Apr 5, 2016 08:28 PM
The new astrology: Economics
https://aeon.co/essays/how-economists-ro...strologers
EXCERPT: By fetishising mathematical models, economists turned economics into a highly paid pseudoscience...
The ‘Lie Detector’ Test Revisted: A Great Example of Junk Science
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_lie_de...nk_science
EXCERPT: . . . Much of the American public seems to be convinced that the “lie detector” is valid, as indicated by its ubiquitous use in “whodunit” literature and on television crime, psychology, talk, and news shows. After all, faced with such an avalanche of widespread approbation, who could doubt the validity of such a test? Supporting this illusion is the fact that federal, state, and local police departments and law enforcement agencies across the United States are generally avid proponents of this method. But let’s take a closer look at this subject. Questions about the accuracy of this test should be amenable to modern scientific methods. Interestingly, this challenge is strikingly similar to those we face regularly as medical researchers and practitioners when we evaluate various tests in the attempt to establish the presence or absence of many diseases. Through this lens, therefore, I can provide some insight on a method that is often uncritically analyzed....
Phantom Flying Machines
http://daily.jstor.org/phantom-flying-machines/
EXCERPT: Is it a coincidence that UFOs look like the technology of the time in which they are reportedly seen? The first “flying saucers” were reported in 1947, at the dawn of the jet age, indeed the very year the U.S. Air Force became its own separate branch of the armed forces. As the Cold War race for space rocketed through the 1950s, the USAF came up with the category Unidentified Flying Object for reports that could not otherwise be explained. But that wasn’t the first time unexplained flying objects caught the public’s imagination. Robert E. Bartholomew calls the numerous Michigan sightings of “airships” in 1897 an episode of mass hysteria. He situates them in the context of rapid technological change, with the telephone, electricity, and those new-fangled horseless carriages stirring things up, and much discussion of flying machines. For flying machines were in the air, of metaphor if not quite the actual atmosphere yet. People were working, often in secret, on powered heavier-than-air flying machines all over the country....
https://aeon.co/essays/how-economists-ro...strologers
EXCERPT: By fetishising mathematical models, economists turned economics into a highly paid pseudoscience...
The ‘Lie Detector’ Test Revisted: A Great Example of Junk Science
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_lie_de...nk_science
EXCERPT: . . . Much of the American public seems to be convinced that the “lie detector” is valid, as indicated by its ubiquitous use in “whodunit” literature and on television crime, psychology, talk, and news shows. After all, faced with such an avalanche of widespread approbation, who could doubt the validity of such a test? Supporting this illusion is the fact that federal, state, and local police departments and law enforcement agencies across the United States are generally avid proponents of this method. But let’s take a closer look at this subject. Questions about the accuracy of this test should be amenable to modern scientific methods. Interestingly, this challenge is strikingly similar to those we face regularly as medical researchers and practitioners when we evaluate various tests in the attempt to establish the presence or absence of many diseases. Through this lens, therefore, I can provide some insight on a method that is often uncritically analyzed....
Phantom Flying Machines
http://daily.jstor.org/phantom-flying-machines/
EXCERPT: Is it a coincidence that UFOs look like the technology of the time in which they are reportedly seen? The first “flying saucers” were reported in 1947, at the dawn of the jet age, indeed the very year the U.S. Air Force became its own separate branch of the armed forces. As the Cold War race for space rocketed through the 1950s, the USAF came up with the category Unidentified Flying Object for reports that could not otherwise be explained. But that wasn’t the first time unexplained flying objects caught the public’s imagination. Robert E. Bartholomew calls the numerous Michigan sightings of “airships” in 1897 an episode of mass hysteria. He situates them in the context of rapid technological change, with the telephone, electricity, and those new-fangled horseless carriages stirring things up, and much discussion of flying machines. For flying machines were in the air, of metaphor if not quite the actual atmosphere yet. People were working, often in secret, on powered heavier-than-air flying machines all over the country....
