Food for thought about data, interpreting research, and misinformation

For over a decade, I did was a "Senior Engineer" doing statistical process quality control at a multi-national company. It was my job to study whatever needed studied in our facility and within my scope of operations, and also write/run DOEs (design of experiements). I was not the sole person doing this; I was one of many.

I can attest that "science" is misunderstood by just about everyone except those who actually did the study.
I can also attest that often "science" is biased (on purpose or not; does not matter).

But, there's always a story to tell with data. It's just a matter of how well the data was collected, processed, and presented. You cannot eliminate bias, but you can account for it and try to reduce it in the study. What we cannot control is the bias of the observer who reads the study.
Absolutely, I love when people with high school degrees are arguing the science of X, Y, and Z doesn't make sense to them. I always think, yeah I know, but it never stops them from denouncing it as being wrong. I don't know or I'm not sure is usually the most appropriate response. I know a lot of science, a buttload more than your average Joe, but all that means is I know there's even more I don't know. There are some things I can speak about with authority but most things I can not and in those (most) cases I am still at the mercy of those who are experts.

There is a common sentiment, especially around the "hot-button science topics", that the politicization of science is the fault of scientists as a result of their own sins. I just don't see it on a large scale. What I do see is science has been politicized by politicians to pander to their constituents. Sure, science is wrong sometimes and imperfect and it changes with time and there is bias but the idea that the entire system is broken is a position pushed mostly by politicians for their own personal gain. Science is imperfect because it changes with time and it is wrong often and this is a positive attribute and not proof it's flawed. It is not about being right - it is about moving towards being right over time and the only way to accomplish that is through being wrong from time to time.
 
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For over a decade, I did was a "Senior Engineer" doing statistical process quality control at a multi-national company. It was my job to study whatever needed studied in our facility and within my scope of operations, and also write/run DOEs (design of experiements). I was not the sole person doing this; I was one of many.

I can attest that "science" is misunderstood by just about everyone except those who actually did the study.
I can also attest that often "science" is biased (on purpose or not; does not matter).

But, there's always a story to tell with data. It's just a matter of how well the data was collected, processed, and presented. You cannot eliminate bias, but you can account for it and try to reduce it's effect on the study. What we cannot control is the bias of the observer who reads the study.
For years I coded a "sales capacity" model on millions of rows of sales data that incorporated sales force tenure, region, product mix, seasonality and more. From a high level, this was a SQL model using linear regression on a rolling 4 quarter basis. The primary goal was to adaquately staff a region with properly tenured sales personell in order to meet corporate forecast goals. From a forward looking perspective, as the model became susprisingly accurate; the executive staff became more and more interested. The model was remarkable in that expected outcomes based on model results were, to a large extent, realized.
Really understanding the results involved the executive staff to make valuable information. It takes real world subject knowledge to understand results. Right down to regional culture... Over the course of years, the questions they were asking me to code became more and more difficult. To a large extent we had overcome the problem of bad data, multiple Excel spreadsheets, multiple ERP data sources, etc.
In my career, I learned data by itself is meaningless, gleaning valuable information from that data is priceless.

As a sideline, I could not believe they paid me to do this stuff.
 
The mark of a professional is knowing what you do know, and admitting what you don't. Seems to be a skill that is lost on many these days...

I'll leave it at that...
My dermatologist is a young physician assistant. She does surgery on me. She is super cute and very sexy in a professional way. I was talking with her at my last skin cancer screening about my mother in law's rare skin cancer and asked her if she's ever seen it in her practice. She was very open in saying that she's never seen it. She learned about it in school and asked me what it looked like. I really respect people when they say things like that. It adds credence when people admit when they don't know. I'm more trusting that they do know when they say they know.
 
My dermatologist is a young physician assistant. She does surgery on me. She is super cute and very sexy in a professional way. I was talking with her at my last skin cancer screening about my mother in law's rare skin cancer and asked her if she's ever seen it in her practice. She was very open in saying that she's never seen it. She learned about it in school and asked me what it looked like. I really respect people when they say things like that. It adds credence when people admit when they don't know. I'm more trusting that they do know when they say they know.
I'm never afraid to say I don't know. As a matter of fact, I'd find the burden of knowing everything to be tedious and exhausting.
 
An additional observation based on something I just read on BITOG about egg prices and a comment that questions whether or not avian flu is responsible for egg prices. The comment hints that there must be something more going on because while avian flu makes a ton of sense as the primary cause for elevated egg prices, since that information came from our government, you obviously can't trust it to be true. As if 100% of what the government says must be untrue. Ok? Is there any reason to not trust it because in my mind tens of millions of chickens dying from avian flu seems like a pretty logical reason?

The old adage of "question everything" has an implied second part that few people seem to follow through on these days - question everything and LOOK FOR EVIDENCE of an alternative explanation. If you don't find alternative evidence you can't really dismiss the original idea. That original idea may still not be true but you can't conclude that with your lack of evidence. The best you could logical conclude is you don't know. We seem to have a significant number of people these days who question everything and make zero effort to find evidence for an alternative reason. Don't get me wrong they have no problem throwing out wild speculations but rarely is this based on firm evidence. This is not insightful. This is not helpful. These people are not "enlightened". This just leads to tens of millions of people just questioning everything, continued erosion of trust in everything, and more chaos.

The problem isn’t what people think…it’s how people think.
 
As if 100% of what the government says must be untrue.
OK

But to challenge this, would be borderline or actual politic violation on BITOG?

There are many reasons in 2022 NOT to trust much anything involved with USA gov. Maybe not 100%, but 90%

Laptops, classified papers all over the place....................
 
Absolutely, I love when people with high school degrees are arguing the science of X, Y, and Z doesn't make sense to them.


The highly educated science type will warn us of bomb cyclones and atmospheric rivers. The average Joe will look out the window and see clear skies and go out and do something.


Don’t besmirch people because of their education level.
 
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"SCIENCE!"
 
"Admittedly, while much of this is self-inflicted, we as a society need to make changes that result in increased public confidence in our "experts"

Being a free individual I could care less what an "expert" says. Some "Experts" want the world to be as they think it should be.
I dont need to be told how to live, how to act or who to hire, this is part of a free society. We slowly but surely as a people seem to be handing power over us to "experts" at the cost of your freedoms.

Who determines who is an expert when it comes to social issues?

With that said, good OP, I would call the OP more of an analyst providing facts for people vs so called experts. The study might be considered a study by a mathematician which I think is more credible than someone labeled an expert.

People can be their own experts, make their own decisions as long as they have the facts from analysts and that to me is what is missing in our society. Everyone tuned into entertainment soap opera news and nothing more.
 
"Admittedly, while much of this is self-inflicted, we as a society need to make changes that result in increased public confidence in our "experts"

Being a free individual I could care less what an "expert" says. Some "Experts" want the world to be as they think it should be.
I dont need to be told how to live, how to act or who to hire, this is part of a free society. We slowly but surely as a people seem to be handing power over us to "experts" at the cost of your freedoms.

Who determines who is an expert when it comes to social issues?
With that said, good OP post, I would call that more of an analyst providing facts for people vs so called experts. The study might be considered a study by a mathematician which I think is more credible than someone labeled an expert.
+1
( :ROFLMAO:
:ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO: 😬🤑🫣)
 
My understanding of the so called "income gap" between men and women is that the numbers are derived from taking income tax data from the entire population, separating it by gender and then looking at the overall numbers.

It would be very, very complicated and costly and have all kinds of statistical aberrations if someone were to try and really determine if a man and woman were doing the EXACT same job, had the same experience, same education or training, same number of years on the job, same attendance record and other factors that go into salary determinations. It would be an impossible task, really.

So people who have a political agenda use the same old argument that women make less than men in an attempt to make it appear that they make less with all other things being equal, which they NEVER are.
 
"Admittedly, while much of this is self-inflicted, we as a society need to make changes that result in increased public confidence in our "experts"

Being a free individual I could care less what an "expert" says. Some "Experts" want the world to be as they think it should be.
I dont need to be told how to live, how to act or who to hire, this is part of a free society. We slowly but surely as a people seem to be handing power over us to "experts" at the cost of your freedoms.

Who determines who is an expert when it comes to social issues?

With that said, good OP, I would call the OP more of an analyst providing facts for people vs so called experts. The study might be considered a study by a mathematician which I think is more credible than someone labeled an expert.

People can be their own experts, make their own decisions as long as they have the facts from analysts and that to me is what is missing in our society. Everyone tuned into entertainment soap opera news and nothing more.
The problem is that we're all being manipulated whether we want to admit it or not by the media. and gov't. We don't know what we don't know. And 99% of what we do know, we only know because the media or the gov't wants us to know. I blame the media primarily for biased reporting.

How would the public have access to facts from analysts?

A problem I had with my team at work was they were really good at presenting facts. They're scientists. They struggled with presenting a narrative around the facts. You know, what's our conclusion? What does it all mean? In science we have to draw conclusions based on the facts. And facts don't sell. Studies with statistically significantly endpoints sell. Inconclusive studies don't get as much air time as they should.
 
My understanding of the so called "income gap" between men and women is that the numbers are derived from taking income tax data from the entire population, separating it by gender and then looking at the overall numbers.

It would be very, very complicated and costly and have all kinds of statistical aberrations if someone were to try and really determine if a man and woman were doing the EXACT same job, had the same experience, same education or training, same number of years on the job, same attendance record and other factors that go into salary determinations. It would be an impossible task, really.

So people who have a political agenda use the same old argument that women make less than men in an attempt to make it appear that they make less with all other things being equal, which they NEVER are.
But it's worse than that.

If you even point out any weakness in the false conclusions, you are labelled (hater, etc) and shut down.

Many things that are actually solvable (gaps, racism, etc) we are not even able to openly discuss without the cancellation hammer coming down from our press and most politicians.
 
OK

But to challenge this, would be borderline or actual politic violation on BITOG?

There are many reasons in 2022 NOT to trust much anything involved with USA gov. Maybe not 100%, but 90%

Laptops, classified papers all over the place....................
Which represents a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny percent of what constitutes the US government. It ain't perfect but that also doesn't mean 100% of it is broken because parts of it are broken. That said, my real point is it's not enough to just say something is broken or wrong without providing evidence for exactly what is broken.
 
Which represents a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny percent of what constitutes the US government. It ain't perfect but that also doesn't mean 100% of it is broken because parts of it are broken. That said, my real point is it's not enough to just say something is broken or wrong without providing evidence for exactly what is broken.
Last I checked, 1/3+ if we have a 3 legged stool, plus the Senate.........so easily 1/2.

Wrong is wrong.

Not a tiny percent. Now more docs in a 3rd location.

First read: American Injustice: My Battle to Expose the Truth

Then read: One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1 and 2

Both on Kindle.
 
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