Which Way Would Pascal Bet ?

When it comes to climate change ,WSJ Opinion Journal  editor  James Taranto has made the basis of its skepticism  perfectly clear.  Quant fund fans will find no sign of  dimensional analysis- he  invokes the power of  'intuition'  as he avers to " lack the time, the inclination and possibly the intellect to delve deeply into the science."

Yesterday, he provided a splendid demonstration of the high intellectual seriousness of this New  Scientific Journalism . All that  double-primary-source nonsense the paper's front page zealously adheres to is evidently something up with which Taranto will not put. But is he prepared to put his money where his mouth is ?

Proceeding from a magazine's reference to a survey described in a blog , he yesterday chose only one of the survey's  hundred -odd questions, which happened to address religion , and cited the opinion of  the sum of  those answering that multiple choice question two ways out of four  as a metric of scientific authority in the Climate Wars, concluding :

" 58% agree that "as the Bible says, the world was literally created in six days." So according to Scientific American, the biblical story of creation has only slightly less scientific merit than global warming. And if you think the people in the survey are unqualified to weigh in on such matters, they beg to differ: 71% of them agreed with the statement "I consider myself an intellectual,"... We'll bet a high proportion of them read Scientific American."

OK, James :  How much do you want to bet ?        I'll  lay:
100    to 1       That that proportion is smaller than 10% ,
1,000 to 1  That among them WSJ subscribers outnumber those subscribing to Scientific American & 
1,000,000  to 1  That  fewer still subscribe to any of the top ten peer reviewed primary scientific journals, starting with Science and Nature.   

What's really at stake is the American economy, because the most negative impact of unabashedly anti-scientific views may be their tendency to repel the minds of technologists who have somewhere else to go  and start their start-ups. We already import a larger percentage of our scientific talent than we do energy . So I'm laying the bet pro bono , in the forlorn hope that Taranto's Editor may read another piece by Christopher Mims. Not the Sci Am column that started this skirmish in the long running comedy of manners that is the Climate Wars , but his Seed essay entitled  America's War Against Science

It is as bipartisan as Scientific American is not , and profoundly disturbing. Forget how many nations are ahead of us in science education. The scarily Darwinian fact is that Mexico and Turkey are just behind us , and coming up fast on the inside.  In an era of globalization , outsourcing reality may not be a very smart bet , especially for a financial journal of record.

Comments

[Michael_The_Rock]

Those are pretty good pot odds. I would put in my $1 on each bet just to watch you do the research to prove your assertions. I thought your point was that Taranto was too lazy (intellectually and otherwise) to do any research.
Assuming that you would be doing this on your own time, I'd be surprised if you could get all that data on $3 worth of your time. You'd lose even if you won.

/I hire others to mow my lawn.
//Stopped subscribing to SA when it became more about the politics than the science.

Comment : What do you think about other than the cost of mowing your lawn ? The due diligence behind the odds is already a done deal.

[Michael_The_Rock]

"What do you think about other than the cost of mowing your lawn ?"

It would cost more than $3.00 of my time to answer this.

"The due diligence behind the odds is already a done deal."

Then you've already overspent on this wager, right?

Smart-assery aside, I find it difficult to understand what you intended by adding the reference to .......................

Boring comment continues interminably as they often do .

References are not provided for the readers convenience.

They must trouble themselves to read the damned things.

[Michael_The_Rock]

I suspected you might delete my comment. Good thing I kept a screen shot.

I used to enjoy this blog. Now you've just proven yourself to be a hack.

Go ahead, delete this too, so no one finds out.

But they will. Don't worry though, the only people who will begin to question your veracity are people with brains to think for themselves.

So much for discourse.

Where do we send the bill for editing the last one ?
Please see _ It Pays To Advertise_ , March 30.
The Management

[philw]

A pox on both your houses.
The Bush Admin is not pro science, and it's true that US science education continues to decline. But more on topic, Sci-Am has become more and more poli-sci as opposed to pure and applied science. Agenda science, be it anti-nuclear hysteria or the orthodoxy of anthropic global warming is really hurting the perception of science today. I only buy issues on occasion rather than support a scientifically biased publication.

[Ben]

I read that Seed article -- oh yeah, that was really>/i> bipartisan. Cheap shots at Bush and... not a word about the Dems or the left. Maybe Bush is "anti-science" in some respects, but certainly less so than Harvard's PC philistines who ran off Larry Summers.

And sorry, but accusing someone of being anti-science because he doubts the theory of anthropogenic global warming is simply absurd. The people who do such things are blatantly ignoring the work of eminent scientists who dispute the theory. Science is about debate and proof, both of which the GW alarmists are adamantly against.

[Gekkobear]

Ok, so the original article was good? And the poll was reasonable?

Interesting.

Can you do a poll regarding the movement of electrons around the nucleus of an atom? Atomic/Particle physics would be greatly simplified if we could get back to the "orbiting" theory.

Sure it doesn't match science, but a majority of polled Americans is now sufficient for Science... (which is what Taranto was mocking). Since you believe this, lets see if we can get a consensus to reset PI and e to 3 as well (that whole repeating decimal thing gets on my last nerve).

If you don't believe that public polls should decide scientific fact, then I can't see why you've spent all this time and effort attacking Taranto's mockery of the use of polls as a scientific basis...

Unless of course its political.