Paul's Perambulations a personal blog

September 12, 2010

How bad (and potentially dangerous) can public science reporting get?

Filed under: General — admin @ 2:12 pm

Headline in current Time Magazine – HEALTH: BOTTOMS UP. NEW STUDY FINDS THAT HEAVY DRINKERS OUTLIVE TEETOTALERS AND MODERATE DRINKERS LIVE ONGEST OF ALL. First, Time published a retraction (apparently online only) that the study does not include any teetotalers (excluded), but that “abstainers” refers to people who said  they were no longer drinking  (20 years ago). Next, when they control for a number of co-variates, the statistical significance is greatly reduced.  Makes you wonder what if they had identified more co-variates. (more…)

September 9, 2010

Appeasement Reconsidered: Investigating the Mythology of the 1930s

Filed under: General — admin @ 3:54 pm

Appeasement Reconsidered: Investigating the Mythology of the 1930s  by Jeffrey Record, Ph.D., Monograph published by the Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army College. The author is on the faculty of the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama.

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub622.pdf

(more…)

September 8, 2010

Mass Bay Colony, Quakers, Witches, Harvard…and how Fran’s relatives were directly involved.

Filed under: Family — admin @ 4:16 pm

Fran’s great-grandfather (if you go back an additional eleven generations) was Governor Dudley of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  I sometimes joke about Fran’s family hanging Quakers and witches, so I felt it was time to get some of this straight. Turns out that there is something to these stories, but not as written above. (more…)

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