Food for thought about data, interpreting research, and misinformation

"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.
Really? Even when it comes to highly technical science that only attracts the best and smartest and even then it still requires a decade of training with other experts in the field before that person can be labled an expert themselves? You think you or I really have a foot to stand on if we decided to show up at the office of an MIT physics professor to debate that in our "expert opinion" quantum chromodynamics is flawed?

This is a ridiculous notion for the "average person" who can barely do long division thinks their opinion means anything in these situations and the simple fact is MOST people HAVE to rely on experts in these situations. Oh we can vomit our worthless ill-informed opinion all we want but it's meaningless. I argue no, people cannot be their own experts in everything. If that was possible, we wouldn't need experts in anything because everyone would be capable of knowing everything. This isn't a knock on people, it's just a division of labor that's required in a highly technical and busy world.
 
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Really? Even when it comes to highly technical science that onoy attracts that best and smartest and even then it still requires a decade of training with other experts in the field before that person can be labled an expert themselves? You think you or I really have a foot to standon if we decided to show up at the office of an MIT physcis professor to debate that in our "expert opinion" quantrum chromodynamics is flawed?

This is a ridiculous notion for the "average person" who can barely do long division thinks their opinion means anything in these situations and the simple fact is MOST people HAVE to rely on experts in these situations. Oh we can vomit our worthless illinformed opinion all we want but it's meaningless. I argue no, people can not be their own experts in everything. If that was possible, we wouldn't need experts in anything because everyone would be capable of knowing everything. This isn't a knock on people, it's just a division of labor that's required in a highly technical and busy world.
I think that what is happening today, is that the pool of "Experts" is being polluted by political activists as can be demonstrated by the ESG movement as well as others.
 
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.
The entire Conrgress consists of 535 people which is a tiny tiny tiny (albeit powerful) percent of the federal government (2.85 million people) and this is missing my point. People argue because the Congress is broken so too is the entire rest of the federal government, literally every single agency no matter how removed from the issues of the Congress. My point is some agencies are and some agencies aren't - we need to be specific but people love to over generalize.
 
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.
Ridiculous. I'm not besmirching education level, I'm besmirching people who have no training or experience in something pretending that they do. I have no idea what you do for a living but it's probably safe to say it's different than what I do for a living. Differences in education level aside, do you think with no training or experience or really any effort to even learn about what you do that I can legitimately tell you how to do your job? Tell you what you're doing wrong?

Now extend this argument to someone who doesn't know what an integral is, coincidentally because they did not go to college and take calculus, who is arguing climate data doesn't make sense to them and therefore must be incorrect. You can pretend that education has no or little value in the real world but that is a ridiculous and nonsensical position, especially when it comes to science.

BTW...don't discount that the average Joe above has a non-zero chance of getting caught in a mud-slide because he didn't listen to the science types and he went out and did something.
 
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"Driving home one day he was thinking about the problem and he realized that when he started at the university in the late 1980's fewer than 10% of the faculty in the business school were female. "

Driving home one day, this should have been realized before the study started.
I'm relaying a story and using some poetic license on what was a busy day for me...I wasn't there...let's not focus on the totally unimportant part. For the record, Dr. Bob has had his Ph.D. in economics for 40 years, worked in both industry and academia, and published over 200 papers on a wide variety of topics. He's a very bright, knowledgeable, and common-sense kind of guy and a real expert in his discipline.
 
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My economics professor studies income inequality and a couple of years ago there was serious concern about gender inequality and he was asked by the university to study income inequality at the university and report his findings to a committee. First, he set out to determine the major factors that influence faculty salaries. The major factors were: 1. Time - the longer you were there the more you made; 2. Highest degree obtained - PhDs made more than masters-level faculty; 3. Specialty - some academic disciplines paid better than others; 4. Additional administrative tasks resulted in additional pay and; 5. Gender

He was asked to report preliminary findings to the committee and immediately there were faculty who wanted to run with the idea that there were inherent biases in pay between men and women. Dr. Bob is an excellent researcher, he knew exactly why he was asked to look at this issue, and he wasn't satisfied that this was in fact reality. Driving home one day he was thinking about the problem and he realized that when he started at the university in the late 1980's fewer than 10% of the faculty in the business school were female. He also realized currently >50% of the faculty in the business school were now female which is a change that has really just happened in the last 15-20 years. When he controlled for time at the university, gender was no longer statistically significant, yet every other variable remained significant. This also made intuitive sense to him since there were still a significant number of male professors who were hired before the push to hire more women and the average tenure of male faculty was significantly longer than the average tenure of female faculty. Gender bias WAS an issue but it was addressed 20 years ago and any remaining differences in income was just leftover from that period of time. Matter-of-fact, when you looked at pay between male and female faculty hired in the past 10 years, there seems to be a gender bias towards women making more than men.

I have a research background in immunology which can be very complicated and very nuanced. It is impossible for someone who does not do that day after day to really understand this nuance. Since I've been out of that field for 20 years I no longer understand the nuance. It's the reason we have "experts" and it's the reason no one can be an "expert" in everything. Every day I see lay people pretending they understand the nuance of complicated situations, having never seen the raw data, and really being ill-equipped to understand it even if they did. Despite my best effort, I do this myself at times. When we do this we are the committee members above who don't really understand the situation but want to run with the first result that fits our preconceived ideas. We as a society need to do better and stop pretending we understand things we really do not because it is pure chaos when we do this on a mass scale. 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".
(y) Too bad some people do so many things to stop your wise words about trust from being accomplished. They have agendas that get in the way of making things better for all of us. Especially the trust/confidence you speak of that I agree with.
 
Really? Even when it comes to highly technical science that only attracts the best and smartest and even then it still requires a decade of training with other experts in the field before that person can be labled an expert themselves? You think you or I really have a foot to stand on if we decided to show up at the office of an MIT physics professor to debate that in our "expert opinion" quantum chromodynamics is flawed?

This is a ridiculous notion for the "average person" who can barely do long division thinks their opinion means anything in these situations and the simple fact is MOST people HAVE to rely on experts in these situations. Oh we can vomit our worthless ill-informed opinion all we want but it's meaningless. I argue no, people cannot be their own experts in everything. If that was possible, we wouldn't need experts in anything because everyone would be capable of knowing everything. This isn't a knock on people, it's just a division of labor that's required in a highly technical and busy world.
Your OP had nothing to do with "quantum chromodynamics"
Your OP had to do with a social issue of equal pay and if properly presented to the public like in the OP the public would understand that.
 
Your OP had nothing to do with "quantum chromodynamics"
Your OP had to do with a social issue of equal pay and if properly presented to the public like in the OP the public would understand that.

Don't attempt to strawman here. The OP is a story that's being used as a tool/example to discuss the much broader topic of data, interpreting research, and misinformation - the title of the post. I don't actually care about the story and the only point in telling it was to focus on the idea that interpretation of data is everything and not only are most people not equipped to interpret data, they spend all their time discrediting the people who actually are qualified.

So ok, quantum chromodynamics is probably above the head of most people. Which topics or disciplines are not then? Which topics or disciplines do you feel require no education, no training, and no expertise? I can tell you Dr. Bob is by training a statistician and so while the story in the OP may seem intuitive to you, he only came to a conclusion AFTER he did the stats. Are you capable of deciding how to collect, organize, and evaluate the data to come to a conclusion? Is the average person with a high school education?

I think the average person can form an unscientific opinion about this topic based on life experience and biases and that's about as valuable as the TP used to wipe someone's ass. Also, even if that unscientific opinion happened to agree with the scientific conclusion offered by Dr. Bob, that doesn't give that person any additional credibility as an expert on income inequality in academia, they got lucky, although they'd probably still try and claim it was just "common sense". If Dr. Bob's conclusion disagreed with their opinion they'd be just as likely to totally dismiss his conclusion and just another "biased expert science type" who is on the take and can't be trusted.

This is more broadly the definition of the death of expertise because we're left with everyone thinking they are experts in everything. If the experts agree with their opinion then that proves they really don't need experts in the first place because the world is just common sense and everyone can be their own experts. If the experts disagree with their opinion well they can't be trusted, follow the money, they're all corrupt, and so you still don't need them in your life. Yet, I look around my home office and realize I'm surrounded by things that I do not have the first clue about how they work and I'm glad there are some experts out there, somewhere, who do understand and they do the heavy lifting for me.
 
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Don't attempt to strawman here. The OP is a story that's being used as a tool/example to discuss the much broader topic of data, interpreting research, and misinformation - the title of the post. I don't actually care about the story and the only point in telling it was to focus on the idea that interpretation of data is everything and not only are most people not equipped to interpret data, they spend all their time discrediting the people who actually are qualified.
Well excuse me for being ignorant then and not taking your post the way you intended. Im not a mind reader. If it was me, I would have picked something other than a social issue to use as an example so ignorant people like me would understand.
 
Well excuse me for being ignorant then and not taking your post the way you intended. Im not a mind reader. If it was me, I would have picked something other than a social issue to use as an example so ignorant people like me would understand.
FTR...there is nothing worse than people getting overly defensive in a discussion. I'm not attacking you and I'm just stating my position that my intention was for this to be a broader discussion than just the OP story - not that there haven't been comments about that and not that there isn't value in discussing that too. I never said or implied you're ignorant in any way. I have included myself along with the high school graduates in the above posts as someone who is not an expert in everything and who out of necessity must also rely on others for their expertise, including lots of high school graduates who can, for instance, wire an outlet for $2K, when clearly I can not. Not knowing everything is not the same as being dumb but claiming you or someone else without the education or training, especially in technical fields, can just be your own expert is misguided IMO.
 
Ridiculous. I'm not besmirching education level, I'm besmirching people who have no training or experience in something pretending that they do. I have no idea what you do for a living but it's probably safe to say it's different than what I do for a living. Differences in education level aside, do you think with no training or experience or really any effort to even learn about what you do that I can legitimately tell you how to do your job? Tell you what you're doing wrong?

Now extend this argument to someone who doesn't know what an integral is, coincidentally because they did not go to college and take calculus, who is arguing climate data doesn't make sense to them and therefore must be incorrect. You can pretend that education has no or little value in the real world but that is a ridiculous and nonsensical position, especially when it comes to science.

BTW...don't discount that the average Joe above has a non-zero chance of getting caught in a mud-slide because he didn't listen to the science types and he went out and did something.


This is exactly the kind of response I expected.
 
I think that what is happening today, is that the pool of "Experts" is being polluted by political activists as can be demonstrated by the ESG movement as well as others.
It's the biased media that promotes one expert over another. And many in the public do the same thing. They start with the answer they want to hear and search out and put more credence in the experts that align with their pre-conceived political or cultural beliefs.
 
It's the biased media that promotes one expert over another. And many in the public do the same thing. They start with the answer they want to hear and search out and put more credence in the experts that align with their pre-conceived political or cultural beliefs.
I couldn't agree more. It concerns me deeply when I look at what comes on and passes for legitimate and truthful cable news shows compared to the once very trust worthy (almost non biased) ABC/CBS/NBC evening new shows I watched daily with my late grandfather.
 
I couldn't agree more. It concerns me deeply when I look at what comes on and passes for legitimate and truthful cable news shows compared to the once very trust worthy (almost non biased) ABC/CBS/NBC evening new shows I watched daily with my late grandfather.


Yep. For years and years the news reported on windstorms and rain storms, much which occur during a certain part of the year depending on where you live. Now they are Bomb Cyclones and Atmospheric Rivers in order to increase the fright amongst the people.

News needs to report and not agendasize. (That might be a new word?)
 
I couldn't agree more. It concerns me deeply when I look at what comes on and passes for legitimate and truthful cable news shows compared to the once very trust worthy (almost non biased) ABC/CBS/NBC evening new shows I watched daily with my late grandfather.
I wonder often what the man I admired would think today about all the wild special reports, accusations (lots without proof) from both sides and the politicalization and near militarization of some of the out of control groups and programs put in place lately , many of which are not created , or implemented by elected officals?
He was one of the first folks known in his area as a "conservationist , did so much to make folks take into account the effects of projects and things they wanted to do and how it affected the environment. Eventually was made the President of The Louisiana Wildlife Federation + life board member of the National Wildlife Federation while working for Shell. They actually invented an EPA style Conservation / Air / Water Division with in house rules and regulations for Shell / DuPont and several companies long before anyone cared or knew much about the subject. This was back in the 1950s. He even made some of those early 1970s era Tv commercials aimed at the environement and what the oil and chemical industry was doing without gov laws or over reach to address what they could about keeping the environment safe with clean air and water being discharged from plants and factories in the USA. He was no "tree hugger, (he was raised on a farm and loved to hunt and fish) wasn't what some today call environmental wackos. He had to give up his outdoor hobbies he got so involved and spent lots of time in Washinton DC on committies working to protect the quality of USA air and water. Some of which he would not accept money for being involved in from his employer, Shell as he wanted no conflicts of interest. Lots of people today have no idea how polluted (LA smog years) the USA was at one time. Today we are one of the leaders in industry who operate "reduced and vey limited non polluting" plants and equipment. Far better than many countries who press on and even build more plants and manufacturing factories with very little concern for the environment & pollution. There is far too much wild accusations and too much in fighting these days to make much if any progress unless we can manage to un politicized the subject. The media is certainly no help as they glom onto what ever they like and do all they can to force whatever their latest agenda is which is set by their owners who are certainly no leaders in anything but media/tv/radio etc.... Sorry for the book /rant. I will stop. :rolleyes:
 
Analytics was my career. There is a new branch of Computer Science called "Data Science" and those who work in the field are Data Scientists.
Data Science is the culmination of tools we have developed thus far:
  • hardware and data bases
  • languages
  • math / statistics
  • mated with domain knowledge and intellectual curiosity.
There is a cycle to a given Data Science project:
Experiment (aggregate and cleanse data and use data in custom models). Test is necessary to hone models. Learn-Plan-Test-Measure.
Democratize data. Scale a data science team to the whole company and even respective clients.
Measure the impact and validity. Evaluate what part DS teams have in your decision-making process and benefit.

In short, Data Science requires a team of experts coming together to glean information from data.
By the way, a programmer with the computer skills above, along with strong communication skills, starts at about $300K at Google. Plus stock.
 
This is exactly the kind of response I expected.
Well thought out, logical, reasonable? I agree! I will accept your brevity as an admission that you don't have a meaningful counterargument.
 
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As my usual short comment, watch the people who say "follow the science" very closely, because they usually are the people who aren't.
They think they’re knowledgeable but generally aren’t scientists/engineers…. Soooo…..
 
By law, a state university will hold to a strict pay scale based on years of seniority, degree level held, whether or not tenure has been granted, and various other non-gender attributes. Private universities also likely institute a similar system to avoid claims of discrimination. So someone of any gender in the same position will be on the same pay.

The question is are there institutional blocks to reaching a high position that may be gender unequal.
Not really. It’s all about how much money you bring in. I am involved in research. Across many universities. I have friends that are top earners at major universities. Make hundreds of thousands of dollars. One has an endowed position.

Pay, and the ability to justify pay increases, is based upon what you bring in. Because universities’ rankings are based in part on research expenditures.

Maybe if you’re a lecturer, or teaching a common subject that cycles thousands of students through, there is pay parity. But if you’re in a competitive field… no…. Your life is chasing funding opportunities, and bringing money in, and graduating students. And devoting your life to it.
 
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Not really. It’s all about how much money you bring in. I am involved in research. Across many universities. I have friends that are too earners at major universities. Make hundreds of thousands of dollars. One has an endowed position.

Pay, and the ability to justify pay increases, is based upon what you bring in. Because universities’ rankings are based in part on research expenditures.

Maybe if you’re a lecturer, or teaching a common subject that cycles thousands of students through, there is pay parity. But if you’re in a competitive field… no…. Your life is chasing funding opportunities, and bringing money in, and graduating students. And devoting your life to it.
I have several friends who are researchers in various science fields at private and public universities and all of them are able to supplement their income with grants. They are senior PIs who do almost no benchtop work anymore and spend nearly 100% of their lab time either writing grants or papers.
 
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