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Comment It's just grumbling about US investigations (Score 4, Informative) 307

From T first FA:

Venting his frustration with what he viewed as "U.S. prosecutors having declared themselves the supreme arbiters of international football affairs," Markin proposed that international investigators could likewise examine some of the murkier elements of America's past.

Comment Re:Job security (Score 1) 229

AFAIK, H-1B is considered dual-intent: the employer has the option to terminate the employee and pay for travel back to the holder's country; and the holder has the option to transfer to another employer (in a timely manner?) and/or apply for permanent residency. I don't think it's any easier to apply for permanent residency just because you hold an H-1B, but the point is, you can apply.

Comment Re:Great (Score 1, Interesting) 312

You're right. Treason is constitutionally punishable by death, after all. We could avoid that problem rather easily.

Whatever you want to call what he did, you can't call it treason.

Treason is defined clearly in the US constitution as aiding or giving comfort to an enemy at a time of war declared by Congress. The last time Congress delcared war was in 1942.

Comment Re:Welcome to Fascist America! (Score 2) 413

Reducing the power of government gives the people who bribe less power, and you know it.

The people who bribe don't just do it to co-opt the power of government. They also do it to direct the power of government away from them. In effect, they're "buying" power from the government. Reducing the power of government justs lets the bribers get what they want for free.

I'm not saying that bribing should be Business as Usual. Rather, I think circletimessquare is right: the solution is to enact tough laws against corruption (i.e., bribery.)

Comment Re:Is this the un"adjusted" raw data? (Score 4, Interesting) 310

In my opinion, to conduct proper science on climatological measurements, the raw measurements should be available to all, to let everyone apply any "adjustments" and "corrections" they believe are necessary - and justified - taking them into account. Then each can properly check the works of their predecessors, and reach their own conclusions, without incorporating unknown distortions from previous work.

Well, how "raw" do you want that data to be? Individual bits of the satellite telemetry? Scribbled notes in a scientist's lab-book? Actual tree-ring samples, and not just?

Most "raw" data is unintelligble to anyone but the experimenters, until it is processed into a form suitable for sharing with others. Instrument calibrations, systematic effects, elimination of confounding factors, etc... all of these need to be performed by the scientists who are closest to the data and the instruments that provided it.

Like it or not, the data needs to be curated in some way, before it can be consumed meaningfully by the larger community.

If the maintainers of the archive believe adjustments are needed to deal with some measurement pathology, they are welcome to also release an open correction dataset or tool in parallel.

Many scientists do, if it makes sense in context. See above.

With the low price and high speed of modern digital storage and processing devices, data set size and complexity is no excuse for withholding the raw data.

The size and complexity of some raw datasets can in fact make it unfeasible to provide in a meaningful way. Again, see above.

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