Ah, but you're all just ACs. Just trolling, I guess, rather than interested in learning any new truths. For everyone else reading this, I thought I'd include a standard rejoinder about the nature of scientific 'proof', just in case.

When one does not have proof, one need not avoid any conclusions; evidence is sufficient. Most of the evidence suggests that there is no imaginary friend; all of the evidence otherwise is provided by anecdote, fallacy, fraud, or fiction. There is evidence that his friend is imaginary, in one sense of the word. There are indicators in the brain that are associated with religious activity; literally faith is all in your head.

I'll believe in god when there is more evidence in favor of its existence than there is against it. I won't do it because some random clown on the the street with a bullhorn (or on the Internet) yells about it. That isn't evidence. You believe; too bad for you. If I knew more about you, I might even be able to explain why you believe (probably because you were raised with the notion of god as a child, but perhaps not). But your belief is not evidence.

See? An open mind that evaluates evidence and comes to a conclusion using the best data available. That's how you have to deal with the scientific worldview.

That must be why Sarah Palin thought Obama was diminishing the standing of the US ... by actually following the law in this one case, he is setting a precedent (and a standard) few Republicans would like to be held to.

No, the investigators should have done no such thing. They aren't scientists, and they weren't investigating faulty scientific reasoning. They were investigating some kind of unspecified 'scientific misconduct', like falsify data or some other kind of fraudulent activity. They wanted a story of how the paper was written, why it was written, where the data came from, to investigate whether there was improper behavior. They aren't there to do statistics checking, though the allegations they are investigating seems to have had some simple calculations that need to be debunked by the scientist himself.

Elsewhere in the interview, 'the subject' spoke to the fact that the note (journal article) included statements of all these assumptions. 'The subject' mentioned that he had no statistics in the paper, only an observation. What made it interesting was that is was the first observation of dead polar bears at sea. That's it. These calculations were for putting a single observation into context.

Also, since I took the time to read the whole interview (but not much else), I'll let you know that 'the subject' had to explain that you can't add the 4 and 3 together (or rather "Its just goofy.") because they were spotted on different passes, different days. He also points out that some sightings don't count because they aren't on transects*, but they are seen on the way to or back from the transect. The alleged misconduct seems to be based on complaints that the analysis was poor. But that isn't scientific misconduct! Nobody could make any sweeping conclusions based on a single observation of 3 dead polar bears, and that's basically all the note (article) seems to have said. At least, that's the characterization of the note by the author.

As one of the mother jones articles on this subject points out, the observation of dead polar bears at sea has been confirmed many times over since the publication of this journal article.

* The transect is the randomized path through the survey area, which is about 11% of the total area.

Well, you're right that the submission is a bit sketchy. The link to the interview was hosted by Mother Jones, so a quick site search provided the following links to actual articles which claim things and explain them.

http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/07/charles-monnett-polar-bear-scientist
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/08/details-monnett-polar-bear-boemre

I'm not a fan of Mother Jones, so I can't speak to whether these articles are 'fair and balanced' or are just part of the 'lame-stream media', but you can read them and go from them.

I'll also point out that that Dr. Monnett's attorney's didn't 'willing allow' this. Dr. Monnett signed a Kalkines warning, which means (according to wikipedia) that he is being forced to co-operate with an internal investigation, although he is immune to criminal charges (presumably due to his 5th amendment rights). If he doesn't answer questions, he'll be fired.

I did read the whole interview. I'll beg you to cite one example of unreasonable or unscientific behavior about his [Monnett's] handling of data. You know, because I'm not a scientist, but I'd like to learn something new about the scientific method. Clearly you aren't one either; if you were you'd already have provided references to the literature. Just saying he's not doing his job properly is an 'allegation' but we don't have to take you seriously unless you provide some kind of evidence.

For some context, on page 4 of the interview, note the following, somewhat shortened:

So I think I've got some leeway in interpreting Dr. Monnett in a favorable light here. He's trying to be understandable, rather than formal, in his descriptions of how the data is collected. Also, Eric May never explains what misconduct is alleged, but it seems clear that coming to a poor scientific conclusion is NOT the issue. If the analysis is bad, the IG doesn't need to get involved. The paper was peer-reviewed and published, so there is an opportunity for people with scientific backgrounds to critique it.

You seem to be mischaracterizing the comments about the storm, and you seem to find it ridiculous that the result of a storm could be extrapolated to the entire arctic polar bear population. Dr. Monnett does not conclude that the storm is the cause of death, he suggests it for the purposes of discussion. But if a storm kills polar bears, that's interesting in and of itself. Polar bears have been in the arctic for a long time, and storms have happened before. Why haven't these storms killed polar bears in the past? We don't know - but it seems reasonable and scientific to ASK THE EFFING QUESTION and even make some suggestions that are consistent with the data. Data, by the way, that he knows better than most people, because he's been doing this for a long time.

If it isn't the storm, we still need an explanation for 3 dead polar bears in the water, something that had never been observed before. It's the observation that merits the published note in a journal, so even if you disagree with the conclusions, you can't object to the publication of the note on 'administrative' grounds, can you?

Only because you are one Crazy Chicken. :-)

Gosh you must feel all warm and fuzzy knowing that in your area, you buck the trend: younger voting aged people voting and getting engaged in the political process!

Truly, the people you should really be concerned about aren't young college students, who may very well grow up into income-earning, tax-paying, family-starting, local residents, but all the 65-70 year olds who vote against (certain) taxes knowing that as the state infrastructure and services crumble, they won't be around to suffer the consequences. You know, the age group that actually voted at the highest participation rates in 2008 (70.1% according to census.gov).

Since you assume the college aged population is selfish and manipulative, and I'm sure you're not an age bigot, you probably also think the retiree aged population is selfish and manipulative.

Are you serious? Perhaps she has more human emotion that you, and realizes that using crosshairs is insensitive in light of recent events.

More than anything, I hope this kind of incident reduces the people's willingness to use violent metaphor in a political context. And I feel that 'crosshairs' is a violent metaphor, but that's because I'm a wacky, left-leaning citizen. There are probably other lifestyles that don't view crosshairs as violently as I do (e.g the FPS gamer community and the local NRA chapter). But in the spirit of fair-mindedness (which I neither require nor expect to be returned by Ms. Palin) I will stand up and defend the act of taking down crosshairs on Rep. Giffords now that she actually has been shot.

I'm sure the targeting of Rep. Giffords has more to do with her political *district* than with her political *beliefs*. Ms. Palin identified her because she is vulnerable, not extreme.

And I'll stand up in advance and say I am sure that Ms. Palin had no intention of targeting Rep Giffords with an actual bullet. Don't help Ms. Palin's political career by accusing her of the blatantly outrageous. It only gives, ahem, ammunition to her style of politics (i.e. she can call all of her political opponents crazy by pointing out all the crazy and stupid accusations leveled at her).

That's just my advice, not an order ;-)

Yeah, the only folks who should pass judgement on medical treatment are plumbers. And the guy down at the 7-11, you know the one, he clearly knows a lot about prescription medication!

Well, maybe for surgical cases, we should allow master carpenters onto the board.

</sarcasm>

What makes you think that city people need more garbage pickup? To pick up trash in an apartment block where all residents have to take it down to a central dumpster must be cheaper than having a dump truck drive 10 between houses?

I read the Green Lantern column at slate.com, and over and over the columnist points out that assessing how green one product over another is depends a lot on the distribution. And the largest source of CO2 in distribution is in the last mile, from store to home. So buying New Zealand lamb from a store you can walk to has much lower emissions than driving to a farmer's market and buying locally produced lamb.

I'm arguing that the tax burden is a hidden way of shifting money from urban dwellers to rural dwellers. Garbage collection and utilities are services used in both settings, so you'll have to convince me that there is some accounting abnormality to explain the difference in tax payments.

Are there services in the city that aren't available in rural areas which the city taxes pay for?

And given that you've posted AC, I wonder if you are being snarky.

This is also the reason why un-PC language is so offensive. If you use certain terms for certain objects (and PEOPLE) you shape the way you think about them - which can be a way of continuing to demean, oppress, or exploit.

This is a feature of the left and the right. It makes a difference if Keith Olbermann and Rush Limbaugh were to suddenly both stop using inflammatory language. At least in my opinion.

Your children probably had cognitive functions before language, but then lots of animals besides humans have cognitive functions too, and don't have as complex a linguistic structure as human speech.

For example, according to this Radio Lab episode, rats can be trained to find food behind the left door, and they can be trained to find food behind the blue door, but they only find food 50% of the time if they have to find the food behind the door to the left of the blue wall.

And children up to the age of about 4? 5? 6? (I can't remember anymore, but well past learning to talk) have the same deficiency. Also, so do adults, if you give them a demanding verbal task to do at the same time.

So, I'd have to agree with GP: It's pretty difficult to think about things you have no words for.

Unless (s)he meant that it is impossible to do so. It is possible, but clearly very, very difficult.

Here's the link. The experiment with the rats starts at about 11 minutes in and the kids version starts at around 15 minutes in (on the podcast, anyway, which has an extra intro)

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2010/09/10