, or even 9 at night (and I am usually here before 8 in it morning): everybody else goes home by 5. Of course, "everybody else" has tenure.

I look forward to that day, if it comes. I have a plan and a path to get there, but no assurance that it will ultimately work out. And they demand research, a minimum of three peer-reviewed publications (a bit of a challenge in my experience). This will ultimately require that I switch fields at least a little, because they don't have anything like enough money to buy the laser and other equipment I would need to stay in my own field. Ouch.

Many of the member of the tenure and promotion committee are people who did not themselves every have this research requirement (though many of them did do research). They got tenure, they got promoted, then they changed the rules to make those things more difficult to get. These are not necessarily complaints, only observations--I actually am really enjoying my job so far.

The nearest to a complaint that I have to offer is that this seems to be a national trend. I specifically targeted smaller "liberal arts"-type colleges because I did not want research to be a requirement of the job--and I am not alone in this desire to leave rigorous research behind. Not everybody wants to do the whole publish-or-perish thing: I'd wager that if not an outright majority, then at least a large minority do not want to have that hanging over their heads. There are quite a few people coming out of the big R1 universities who want to go to a smaller college without graduate students because they want to focus on teaching and teaching well, with research as a sort of side-gig or hobby. Research without pressure to publish immediately won't likely lead to cutting edge results. It may well lead to a return to "doing good science," that is, being more thorough and systematic in obtaining results.

It may be that soon there will be no such teaching positions available, outside of the community colleges and adjunct positions. And on a related note, "publish or perish" has been steadily pushing the scientific field to look for "flashy results" and not necessarily good science. Often the one can lead to the other, though much of the "good science" which comes in the wake of the "flashy results" never really makes it to publication. And at the other extreme, often the flashy results are not good science at all, are not the beginnings of good science--but they get published, so the more cynical scientists will pass them off as "good science" for as long as they can wring publications out of them. That truly is a tragedy.

Fat Country

Bloomberg reports that a study in The Lancet has us as (statistically) among the fattest nations:

"About 2.1 billion people, or almost one-third of the world’s population, were obese or overweight last year, researchers estimated after examining data from 183 countries... The heaviest country was the U.S., accounting for about 13 percent of the world’s obese people."

By my math, that means that the, ahem, vast majority (~4/5) of Americans are obese. Of course, there's also a few sleights of hand here:

• The 2.1 billion number is the number of people who are either obese or overweight
• The 13% number is the American share of obese people
• Buried further down in the Bloomberg article is the fact that of the 2.1 billion figure reported above, only 671 million are obese (and thus, 87 million or roughly 1 in 4 Americans are obese)

But wait, there's more! The device used to measure all of this is... the body mass index. Input your height and your weight, and this device will till you whether you are underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese. Hint number one: all women who are beyond the second trimester will be marked as overweight or obese. Ditto for postpartum women (at least for the first few months). Yikes.

And if you happen to be big-boned or a heavily-muscled man, odds are that you're at least overweight. And, I notice that if I put in my height and weight from my junior year of high school--during which time I was still considered to be somewhat of a beanpole--I still end up in the "normal weight" category, albeit at the lower end of it.

But, of course, such studies are useful for banning large fountain drinks and pushing for "healthier" meals at school, both points found in favor of those who are rich and powerful. Therefor, they will continue to receive funding, and so the march of SCIENCE! continues.

Seven Quick Takes Friday (vol 3).

--1--

I haven't been posting as much (or as lengthy, or in as high-quality) as I'd like, but I've become very busy all of a sudden. It's not just the start of a new semester (though this doesn't help). I can't really point to anything in particular, other than maybe exhaustion. A three-day weekend helped, but it was mostly spent baby-proofing the apartment, and I did not have any time for writing (and little for reading). Maybe it's that when I am home, I am instantly in charge of a very demanding baby, and when I'm at work there is no real down time on most days (including lunch-breaks, etc.). How I pine for a better work-life balance, but i also want a better life-LIFE balance. Some of what follows is a set of threads which I had wanted to make into longer posts, but which I don't have the time or the energy to tackle.

--2--

In the days of my youth I supported both the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars. I'm not sure that it was a mistake per se at the time (and certainly not the Afghanistan War), though now that I see how our country fights wars anymore, and how it botches the clean-up after the war, I'm certain that at the least I would have opposed the war as fought there. I have tried to learn a bit from my mistakes, and really also from the mistakes of others, so even had the pope been silent on Syria, even had the Syrian Christians said nothing, and even if I had more confidence that the President wanted the war for more noble reasons than saving his own credibility, I would be opposing a war in Syria. Alas, a number of Republicans (and a few Democrats, too) are not so opposed. We may well enter into an unnecessary war, and on the wrong side (if there is a right side), to save face for the President, thanks to a Congress which is less interested in doing what is right than in playing politics with lives. Feeling ruled, feeling insignificant? That because in the eyes of the "ruling class," you and I are.

--3--

"Love the sinner, hate the sin." This is a common saying for Christians, in particular orthodox Christians. However, "liberal" Christians think they love the sinner, and are utterly indifferent to the sin; some conservative Christians hate the sin but at times forget about the sinner; and "progressive" Christians celebrate the sin, but are indifferent to the sinner.

--4--

"Love the sinner, hate the sin." It's actually a sort of tautology: the Christian recognizes that loving someone means wanting what is right for them, and despising what is bad for them. The greatest good consists in beatitude and ultimately the beatific vision, that is, seeing God face-to-face, enjoying God. The supreme and ultimate Good is God. Sin is that which separates us from God. Therefore, sin, and its consequence (damnation, separation from God) is the greatest evil. Hence, we cannot love the sinner fully without also hating his sins.

--5--

Two thoughts on the pro-life front. The first is that neither party really stands against abortion as a priority, but it's obvious that one party is willing to go all-in to fight for abortion, whereas the other is not. There are very few genuinely pro-life politicians, but they are more rare on the Democratic side of the political aisle; Senator Bob Casey, for example, is not particularly pro-life, nor really pro-family. Neither party is perfect, and I actually mostly dislike both parties, but one party's platform is at least tolerable, and one party is clearly more pro-abortion than the other. The second thought is related to the first, which is that appalling few states actually ban abortion coverage in insurance outright, and far too few ban it in the state exchanges. A few "conservative," "red," "Republican-stronghold" states (*cough* Texas *cough*) lack such bans.  The pro-life issue has always been grassroots, but there are some frustrations with having little to no political leadership on this issue.

--6--

This series of posts by Mike Flynn on the Galileo Affair is fascinating reading. It's in three parts, though there are prequels. Among other things, it really brings out the personalities of those involved (and it was not just a matter of "Galileo vs the Church" as the modern scientistic-atheistic propaganda would have us believe). Among other things, there was no real reason to believe Galileo's (really Copernicus') model at the time of the Galileo Affair: there were simpler explanations which made more accurate predictions and which were less counter-intuitive. Actually, it seems to me that the main theoretical justification for heliocentrism is found in the laws of gravitation and in Newton's Laws. While two of Newton's Laws (the first and the third) were known prior to Newton, it was Newton who interpreted them into a coherent set of principles relating forces and momenta, and Newton who significantly advanced our understanding of gravity (since overthrown by general relativity). Newton, you will recall, was born in the same year that Galileo died.

Also worth highlighting is the irony that even in Kepler's model of the solar system (which is superior to Copernicus' model), there are still epicycles (e.g. the moon's orbit of the earth, and the orbits of the other planets' moons about their respective planets).

--7--

The Bad Catholic--that is Mr Marc Barnes, not Mr John Zmirac--has a post up about youth ministry and authority. I link to this both because I think it gives some sound advice, and because it relates to some other recent links about Millenials and the Church [1].

Anyway, the emphasis in Mr Barnes' post is on the importance of authority: and I think that this is actually exactly what our generation is looking for, whether from the Churches or from the culture. I rather hope more would find real and reliable authority from the former and not the latter.


[1] Millenials: didn't we used to be called "Generation Y?" I kind of liked that name, even if it was meant as a place-holder, "The otherwise-unamed Generation after Generation X," but it also worked well as a pun which really has so-far captured our generation: "Why?"
-----

Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Multiverse Musings

I'm may be a little late to this party, but Dr Stephen Barr has an article on First Things about multiverses and the LHC. It is a sort of follow-up to an older article of his, both of which were recently linked by Michael Flynn. In the article in question, Dr Barr discusses the likelihood that we live in a multiverse, and comes down in favor pf the idea.

I found this interesting, because I was under the impression that the people who largely favor the idea of a multiverse are those who do so for the ideological grounds of getting around fine-tuning arguments for theism. As an argument for atheism (of sorts)--this is largely the context that I have encountered the multiverse in, aside from Star Trek (but I repeat myself). Oddly enough, of the four authors of the paper which Dr Barr references (and is a co-author of), two are Catholics and one is an atheist.

Another musing on the same subject: the multiverse might (or might not) serve as an argument against a theistic basis for fine-tuning. Sure, it provides a multitude of universes, perhaps even infinitely many. But infinitely many does not mean "every possible combination," and we could indeed have infinitely many universes in which everything is nearly fine-tuned for life on earth: or even infinitely many in which all of the parameters relevant to the creation/evolution of life on earth are still so-tuned.


I also agree with Ye Olde Statistician (TOF)'s remark that physicists do themselves a disservice when referring to connected localities as universes. While I understand Dr Barr's exchange with commenter Boonton about two interpretations of the multiverse and the difference between the multiverse and many worlds, the change in the word's definition without any real fanfare does lead to confusion, and not just for amateurs.  Universe, cosmos: these two things have generally been used to mean "everything there is" (or at the least, "everything there is in the natural order" in the case of the universe). Thus, saying that the multiverse consists of a multitude of universes tends to make the reader think of something akin to the mirror universe in Star Trek, even though many physicists merely mean a realm of connected space-time and matter in which the various physical constants are, well, constant. It also gets the physicists into trouble when they attempt to comment on philosophical matters (which tend to use more traditional definitions like "the universe is defined as everything which exists in the natural order").


Finally, it occurs to me that regardless of whether there are infinitely many "universes" in the multiverse, none of St Thomas Five Ways are encessarily refuted. Indeed, the Fourth and Fifth way in particular might plausibly be said to be strengthened by the exist of many universes--and that's true whether we mean universes in the sense used by Dr Barr and other "cosmologists", or in the science fiction sense of "parallel universes," or in the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics (to say nothing of philosophy).