bad science

by 2 comments on "This one weird trick will completely fail to replicate the previous experimenter’s results"

It’s pretty depressing that British politicians are shallow enough all to glom onto the same risible fad at the same time: It’s a thing. It’s definitely a thing. Someone is telling them to stand like this. pic.twitter.com/RcvelFujVa — SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) June 2, 2016 It’s even more depressing that the risible fad in question is also…

Read More This one weird trick will completely fail to replicate the previous experimenter’s results
by 3 comments on "thatcherite lysenko, and some very strange behaviour with goats and children"

I knew Andrew Wakefield was full of shit, in a conflict of interest, practicing crappy lab technique, a hypocrite who thought autism was caused by measles viruses when he was in Britain and mercury when he was in America, someone who dealt with people who were promoting quack treatments like giving your autistic kid chemical…

Read More thatcherite lysenko, and some very strange behaviour with goats and children
by 1 comment on "killer meme watch"

Apple’s internal security team may be scary – and especially the name (Worldwide Loyalty Team). But they are as nothing, in terms of creepiness, to this Microsoft web page, which provides the criteria against which MS employees are assessed for their use of humour and the targets they are given to improve. You will not…

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by 3 comments on "project failure"

I’ve been reading Bruno Latour’s Aramis, or the Love of Technology, a postmodernist account of the failure of a massive French project to develop a Personal Rapid Transit system. Latour’s book contains chunks of fiction, interviews, historical documents, and authorial comment, broken out by the typography – the experience is more like reading a long…

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by 0 comments on "a genuinely sinister drug"

I liked this (via): Although technically speaking releasing testosterone precursors on the world’s trading floors to try to rally valuations wasn’t criminal as such, the affected traders lobbied to declare it illegal. But governments liked the idea too much, and oxygen masks were forbidden. (Electronic traders were of course immune, but they knew floor traders…

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by 1 comment on "give IT yahoos United States (dollars)"

So, there’s this rumour-surrounded gadget that GIYUS wants people to install on their computers as part of the War on Terror. Obviously, I wondered exactly how it worked; did it analyse the Web sites you visit semantically, so as to target its talking points precisely? Did it use some sort of social recommendation mechanism? Also,…

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by 3 comments on "if you’re not on the list you’re not coming in"

OK, so what about those identity cards for (some kinds of) foreign nationals? You’ll recall that the Government promised, back in the spring, to have them out and operational in 300 days. As late as July, there were no actual contracts for the job, but they did actually manage to bring in Thales to start…

Read More if you’re not on the list you’re not coming in