Keywords: concern about children, statistics, cancer

The claims of many snake oil salesmen are fairly easy to identify as bunk.  They're usually over the top, outlandish, and not supported by any real scientific evidence.  But there are lots of more mainstream, less obvious distortions of science and medicine that people are easily taken in by.

Often this takes the form of fallacious statistical reasoning.  And it's also often the case that the message being promoted is a reasonable one - but since it's being promoted with poor statistics it plays into the public's misunderstandings about science and statistics and reinforces them.

I've noticed a few statistical claims related to age ranges and how they relate to injury and illness, which severely distort any sensible perspective on the issues involved and promote an anxiety in people that is not warranted by the data.

Keywords: study, experiment

Any study has a set of built in assumptions.  Identifying those assumptions is important for understanding what the results are telling us and whether there might be other explanations for the conclusions of the study authors.

That's why I think the ability to understand statistics and how studies work, at least at a basic level, is very important for understanding the kind of information on new studies and statistics that we're constantly subjected to.

I've talked about this a few times before on this blog.  For illustration today I want to present something on a bit of a lighter note.  A few years ago I myself performed a study in my spare time.  The grand purpose of my study was no less than to figure out the meaning of life. 

How in the world did I design a study to answer such a large question?  Read on and I'll tell you!

Keywords: health, concern about children, statistics

I try to be on the lookout for articles that confirm common biases so that I can look deeper into them.  I'm often able to find claims that rely almost completely on confirming preconceived notions but don't have the science to back them up.

One area that is particularly lucrative for finding such claims is the so called "obesity epidemic".  Of course, it's true that there was an increase in average weight during the 80's and 90's which has since leveled off.  However, it seems that the alarming rhetoric of calling it an "epidemic" has lead to people making remarkable claims completely unchallenged.

There's even a study suggesting that by 2048 the US overweight/obesity rate will reach 100%.  I've talked before about how predicting the future in this way can lead researchers, who really should know better, down incredibly silly paths.

Right now, though, I want to look at a claim that's not as obviously silly.  The claim is that young toddlers are increasingly too fat to fit in their car seats, and that this is becoming a problem.

Keywords: link

In an earlier post, I talked about prose literacy and how it was being defined in order to derive an alarming statistic about the state of literacy in Canada.

I thought that some of you might like to take the test yourself.  You may do so at the following website:

http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/Reports/LiteracySelfAssessment/

My main disappointment regarding this test was that it didn't tell me what questions I got wrong.  I was very confident in almost all of my answers, but I only got 100% in one small sub category "use of pattern and relationships -> calculate -> formulae".

It would be nice if the way the tests were scored was transparent and available online.  Perhaps the information is available on request.

If anybody's interested, I scored a level 4 in prose literacy.  In document literacy, I scored in level 3, and in numeracy, I scored in level 5.

I was supplied with a bewildering array of results from numerous sub-categories, which must have been a labour intensive undertaking to design and program.  I have my doubts about how much these tiny slices of meaning can possibly tell me about myself and my abilities.  But over all I'm sure the test gives at least a rough idea of a person's literacy level.

Take the test yourself and let me know what you think.

Keywords: environment, holistic

Normally I don't talk much about global warming, but I've noticed that it's being addressed a lot in critical thinking/skeptic blogs and the like.  Particularly rampant are theories about why there are so many people in the skeptic movement who doubt that it's occurring.

Of the ones I've seen so far, I don't think any of them really explain this phenomenon well.  I want to explore this issue and give my views on the situation.

First of all, I want to make it clear that global warming is happening, and human caused emissions are playing a part in it.  Even many of the denialists have backed off in the face of recent evidence and agreed that it's happening, but instead see the it as a wholly natural phenomenon.  This position still goes too far, but I guess it's difficult to stick your head completely in the sand on this one.

But regarding why skeptical people might have doubts about global warming, I think the answer is pretty simple.  The fact is that on first glance, Global Warming seems like a big pile of alarmist crap.

Let me explain.

Keywords: woo, homeopathy, health, alternative medicine, cancer, bad reporting

One thing that you learn when you read a lot of books on critical thinking and logic and statistics is that you really can't accept everything at face value.  It's dismaying how much rampant credulity is out there, even from news sources that we want to trust.

I came across an article in the Ingersoll Times which credulously recounts the story of a man who claims to have cured himself of cancer through the use of homeopathy.  Naturally, I feel that this article could use a re-analysis with a more critical eye.

Unfortunately, I'm the only one volunteering, so my dumbass eye will have to do.  So let's take a look at what this article has to say:

I've been writing this blog for about 3 weeks now.  One of my main goals in doing this is to get more involved in the critical thinking and skeptical community.  Hopefully, I'll be able to meet people with similar interests, especially ones with blogs of their own to read.

Since this blog is so young, I may not have any regular readers at all.  But if there are any regular readers of this dumbass blog out there, especially if you have a small time blog of your own, please write into the comments section for this entry.  I would like to know who you are, and I would be very interested in reading what you have to say in your own blog.

I don't have delusions about this becoming a big time popular blog.  But I would like to use it to meet like minded people and read what they have to say.  So if that applies to you, leave a comment.  I'd love to hear from you.

Keywords: personal experience, experiment, statistics, uncertainty, randomness

I want to relate to you an incident that happened to me a while back.  I was going to melt some peanut butter in my microwave for a recipe, but the moment I turned the microwave on, it started sparking inside.

Alarmed, I quickly pressed the stop button and took my bowl of peanut butter out to examine it.  The bowl was one that I'd used before, no metal on it and completely microwave safe.  I'd melted peanut butter in the microwave before, and never had such a thing happened.

Perhaps there was something wrong with the microwave, I thought.  I filled a mug with water, put it inside, and turned the machine on.  Nothing happened, it worked just fine.

Then I tried the peanut butter again: sparks.

I performed the comparison over again just to be sure.  Only the peanut butter sparked.

What the hell was in my peanut butter that was making the microwave spark??

Keywords: statistics, concern about children, nutrition, study, bad reporting

I managed to convince Steve Thoms of Skeptic North to allow me to write a guest blog post, which was posted online today.  Since I was trying to be concise for Steve and keep the article under 1200 words, I didn't mention a few things that I'd have liked to point out.  They're not points that are really necessary to understanding the article, but I think they'll be of  interest to seekers of truth who like to get the full analysis.

So I'm going to post the entry here, along with a dumbass addendum.  So please read on while a dumbass explores the importance of definitions.

I like to sometimes read over old blog entries to make sure that I've got all my facts straight, and that I've explained everything as well as I should.  I was looking over the ShamWow Entry and wondered to myself whether I might have missed something.  Maybe there was somebody else analyzing this product as critically as I did that I wasn't able to find.  I decided to try another Google search, and plugged  "critical analysis shamwow", and guess what I found: