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Comment Re:Nice try (Score 1) 736

If you don't provide enough detail for someone to be able to reproduce your result, your paper will (well, should) be rejected.

Peer review and the journal acceptance procedures do not check this. Peer review is merely a sanity check. Papers in climatology journals are not rejected because you don't provide enough detail to reproduce the result - referees don't check this. Furthermore, some climatological journals do not believe it is their job to require data archiving either before or after the fact of publication. See here, here, and here.

The policies for journals should be as good as they are at the American Economic Association: Data Availability Policy. Anything less is inadequate.

Comment Re:Nice try (Score 1) 736

It is standard practice in Economics and Econometrics journals to require just this. This practice was instigated by the non-profit academic societies journals. See: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/submissions.html

9. All data used in analysis must be clearly and precisely documented.
10. All data used in analysis must be made available to any researcher for purposes of replication. See Data Availability Policy.

If they can do it, I don't see why others can't.

(Don't cry for Elsevier - they make huge amounts of money from libraries. There have been calls to boycott Elsevier journals because they use unpaid reviewers but charge the libraries at the academic institutions the reviewers work at an arm and a leg for the journal.)

Comment Re:Nice try (Score 1) 736

One only has to use FOI requests when polite requests get refused. The fact that they are resorting to such means suggests bad intent on the part of the 'scientists' who refuse to provide the data when politely requested. Would you seriously be happy that scientists could publish, refuse to provide any verification or replication information and just rely on "trust me, I'm a scientist". If you require trust, it's not science.

Frankly, it is a travesty that publication is not conditional upon a full replication suite being archived with the journal prior to publication. Without replication it's not science.

Having to use the force of law to enforce minimum standards of scientific conduct? The research is not legitimate in my book.

Comment Re:Oftentimes, simply no... (Score 2, Insightful) 822

A common refrain is - "you are not a climatologist therefore you can not comment on anything we do". However, when one examines what is being done it immediately becomes apparent that 'climatologist' is a useless definition. Much of the more controversial stuff is pure statistics. I am a scientist and my statistical ability is greater than most of the climatologists. But, for some reason, people would claim that because I am not a 'climatologist' I can not comment.

Is that your position? That highly educated people who didn't happen to tick the 'climatologist' box when they graduated can't comment? While you might not find a physicist making a mistake about the first law of thermodynamics you can find them making a mistake about the central limit theorem or the asymptotic properties of estimators. As a person with a high level of statistical training I am shocked by how bad the statistics used in some of these climatological papers is. You then get into a bizarre situation where a statistician is telling a 'climatologist' that R-squared is an invalid statistics to use in a particular situation and the 'climatologist' saying 'I'm the expert here because the topic is the climate and I reject your criticism. Some 'climatologists' aren't prepared to defend their work against legitimate, good, criticism.

Comment Re:No. (Score 3, Informative) 1174

Think about it for just a minute and it might dawn on you - you don't need to be an electrician to get this. A 15A appliance will work in a 30A socket, but a 30A appliance won't work or will cause safety problems in a 15A socket. You don't want people plugging 30A appliances into 15A sockets and the socket design ensures this. It's kind of like backward compatibility - it only works one way and it should only work one way.

Math

Pi Calculated To Record 2.5 Trillion Digits 432

Joshua writes "Researchers from Japan have calculated Pi to over 2.5 trillion decimals using the T2K Open Supercomputer (which is currently ranked 47th in the world according to a June, 2009 report from Top500.org). This new number more than doubles the previous record of about 1.2 trillion decimals set in 2002 by another Japanese research team. Unfortunately, there still seems to be no pattern."

Comment From TFA (Score 4, Interesting) 167

I think the most amazing part of the story is this:
"According to the report, the teen told investigators he'd heard if you make threats online against a plane, the police would show up at your doorstep. The teen told investigators he was only testing that theory."

Test successful! Big Brother is watching.

Comment Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score 1) 1057

Yeah thanks for that. Just because I didn't decide to follow an academic path after getting my PhD in Economics at MIT you have decided that I am the dregs of the program at MIT. I'm sure that my classmates and professors there will be happy to disagree. Do you place working for the Federal Reserve in the same category? Just fit for the dregs of the MIT economics program?

What I did was return to my home country to pursue public service. Strangely enough, some people don't want to spend their time in academia but want to make a more direct contribution. This has no correlation with their ability to do economics.

Bottom line: You are speaking out of your arse making sweeping generalisations about something you know nothing about.

Comment Re:WTF? (Score 1) 664

What the publishers fail to realise is that the price they can sell new games for reflects the fact that buyers are factoring in the ability to sell the product on the used market. While some people buy to keep, others buy to play and resell. If you kill the used game market the price they can sell a new copy for will drop as all the people who were planning on reselling refuse to buy the game now. Only people who buy to keep will pay the currently inflated prices. (Unless they drop the price.)

The net effect is actually that the amount publishers make will be exactly the same regardless of whether there is a used game market or not. Or whether they take a cut from Gamestop or not (because any cut they take from Gamestop is going to be reflected in lower prices paid by Gamestop for used games, which is going to affect how many people actually buy the game new).

Lots of other industries seem to indulge in this short-sighted thinking. If you offer people an inferior product - use of something for a limited amount of time versus use for an indefinite amount of time the price they are willing to pay for it is reduced. This is even more so where people don't know what the value to them is and are taking a risk by buying it. If there is a possibility a game will suck, the ability to resell it on the used market makes it much more likely that people will take the risk. If the used market gets destroyed there will be fewer customers like that and, once again, the publishers will have to drop their prices if they want to keep making as much money as they currently are.

Comment Re:pay to receive calls? (Score 1) 76

I tried to do this with Optus and they said they couldn't do it. They said they could block all SMS - but not selectively block premium SMS. How did you manage to get them to do it? Surprisingly Telstra can and will block just premium SMS but most don't.

Anyway, given the money Optus make out of premium SMS it is unsurprising that they refuse to selectively block it. technical problems my arse.

Security

Submission + - APEC Security Flop (news.com.au)

APEC Security Team writes: Today, 11 members of an Australian TV comedy crew (The Chaser) were arrested after passing through two checkpoints into the "Sydney's APEC security "red" zone", coming within metres of the hotel at which US President George W Bush is staying. The article states: "Chaser members said they had dressed up a convoy to look like an official Canadian motorcade, on a day during which a number of official motorcades crossed the city. Southern Cross Broadcasting reported that the convoy carrying the Chaser team passed "through two checkpoints around the hotel before one of The Chaser pranksters jumped out (dressed) as Osama Bin Laden".
Security

Submission + - Osama Stunt Embarasses APEC

GrpA writes: The Chaser's War On Everything, possibly best known previously for their booking flights under the names Terry Wrist and Al Kyder have been arrested at the APEC Summit for what could be one of the most audacious stunts yet performed by the team. Their latest work involved them driving a fake motorcade through the restricted APEC Summit zone, with Chaser "Chas Licciardello" emerged from the vehicle dressed as Osama Bin Laden, embarassing security forces that were guarding world leaders, including Chinese President Hu Jintao and US President George W Bush. I guess our current world leaders haven't learned from lessons of the past.

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