The quality of our news is going down the tubes.

"Massive study finds that they should have hired more intelligent researchers"

Who cares if they found genes correlated to intelligence but they don't directly affect the nervous system? The body is interconnected in so many ways that everything affects intelligence.

Also, academic achievement also tests for willingness to put up with bull and do boring homework, or an interest in certain subjects. To be fair though, academic achievement is probably more important than intelligence, at least for some things. For example many colleges want applicants to take the Student Aptitude Test, yet I've never heard of one wanting an IQ test.

Other studies have found that about 50% of the variation in intelligence is due to genetics. This study only looked at it from the perspective that maybe a few genes contribute a lot. It seems that the answer is it is due to a large number of genes each with a tiny effect. This is hardly surprising but it was a worthwhile test.

Well, in my opinion I'd like an app that can tell me the time and date, has an alarm, and can make the battery last for 5 years. Is there an app for that?

Or jammed when the cops show up.

Well, it could also be seen as hacking (of the device) or impersonation (of the wireless hub). If the device properly identifies itself as having nothing to do with the network when sending the disconnect request, then it would be comparable to merely a request. If not, then I see no reason we should encourage the elimination of a feature of our networks by eliminating the disconnect packet from all network code, just so a stupid jammer can work for a month while the code is eliminated.

In the case of a drone, I suspect the owner of the jammer will be considered responsible for any damage caused by booting the drone from the network, if any.

And yes, I realize that this is not a device that saturates the EM frequencies to jam a signal. But it has the same purpose and function of a jammer, of terminating the target's communications. And I think it is worse than a jammer, because it might end up deleting a feature of the internet.

You should see the smiles on the faces of slashdotters as they read this news. Seriously, hack into their computers and activate their cameras.

Why, do I first need to conduct an experiment to see how well scientific consensus correlates with accurate prediction? Or would that still not be science because authoritarianism?

Nope, science is about prediction. Anything that makes predictions must by necessity be falsifiable, the things that make the best predictions are the easiest to falsify should it be wrong. If something is false yet makes good predictions, it will be accepted until such time as circumstances are found where it makes wrong predictions, and then it will be kept even so until such time as something makes better predictions.

Case in point: Newtonian mechanics. Newtonian mechanics has been falsified, but remains in use because it makes accurate predictions with simple calculations, except for in certain extreme circumstances. This is how you judge if something was good science or bad: not if the "explanation" it has for something was right or wrong, but if it made accurate predictions. And if it made accurate predictions it will forever be at least approximately accurate.

The easiest to understand evidence in this case is, in fact, the consensus. A reasonable person would conclude that there is a very small chance of people who dedicated their lives to discovering, sharing, and verifying truth, to be in some sort of conspiracy to hide the truth. And if you don't trust them, then you shouldn't trust their data either, nor their calculations.

Go gather it yourself, and make your own calculations. Only after you have done that would the data you're asking for have any value for you. For bonus points, see if you can buy the weather station data with re-distribution rights, so that you can share it afterwards.

It's the job of the scientist to make predictions about the real world and test them. Sometimes you can double-check their work, other times to do it all yourself would require millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours.

If you've got a problem with weather stations that make records and then sell them without re-distribution rights, take it up with the weather stations or the guys who wrote copyright law, or fund your own weather stations and give the data away. But ask yourself this: do you also bemoan the fact that psychologists and medical researchers don't tell you the names and personal data of the subjects in their study? Sometimes a scientist won't give you the data, and this is not unique to climatologists. After all, you can always gather your own data.

And even if they could give you the data, what are you going to do with it? Do you have a supercomputer and the know-how to debug a million lines of code simulation software? I'm sorry, but there are some things that you can't just check in a couple minutes, you'd have to dedicate your life to it and even then depend on your coworkers.

But, at the least you can see for yourself that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Rent IR goggles, and look at a heat source through a flask of CO2 and a flask of nitrogen.

The reason scientific consensus got a bad name is simple: On occasion, the scientific consensus costs powerful people tons of money. Whether it be cigarettes and cancer, or global warming, or the environmental and health costs of pollution, on occasion the scientific consensus will cost some powerful people a ton of money, and make a ton of other people feel bad about what they do.

The FUD is getting so bad that people don't even know what science is anymore: the making and testing of predictions about reality. It's not only that simple, but scientists will gleefully attack the tiniest error in another scientist's work, they'll double-check on each others' work, and have even developed methods to test a prediction when one can't trust oneself to be unbiased (double blind study). If you can't trust a scientist, who the hell does any better?

Some people have to stay up late at unexpected times, or get up early at unexpected times. Plus, antioxidants!

...said the criminal who has committed multiple counts of felonies and smaller crimes. If you want to keep that attitude you might want to look into reducing the absurdly large number of overly broad laws. And then design a gun that can identify and refuse to shoot at law-abiding citizens.

Am I the only one concerned about all these supposedly intelligent people walking about with their heads in the cloud?

Why, is there some sort of super, underegulable regulation that says you shouldn't misrepresent your product?