Comment Re:Context is nice (Score 2) 276
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.