The economy -- are we replacing or repairing?

"J. Clarke" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@hamster.jcbsbsdomain.local:

I'm as suspicious as any person when it comes to statistics. Moreover, I hate statistics, because as you imply (I think) with statistics you can "prove" almost anything. Nevertheless, there are ways to make statistics at least more scientific. It starts out with a "null" hypothesis, namely that there is no difference between treatments A and B, or populations, or whatever collections of data. Next you need to determinewhether the variations between individual measurements of A and B follow a Gaussian, or normal distribution. Then you need to know whether you have enough data points obtained in an non-biased manner. Then after you let the statistics program loose on the data, it will tell you the level of significance of the deviation from the null hypothesis. p=0.5 means there is a 50/50 chance of the result being right. p=0.05 means it is 95% sure that the difference from the null hypothesis is correct, and a 5% chance that the difference was just by chance. p=0.005, 99.5 a% and 0.5% chance etc. People who gamble go for

1:1 million chances to win the jackpot. Sometimes a small chance is still very significant, and judged very important. Vioxx was taken of the market as a painkiller because when a group of patients was (supposedly totally unbiased) split in two, and half the patients received placebo and the other half Vioxx, it appeared Vioxx was really bad: The study reported 29 deaths (2.7 percent) among 1,067 rofecoxib patients and 17 deaths (1.6 percent) among 1,075 placebo patients. Almost double the death rate, but still only 27 in a 1000. So what are you going to do if aspirin doesn't help your arthritis pain, and Vioxx did?
Reply to
Han
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By definition, a person with a degree in something other than Elementary Education is not competent to teach in a government school.

For fifty dollars they, as an adult, can change their name. That they don't is evidence sufficient that they like it just the way it is. Inasmuch as I'm the one doing the hiring, I don't want my business held up to contempt and ridicule, so, no I wouldn't even interview such a person.

Reply to
HeyBub

Curse the FDA like many of my buddies with RA.

Reply to
Kurt Ullman

Kurt Ullman wrote in news:TL- dnYWEjaWt2pbSnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

There are other COX-2 inhibitors still on the market (eg Celebrex), and there are non-ASA NSAIDS with a more cox-2-specific profile. The "problem" is that they all should have the Vioxx side-effects too.

Reply to
Han

I remember a young Bohemian woman from the university area telling me she was having trouble finding a job, this was in the mid 1990's. I asked her if she thought her green hair may have something to do with it and she said she would wear a hat. I then inquired about her 47 ear rings and other piercings? Her response was "Oh, I'll take them out." I don't think she was covered in tattoos. ^_^

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

They do. It is just that Vioxx got sideways of the activists. Most of the OTC NSAIDs also have similar problems, but are studiously ignored.

Reply to
Kurt Ullman

Kurt Ullman wrote in news:PuWdnaCoscmz_5bSnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

Vioxx had heavy-handed marketing, and Merck shoved negative studies under the rug until they no longer could. The other NSAIDS are not ignored in this respect, but there is indeed not much ruckus about it. FWIW, the exact mechanisms by which Vioxx et al do the bad stuff has not yet been fully explained. Despite efforts by really smart people, life is still more complicated than the sum of all known biochemical pathways. Also, since man is not an inbred strain of a lab animal, the biological diversity is too great to make uniform rules ...

Reply to
Han

OK, Ed, you're now wandering into netloon territory.

Reply to
J. Clarke

Well, he graduated the same year as Bush Jr IIRC and he's been starving for most of the interim.

Reply to
J. Clarke

Economics essentially owns applied statistics. Political science was a junk field, no better than sociology, until economics colonized it and taught the political scientists how to do regression...and stuck around long enough to see that they did it.

Reply to
Delvin Benet

Nope, I've covered the bases on both sides. Don't get huffy about the physical-science superiority until you've dealt with good scientists in biological sciences, econometrics, and even many social scientists. Their science is generally as good as, and often better than, the science perpetuated by physical scientists. It's just a different thing, working mostly with probabilities.

Think of it as something like quantum mechanics.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I agree completely. Political science would have been fine if they had used another word for it. Now that they use many of the methods of econometrics, they can call it science.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Does he smell real bad or something? He has a law degree from Yale and he's starving? Perhaps he has such high morals which keep him from the practice of law? o_O

TDD

Reply to
The Daring Dufas

He never learned to steal big ticket items, like the other lawyers?

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Nahh, he just goes in to the office, does as little as possible, then goes home and does as little as possible.

Reply to
J. Clarke

Like I said, he steals small. Starting with his pay. :)

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Ah, I think that most universities will disagree with you about that.

Narrow-minded instrumentalists, many physical scientists have an ahistorical understanding of the term. Instrumentalism is just one facet of science.

You're describing instrumentalism, not the entire scope of science. An anthropologist may use the scientific method to study the interaction of cultures, but can't predict what would happen if those same cultures were to meet for the first time all over again. If they use the methods of science to gain knowledge, that's science.

By the same token, a scientist specializing in quantum mechanics can, at best, give you only a statistical probability about where a particle may be at some time in the future.

It is a STATISTICAL model of probabilities. The entire field is probablistic, never deterministic.

Hmmm.. something like economics. d8-)

It's not very helpful to one's understanding of the world of knowledge to trap oneself in instrumentalist models of science. Historically, strict insrumentalism is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it reflects a narrowing, not an expansion, of understanding. And it's only one aspect of science, which applies particularly to the physical sciences.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Here we have envious 'scientists' who can't produce rigorous and verifiable mathematical models attempting to downgrade the ones who can.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Here we have self-important physical scientists, who have excellent vocational training but not much of what one could call an education, thinking that science starts and stops at their doorstep.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Aren't they the ones who call 18 feet of snow in Anchorage "Anthropogenic Global Warming"? (kumbaya)

-- We are always the same age inside. -- Gertrude Stein

Reply to
Larry Jaques

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