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Comment Re:Peer review (Score 1) 1100

Many peer review processes are double-blind. But peer review do policies vary, and they are almost always clearly stated (transparency). So go read them for yourself and decide what's best in your view.

Science is primarily a deductive process. The entire process and systems surrounding our organization of scientific knowledge center on of confrontation and argumentation. Moreover, scientists themselves are predisposed to disagree. You distinguish yourself by contributing, you contribute by revising what is currently known. Scientists simply have no motivation to agree unless the evidence is quite convincing (to them, if not you).

The social networking argument is a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument. Obviously there will be tight coupling, such is the nature of specialized study. Some needless errors will propagate, but substantially more noise will be filtered. Peer review is essential -- but if you have a new, superior review policy in mind, please describe it.

Even so, the social networking argument does not strengthen your point. Propagating errors is a far cry from a systematic closure around a singular and broad position. Again, have you any EVIDENCE that there is systematic bias against anti-anthropogenic GW research that goes beyond merit? It's a facile claim.

I still do not understand how your second point relates to peer review in any way. You are comparing the basis for action on the one hand to the results of action on the other. Or do you suggest that the consequence to the RESULTS (one way or the other) of climate study are minor? The statement seems to me to be more a tangential expression of your frustration with the (inaccurate) belief that anthropogenic GW positions rests primarily on hypothetical computational simulations.

And you've still not made your point: How does peer review "hide" anything? The handful of scientists that differ from the community DO find venues in which to publish their work. You are not prevented from reading these. And the media clearly isn't prevented from covering them.

There is already a transparent and open examination of the evidence. What has been hidden from you?

If you aren't convinced by the evidence, fine ... I'm not going to argue with you about GW itself. But if you've read the literature and are still unconvinced then clearly you have sufficient access to the counter-popular side of things, and if you've not read the literature then you have no position with which to claim any research is being kept from you. Your argument is not internally consistent.

Comment Re:Peer review (Score 1) 1100

This makes no sense. Most scientific papers are publicly available, so nothing is "hidden". People who cannot publish their work in respected, peer reviewed journal can (and do) still publish their work. So even those works are not "hidden". Indeed, many people who feel unappreciated by their respective scientific communities can (and do) create their own venues of publication. And potential readers are free to make their own decisions about what sources are most trustworthy.

Peer review is a necessary vetting process to prevent scientific literature from devolving into nonsense. "Science" published without peer review should not be considered seriously. Scientists pay more attention to publication mediums that have an established record of publishing solid scientific work. Good vetting is necessary to ensure good rigor.

Your supporting point is equally confusing. What do any of those things have to do with peer review? Except this: None of them could have been accomplished without at least some portion of the underlying technologies having a basis in solid, foundational science ... which, almost certainly, relied on peer review in its establishment. There IS ALREADY transparency and open examination of the facts -- go to the library. What you seem to want is an open cacophony of multi-sided argumentation without drawing any kind of distinctions between what people say. We already have that, too: Internet post/comment type forums like this one.

But I think your real point is that scientists somehow collude to permit only a single viewpoint to be "publishable". With respect, if this is what you mean, it is an absurd position. Have you evidence that the consensus in the published primary-source literature is the result of something other than convincing scientific evidence?

None of the science is "hidden" from you, nor is the debate opaque -- go read the papers from Journal of Climate or Climate Dynamics, etc. ... or even respected secondary sources like PNAS, Science, or Nature. If the articles aren't available from online, write the authors ... most will send you their papers. Most libraries have some kind of ILL process to get articles, so you have a means to get them. If you don't want to do this for whatever reason, that's your choice. But don't then claim the debate isn't transparent or that there's no evidence. (By the way, I've read a variety of primary source counter anthropogenic GW pieces, myself.)

Peer review reveals, it does not hide. Actually, a LACK of peer review obfuscates by decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio. You aren't being blindfolded, you're closing your eyes.

Education

Habitual Multitaskers Do It Badly 386

iandoh writes "According to a group of Stanford researchers, people who frequently multitask don't pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time. In other words, multitaskers are bad at multitasking. The research team is also studying how to design computer voices for cars that result in safer driving." Reader AliasMarlowe adds "The comparison involved multitasking with a number of attention or context related tests. For the study, multitasking was defined as consuming multiple media sources at once — gaming, TV, IM, email, etc. Interestingly, the habitual multitaskers were much worse at multitasking than the single taskers in these relatively straightforward tests. In self-assessment the multitaskers considered themselves good at it and the single taskers considered themselves bad at it. An extreme case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, perhaps, with consequences for business and society."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Experimental Video Game Evolves Its Own Content (ucf.edu)

Ken Stanley writes: "Just as interest in user-generated content in video games is heating up, a team of researchers at the University of Central Florida has released an experimental multiplayer game in which content items compete with each other in an evolutionary arms race to satisfy the players. As a result, particle system-based weapons, which are the evolving class of content, continually invent their own new behaviors based on what users liked in the past. Does the resulting experience in this game, called Galactic Arms Race, suggest that evolutionary algorithms may be the key to automated content generation in future multiplayer gaming and MMOs?"
Programming

IBM Releases Open Source Machine Learning Compiler 146

sheepweevil writes "IBM just released Milepost GCC, 'the world's first open source machine learning compiler.' The compiler analyses the software and determines which code optimizations will be most effective during compilation using machine learning techniques. Experiments carried out with the compiler achieved an average 18% performance improvement. The compiler is expected to significantly reduce time-to-market of new software, because lengthy manual optimization can now be carried out by the compiler. A new code tuning website has been launched to coincide with the compiler release. The website features collaborative performance tuning and sharing of interesting optimization cases."

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