Oh, I get it. Because "science" has gotten too "Liberal"

[rdean]

Did I upset you again? The US population is approximately 20% liberal and 40% conservative. Let me see if I can explain the math to you. It is statistically impossible to take any random sampling of that population and end up with only 6% conservatives. If you knew anything about math you would know that.

Uh huh, sure. Explain why that is.

You guys agree with PEW when it's something you "agree with". When it's not, you call it "statistically impossible" - which in Republican speak means, "I don't care what the evidence is, I refuse to believe it because I don't want to". In the mean time, don't you have an abortion to stop? School lunches for poor children to "phase out"? An oil company to apologize to?

I never just agree with surveys, I just see them as data points. You are the one that picks and chooses what to believe and what to reject, hence your outright rejection of the Pew Research Center survey that shows that Democrats are more likely to believe Jesus will return by 2050 than Republicans.

As for explaining the math. Let us say that you have a drawer full of 100 unmatched socks, and half of them are white, and the other half are black. How many socks would you have to pull out to be sure you had a single pair of socks that matched if you had no light at all?

The correct answer to that is 3, which is obvious if you think about it. There would be no way to pull out 3 socks without having at least 2 of them match. Now we get a little trickier. Suppose you want to have a pair of white socks, how many socks would you have to pull out to be statistically sure that you had a pair of white socks?

Think about this for a bit. If I wanted to be absolutely certain that I had a single pair of white socks I would have to pull out 52 socks, because it is theoretically possible that I could actually reach into that drawer and randomly select 50 black socks. However, if I wanted to actually pull out 50 black socks in the dark I would have to pull out all of the socks, because it would be statistically impossible to pull out 50 black socks.

Personally, I would pull out 6 socks, and be confident that at least two of them were white. If I was having a run of especially bad luck I might go for 10, but it approaches statistical zero that I could pull out that many and not get a single pair of the color I want.

The same thing works with people and sampling them. Approximately 35.4% of the US population identifies themselves as Republican, 35% identify themselves as Democratic, and the remaining group is made of up decline to state, independent, or something else.

That Pew poll you like so much shows a much different political distribution. Instead of being roughly evenly divided among the three groups, scientists are overwhelmingly Democratic. Even if you want to argue that republicans are inherently anti science, you still have to explain the fact that they outnumber independents/other by such a large margin. In fact, independents are almost exactly where they would be in a normal sampling of the population, but Democrats are occur at twice the statistical rate, and Republicans occur at a 6th of the normal rate.

This is statistically impossible.

Socks weren't surveyed. Also, the survey's were "weighed". (sigh)

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I'm sure you want to take that statement back.

Science is NOT beyond politics and it should never be. Should scientists merge ape and human genes to make a "better worker"? Or a "better athlete"? Should science clone people to harvest their organs? Science has to be guided by human morals.

The problem is right wingers get their morals out of a book that teaches them to hate gays and put women in their place and supports slavery. They have no morals beyond what they read out of a book written by primitives thousands of years ago.

There is your problem rdean. There is a significant difference between politics and ethics. or morality. What you are talking about is ethics, not politics.

Morality and ethics are not the same thing. Republicans consider themselves very moral yet have zero ethics. It's why they can vote for a Speaker of the House who passes out bribes or apologize to BP or make a women give birth but suggest starving the child is "OK".

Really? No Democrat considers himself moral? How much ethics do they have? Is there some type of scale I can use to judge ethical standards? If Charly Rangel. Maxine Waters, and Sanford Bishop are 10s, being Democrats, where would I put the freshman Republicans who are refusing to take government health care and refusing to back down from the promise to trim $100 billion from the budget?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Uh huh, sure. Explain why that is.

You guys agree with PEW when it's something you "agree with". When it's not, you call it "statistically impossible" - which in Republican speak means, "I don't care what the evidence is, I refuse to believe it because I don't want to". In the mean time, don't you have an abortion to stop? School lunches for poor children to "phase out"? An oil company to apologize to?

I never just agree with surveys, I just see them as data points. You are the one that picks and chooses what to believe and what to reject, hence your outright rejection of the Pew Research Center survey that shows that Democrats are more likely to believe Jesus will return by 2050 than Republicans.

As for explaining the math. Let us say that you have a drawer full of 100 unmatched socks, and half of them are white, and the other half are black. How many socks would you have to pull out to be sure you had a single pair of socks that matched if you had no light at all?

The correct answer to that is 3, which is obvious if you think about it. There would be no way to pull out 3 socks without having at least 2 of them match. Now we get a little trickier. Suppose you want to have a pair of white socks, how many socks would you have to pull out to be statistically sure that you had a pair of white socks?

Think about this for a bit. If I wanted to be absolutely certain that I had a single pair of white socks I would have to pull out 52 socks, because it is theoretically possible that I could actually reach into that drawer and randomly select 50 black socks. However, if I wanted to actually pull out 50 black socks in the dark I would have to pull out all of the socks, because it would be statistically impossible to pull out 50 black socks.

Personally, I would pull out 6 socks, and be confident that at least two of them were white. If I was having a run of especially bad luck I might go for 10, but it approaches statistical zero that I could pull out that many and not get a single pair of the color I want.

The same thing works with people and sampling them. Approximately 35.4% of the US population identifies themselves as Republican, 35% identify themselves as Democratic, and the remaining group is made of up decline to state, independent, or something else.

That Pew poll you like so much shows a much different political distribution. Instead of being roughly evenly divided among the three groups, scientists are overwhelmingly Democratic. Even if you want to argue that republicans are inherently anti science, you still have to explain the fact that they outnumber independents/other by such a large margin. In fact, independents are almost exactly where they would be in a normal sampling of the population, but Democrats are occur at twice the statistical rate, and Republicans occur at a 6th of the normal rate.

This is statistically impossible.

Socks weren't surveyed. Also, the survey's were "weighed". (sigh)

The survey was not weighed. It was an entirely voluntary online poll of a single organization that focuses on academics.

 

[Big Black Dog]

I wonder if it hurts to be this stupid...

 

[Quantum Windbag]

It certainly hurts my brain to read his posts.