Selection Bias and Alternative Facts

Alternative facts is better termed ‘alternative reality’.  CBC News is a prime example though CNN is equally entertaining for these marketing strategies that are unscientific and commonly called ‘pseudoscience’.  An example is a left leaning poll, knowing that marijuana smokers sleep in , work from home, or don’t have jobs, pollsters will poll during the afternoon.  The right wing anti marijuana smokers by contrast are commonly early risers and at work.  Such a poll is then used by the CBC or CNN to support in a pseudoscience way their contention that the majority of Canadians want more access for themselves and their children and their pets to marijuana.  

Selection bias worked in the university regarding Climate Change. The UN IPCC mandate was to publish evidence of ‘man made weather changes’.  Strong the Canadian communist supported by his Chinese and globalist partners was against fossil fuels.  China has maintained fossil fuels but by demonizing them in the west Strong and the communists saw the undermining of the western military economy by hampering the west’s efforts to compete with the military build up of China and countries in the Middle East, specifically those agains the principle western ally, Israel.  In all these other countries they are using cheap energy to in military competition with the west who increasingly have found their ability to defend the west undermined at home. It’s long known that the American military won the War in Vietnam only to have it lost by the Media at home.  

Selective bias is to report Canadian carbon ‘footprint’ one of the best in the industrialized world and tax the already over taxed Canadians all the while countries like China continue to pollute massively.

The most recent evidence of selective bias and the alternative facts that follows from this alternative reality which excludes comparison is with the pipe line spills.  Pipelines are cheaper and safer than railways but corporate tycoons like Warren Buffet and the Trudeau government are heavily invested in the more costly and more dangerous railway transport of fuels.  By paying ‘activists’ and raising rallies these alternative corporate interests run a marketing campaign demonizing the competing industry. Oil will be carried but not by pipelines but rather by trains.  

The issue of ‘gun laws’ was the same with the exclusion of heavily armed Switzerland with it’s very ordered and safe society but instead looking at America and claiming that ‘guns’ are the cause of murder in the US.  What was further excluded from the debate was that 75% of Californian gang violence was by “illegal aliens’ but most importantly ‘legal guns’ in the US are simply absent in violence other than domestic violence where there are measures that have been taken in countries like Canada to reduce the likelihood of domestic violence without demonizing guns.  

The point is that the key to understanding the ‘alternative facts’ and the ‘alternative realities’ of the major competing ideologies of individualism of the right and collectivism of the left is to look first at the ‘terms of the reference’ of the research involved or the ‘study’ involved.  Then it’s critical to have an appropriate comparison group.

The place where I saw this was with ‘home deliveries’.  The Liberal government having taken all the tax payer citizen money for health care was attempting to keep it all for their own luxuries by schemes like as ‘deliver your baby in your home’.  They had this plan to cut costs and reduce the amount of money returned to the citizens for the medical care which citizens were willing to pay for.  So they also encouraged ‘mid wives’ to do ‘home deliveries’ and developed ‘dual’s.  These individuals were in direct competition with obstetricians whose work was the most scrutinized and regulated and subject to the highest costs in medical legal terms because of the demand for perfection.  Overnight the home deliveries were associated with deaths and difficulties but never subjected to the same scrutiny simply because it was ‘government approved’ and part of the main agenda.  The most important comparison was to use Britain and Holland as ‘comparison’ showing that Britain and Holland had home deliveries without problems. What was left out was that when I lived in London there was a clinic and hospital and life support facilities as close as pubs on every corner. The ‘density’ of the population allowed proximity to obstetricians and c sections.  By contrast in Canada the vast distances resulted in long delays from getting from the home to the hospital if anything went wrong.  

The key is to understanding the ‘terms of reference’. In the Downtown Eastside the agenda was to introduce costly ‘injection sites’ and promote the ‘culture of drugs’ but ‘control’ it and bring it into the same ‘marketing potential’ as the highly lucrative tobacco and alcohol industries with their lobbies and revenues.  There was no evidence that these incredibly expensive facilities did more than reduced a death per year at a cost of a million dollars. However by presenting a graph showing the drop of the deaths in the community which included the years before they were opened they ‘claimed’ success but now though there is a horrendous rise in deaths "as a consequence" of the injection sites, the very name SAFER marketing drugs increasingly to youth who no longer associate drugs with death, as they had after the Belushi death, instead we have a cry in the construction industry to build more empires.  This is an alternative reality to the proven success of street policing, abstinence baed treatment centres, methadone, suboxone, AA and NA.  The construction industry and other players are very keen on more bastilles which serve as a focus for spreading the ideology of ‘better living through chemistry’.  

The abortion industry is one of the most expensive and most highly paid and costly industries.  A simple comparison would be to consider as it was 30 years ago, what is the cost of abortion compared to supporting mothers and children.  The multi billion dollar abortion industry doesn’t wish to share it’s masses of money with mere women and children yet we could support well all the unborn babies if we had indeed presented the evidence without the ‘selection bias’ which came from the idea there are ‘too many people are the planet’.  What was never mentioned is that idea, that doomsaying, was first introduced in the time of Columbus.  Like Global Warming and countless other fear mongering ideologies, these serve to get people to give money to the organizations creating the problem.  

To understand all the squishy feel good promotions like save the wounded puppy campaigns understand that there is an industry behind everyone of these.  Pipelines debate isn’t about fossil fuel or not but about fossil fuel carried by trains or pipelines.  Look for the money that is competing and ask about the egos involved in the competition.  

George Soros who profits by bringing down governments investing billions in their downfall, buying up their currency before they rise again , all done artificially and by intention, is behind the black lives matter campaign which is a money making machine for black leaders and democrats principally.  In South Africa the blacks are persecuting the whites but there is no ‘white lives matter’ campaign there because in other countries there are no freedoms as we enjoy here.  Much of the terminology is based on this ‘selection bias’.  Asians with their history of success comparative to Caucasians are not demonized as whites are by the blacks because theres an agenda and ‘selective bias’.  Follow the money trails and ask who is profiting from this warm and fuzzy today.  

I am a researcher and I see such stupidity and wonder why people don’t go to university and study stats and research to know the fundamentals so they won’t be lead by the nose and turned into consumer slaves by the forces behind CBC and CNN.  I did my research training at the Masters level and this was simply 101. It's not new information but seeing Canadians vote and listening to Canadians discuss politics I'm quite frightened by the level of general ignorance about science and research. There's a tremendous pseudoscience and the new bullying of the brownshirt "identity politics' but a general ignorance about polls, democracy, socialism, communism, history, studies, bias that really is seriously troubling.  

Think alternative ‘realities’ and ‘selection bias’ and ‘terms of reference’. And polls are as limitted to who pays for them. Snopes for one is bought and sold.  

 

The best way to sucker someone too, is to bait them with a couple of truths so you can sucker them with the bigger false hood when their guards are down. That’s why these organizations are partially useful on the stuff that doesn’t really ‘count’.  Everything is grey.  Nothing is all bad or all good. It’s just where are you on the spectrum of naivity to intelligent discernment 

 

Also know that the search engines of the Internet are rigged. The queue of items is bought. The marijuana industry is so well funded and powerful that a recent research item about the harm of marijuana was 'buried' in the general search engines in the most sophisticated manner whereas it was front and centre in the scientific search engines. I liked the coffee mug, 'don't confuse your google search with my MD". It's increasingly tedious to explain to people the basics of marketing or sales and burst their bubble of overnight genius. Right now the 'left' is claiming to be the judge of 'truth'. Their new word is 'facts'. Beware. The best New Yorker cartoon showed a weather woman saying, "now we've given you the Republican weather report now we're give you the Democrat weather report." You can get a Jamaican, Saudi, female, gay or dog lover report now on just about any matter and mostly you'll be hearing the expensive monetarily back skewed view. One way to untangle deviation is to know a controversial story from the inside then watch how different media present the story. That gives a baseline deviation There will always be selection bias and alternative relations and social relativism will play a part but if you are aware of these forces you can factor them into your analysis. I know it's tough. I know you want the nipple of reason and the umbilical cord of facts to hang onto. Don't we all.