Acts of violence against ANY person are to be condemned without reservation. However the BBC went into overdrive when a young “Asylum seeker” was brutally attacked by a gang a few days ago. At one point this led their UK news agenda. The comrades were doing all they could to slyly suggest that this defenceless young man was attacked by white supremacists on a way to a Brexiteer meeting.
Today, the Police have realised an image of some of the suspects….bit awkward, eh?
Here you go, a new Open Thread on which to detail the egregious bias of the BBC!
I was interested to hear the BBC announce on the news this morning that many companies and banks were ‘deserting’ the Square Mile #DuetoBrexit. Well some are setting up subsiduaries on the Continent but like Lloyds are not actually abandoning London which many think will remain the world’s financial centre….Lloyds only generating 11% of its profit from Europe.
Jenni Murray is being hounded for her opinions on Transgender people…apparently some students want to no-platform her for her views….much as the BBC no-platformed climate change sceptics…speaking of which…as the BBC pours cold water onto Brexit, we have take another look at some BBC concerns about the reliability of scientifc research…..note climate change is not mentioned…from 2014….
Everything We Know Is Wrong
Every day the newspapers carry stories of new scientific findings. There are 15 million scientists worldwide all trying to get their research published. But a disturbing fact appears if you look closely: as time goes by, many scientific findings seem to become less true than we thought. It’s called the “decline effect” – and some findings even dwindle away to zero.
A highly influential paper by Dr John Ioannidis at Stanford University called “Why most published research findings are false” argues that fewer than half of scientific papers can be believed, and that the hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true. He even showed that of the 49 most highly cited medical papers, only 34 had been retested and of them 41 per cent had been convincingly shown to be wrong. And yet they were still being cited.
Again and again, researchers are finding the same things, whether it’s with observational studies, or even the “gold standard” Randomised Controlled Studies, whether it’s medicine or economics. Nobody bothers to try to replicate most studies, and when they do try, the majority of findings don’t stack up. The awkward truth is that, taken as a whole, the scientific literature is full of falsehoods.
Jolyon Jenkins reports on the factors that lie behind this. How researchers who are obliged for career reasons to produce studies that have “impact”; of small teams who produce headline-grabbing studies that are too statistically underpowered to produce meaningful results; of the way that scientists are under pressure to spin their findings and pretend that things they discovered by chance are what they were looking for in the first place. It’s not exactly fraud, but it’s not completely honest either. And he reports on new initiatives to go through the literature systematically trying to reproduce published findings, and of the bitter and personalised battles that can occur as a result.
What? Relatively few scientific papers are tested and of those that are 41% were convincingly shown to be wrong and yet they kept being cited in journals and presumably the media.
Scientists spin results to grab headlines and for career reasons, as well as no doubt due to pressure from other scientists who already hold such opinions…such as string theory…
In 2008 Physicist Lee Smolin’s book ‘The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science and What Comes Next’ was published.
What he had to say about the way science worked and how ideas and theories were produced and then supported regardless of reality was a stinging rebuke to those people who jump on a bandwagon and base their career and funding on the ‘truth’ of that idea….if the idea is discredited so are they, and the funding dries up…..
Here is what he says about String Theory and its proponents….
‘….with a cry of joy, most of these scientists seized on string theory as the answer. But their enthusiasm was such that they came to think not that it might be the answer, but that it must be. They formed themselves into a cult. Dissenters and apostates were not just scorned, they were denied posts in universities. Einstein the thinker could not now get a job in any leading physics department. For any young physicist, it was easiest simply to suppress one‘s doubts and go with the stringies.‘
Is this limited to medical science and string theory or is it widespread across science…such as in the climate change community?…I think we know the answer to that…one reason they hate sceptics asking questions, the answer to which might prove embarrassing….still its good that the BBC’s finest, english graduate Roger Harrabin, has decided he knows better than even scientifically educated sceptics and has decided that they should be no-platformed.
The Army psychiatrist/Muslim terrorist sentenced to death for the Fort Hood shooting rampage has been forcibly shaved….An Army spokesman stated that the beard is considered to be a security threat.
China Bans ‘Abnormal’ Beards
China has banned ‘abnormal’ beards as part of a major crackdown on what it sees as religious extremism in the western province of Xinjiang.
The measure, which comes into effect Saturday, also bans veils and names, as well as other “extremist signs.”
Beards are clearly dangerous in the hands of religious fanatics.
Guess we’re a day late [welcome to April] with this one from the Mail…..
Google blood money: Web giant cashes in on vile four-minute video showing ‘weapons expert’ demonstrating how Muslim extremists can smuggle weapons onto aircraft undetected, turning their beards into murderous makeshift weapons.
A Mail on Sunday investigation today exposes how Google has cashed in on a sickening YouTube video that shows viewers how to weaponise a beard and use it in a terror attack.
The vile video was online for six months despite widespread warnings that UK jihadis use such material for training.
The Mail on Sunday easily found the film online despite promises made last week by YouTube owners Google to crack down on extremist material.
Last night, Home Secretary Amber Rudd condemned the video and demanded that YouTube take action to ensure similar films are banned.
She said: ‘We will not tolerate the internet being used to hide terrorist activities or, as The Mail on Sunday has revealed, provide information to assist them in their terrible activities.
And Labour’s Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: ‘The idea that YouTube and Google should profit from something so depraved is appalling.
‘When are Google going to get their act together and stop making money out of vile hatred?’
Time for a chill….Nora the polar bear…
Gotta love this….the BBC’s response to a complaint about a ‘comic’ calling Jacob Rees-Mogg an arsehole on The Now Show…
This was not about calling random people ‘arsehole’ indiscriminately. This was a satirical piece about Jacob Rees-Mogg and his claim that ‘experts’ were in the same category as ‘soothsayers and astrologers’. Nish Kumar felt this was a preposterous statement from an MP and pick ed up on Rees-Mogg rather pretentiously quoting the Roman philosopher and politician Cicero on Newsnight to support his argument.
Nish Kumar provided a genuine quote from Cicero in return, countering Rees-Mogg’s argument and ended with a comic undercut in the form of the made -up quote from Cicero saying, “the guy is a total arsehole”.
This concluded a sophisticated argument by using anachronistic modern terminology, which also satirised Rees-Mogg for his pretension.
Rees – Mogg is fair game in this context as a public figure he often plays up to the image of being old-fashioned and more comfortable with classical allusions than modern ones.
Get her…‘a sophisticated argument by using anachronistic modern terminology, which also satirised Rees-Mogg for his pretension.’….blimey and there was me thinking it was just something slapped together on the 54 bus on the way to the studio….and it seems a bit of a leap to suggest it is somehow justified to call Rees-Mogg an arsehole because he likes the classics…..what can we call Mary Beard then? [No need to answer that one thanks]
And the use of the phrase ‘hideously white’? Not apparently prejudicial to white people at all….and other media outlets used the phrase, so OK…
It was the lack of diversity and representation which was being described as hideous in this phrase, not any particular ethnicity itself. Other media outlets quoted the phrase from the report too.
Just in the same way the BBC thinks it amusing to bandy about the phrase ‘Pale, male and stale’…sexist, ageist and racist…but it’s OK for BBC presenters to use it.
Try using ‘Hideously Muslim’ if you believe the BBC has an over-abundance of Muslim employees….see where that gets you….it wouldn’t of course be about ethnicity or religious identity but merely an argument about too much diversity and an over-representation of Muslims in the BBC that isn’t merited by their actual presence in society.
Thanks to Mice Height for this…
