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.

 

Cherry Picking

The Bible is a vast work written by many over centuries.  Of course it is inspired by God and is the Holy Bible. However this clear voice of love and truth require the ‘ears to hear’ and the ‘eyes to read’.  To Pontius Pilate and the Romans, the authorities of the day, Jesus was simply a trouble maker.  Throughout history the words of the Bible have been interpreted and mis interpreted.
Jesus gave us a “key” to the Bible.  Asked to sum it up he said, “Love God and Love your Neighbour as Yourself.”  Love is the answer.  Throughout history there was ‘judgement and mercy’ but Jesus said essential mercy and compassion are more important.  “Judgement is the Lord’s.   “Take the timber out of your own eye before you try to take the sliver out of your fellow mans eye”.  “Judge not lest ye be judged.”   “Forgive.’  These are the Christian messages.
Cherry picking is taking something out of context and using this isolated snippet of information for a different purposes.  It’s all too common in advertising, marketing and politics. It has no place in spirituality and Biblical interpretation.  Given that Jesus has given us the key to the Bible I consider every other aspect against the very foundation of Christianity as Jesus laid it out. Given navigation requires one or best two or more points outside my own location I can use this ‘key’ as a way to unlock the direction and course of my life relative to the spiritual life. The Bible is for me to reflect most on my behaviour not on others. It’s greatest gift is that it guides my spiritual development.
I can’t just cherry pick any old phrase from the Bible and insist that this represents the whole.  That would be like asking one Canadian what he thinks about something and then insisting this is what Canada believes as a country.
In my work as a physician,  ‘cherry picking’ is the business practice popular with the new doctors in which one picks an ‘easy practice’, avoiding complicated and sick individuals because the most money is made with the ‘worried well’. This is why the ‘cosmetic health care industry’ of ‘vitamins and ‘health foods’ makes billions of dollars a year.  The well are usually rich because they are healthy enough to work and make money. The really sick are the chronically ill and the system fails them.  As a Christian I must beware of the temptation to ‘cherry pick’ my practice for the financial benefits that come with treating the worried well.
As for learning, there’s discernment, which I use in choosing the influences about me, the friends I spend time with, the music I listen to and what I read mostly. Discernment is not ‘cherry picking’ but it involves “selection bias’.  With discernment though I’m selecting the information and influences that will help me as a Christian grow as a person.  Cherry picking is the flip side of discernment.

Scientific Method, Bias and Politics

Science is distinct from religion and philosophy.  In religion one begins from the position of received 'truth'.  God speaks to Moses and tells him to tell the Pharaoh, "let my people go".  Beginning with God's word the outcome is a product of the level of obedience to the projected plan by the individual.  In philosophy one arrives at truth through reasoning, predominantly deductive or inductive.
In science, truth is not known, but an hypothesis is assumed. An hypothesis is an unproven, but an experiment is devised to prove the hypothesis, thereby arriving at 'not absolute truth' but rather a "prevailing hypothesis".
In religion increasing truth about the world comes from God's sharing this information but in science it comes from human endeavour, that is the accumulation of 'proofs' regarding some aspect of creation. Whereas religion and philosophy delve into the greater meaning of the universe, the why's and wherefore's of creation, science is predominantly interested in the how.
So an hypothesis might well be that the light always returns after darkness.  A study is designed where two people wait through the night and sure enough the light comes with the sun in the morning.  Eventually the hypothesis that explains this and suggests this is prevailing experience is the astronomical recognition with aid of telescopes and other paraphernalia that the earth revolves around the sun.  Even watching the moon in its orbit around the earth one can see in eclipses the lightness and darkness confirming the original idea that the light follows the dark.
Experimentation is therefore central to science and why science students have 'lab' assignments in addition to regular class assignments.  In the arts a literature student doesn't require an extra lab class doing experiments with explosives or highly dangerous chemicals. A literature student will listen in class, hear ideas and go away, read books, discuss the ideas and write papers about the ideas.  In science classes the students are required to do the original critical experiments that defined the accumulated knowledge that forms the prevailing hypothesis in that field.
In scientific experimentation to better arrived at truth there are a number of variables which are identified and limitted.  These 'variables' , aspects of experimental design and work which can influence an experiment unfairly, are generally limitted in elegant experiment because they introduce bias into the experiment. Experiments are like a game in that there are usually two principal outcomes, either the experiment prooves your hypothesis right or it proves your hypothesis wrong. If you are right you get grant money and advancement whereas if you are wrong you can be advised to get an arts degree or perhaps physical education.
Scientists are competitive and science is a competition in this sense.
The first bias to consider is 'selection bias'. In social sciences if you wanted to say "all men are good dancers" you could unfairly prove your 'hypothesis' true by choosing to select only from Negro and Latino men preferably from US inner city. If on the other hand you chose 'white male judges' you'd find that your hypothesis was wrong since everyone knows 'white male judges' can't dance whereas Latino and Black men can.  Indeed, this fact alone, to scientists has often explained the 'legal' bias against Black and Latino men by the predominantly white judicial system. However without funding the experiments haven't been done to confirm this obvious example of how envy influences the judicial system scientifically.
Random selection is the way one avoids such obvious bias.  Therefore by random selection you stand on a street corner in New York and observe the rythym of every second male regardless of their race thereby removing the 'selection bias' component.
Commonly experiments have at least two study groups. Often in biological sciences the study group is considered the group that something is being done to whereas the 'control' group is the group that is being left wild.  In this way, if I wanted to study the sexual behaviour of women under the influence of alcohol, my hypothesis being that alcohol makes women women more sexual I'd have my control group drink coffee in a bar one night whereas I'd subject my study group of women to the influence of alcohol.   My experimental design might be the more sexual encounters in 24 hours is the criteria for proof in my experiment.
If I wanted to make the experiment even more 'stringent' I'd introduce "blind" factors. Blinding in scientific method is causing either experimenter or those in the experiment not to know what is being done. In 'double' blind experiments the subject and the experiment is unaware of who is the control and who is the experimental group.  In drug research commonly 'blinding' is done with 'placebo pills' such as sugar pills.  So one group of students is given LSD and another is given placebo. The experiment design is set up to study whether students on LSD act abnormally. The experimenters rating the behaviour don't know which group took the LSD and the students themselves don't.
Other biases in research include "effects", such as the "halo effects'.  In physics it was found that electrons being looked at acted differently from electrons not being looked at. This was the same in social sciences where people who are in an 'experiment' act differently than those not in an experiment.
Alot of 'field work' in anthropology and zoology was developed because in social sciences the very 'context' of the experiment had a biasing effect.  Observation in the 'wild' showed that animals for instance acted different than animals in the zoo the same way that humans in night clubs act differently from the same humans in church.
An example of this was a colleague who was so uptight he made a normal Austrian gestapo look left of Democrat. He wore his white lab coat pressed and cleaned each day and had his hair brushed exquisitely.  He carried a clip board and didn't talk to people unless he thought they were serious. No one knew this man to laugh and when his sense of humor was questioned he denied the claim insisting that he had a sense of humor most angrily.  He did experiments on students showing that LSD caused paranoia by sitting in a locked white room with student who had taken LSD and observing the student while avoiding interacting with him. The subjects became paranoid in his presence and he failed to consider that his own paranoia was the cause of their associative paranoia however his published results made him considerable amounts of money. Another researcher observed students at a frat party taking LSD and did notice that a subset of LSD users became paranoid while others became ecstatic.  When he reported his results the original researcher began a political campaign to have him discreditted.
Scientific method with experimentation is a means whereby a study design is set up much like a cookbook recipe with the outcome predicted based on the study. Using the rigors of scientific methods, a scientist knows that if he adds the right ingredients as say Newton or Einstein, he will most likely get chilli rather than curry  Subsequently the study is repeated enough times to establish it's 'reliability'. Then it's subjected to analysis to assess 'inter rater reliability'.  Over time a 'body' of evidence is achieved whereby a 'theory' becomes established.
Gravity is one such theory.
In social sciences the idea that the disparate complex nature of social behaviour can be simplified in some instances by the recognition that predominant motivational factors for men and women are sex and power.  With out this knowledge an arts student with a very beautiful wife and a whole lot of money might not understand the potential behaviour of his somewhat poor single ugly weazel like neighbour who works all day in his laboratory making a bomb.  The first man having some general knowledge of theories concerning human behaviour might well show some concern when the neighbour scientist invites him to see how his bomb works.
Bias is the inclination to hold a partial perspective at the expense of alternatives which might be equally valid is what science attempts to exclude to get a closer look at truth.
However, something as simple as 'funding bias' will politically grossly effect science. This is well understood in science and talked about all the time however in the courts even the suggestion of 'funding bias' can cause one to be held in 'contempt of court' since questioning 'funding bias' is indeed 'fighting city hall'.  In law one can't question funding bias but in politics it's what the media does however it was the 'funding bias' of the Nazis that was said to have affected the ethics of the Pope early in WWII when he didn't question the politics of Hitler.
Today if a person develops an experiment to 'disprove'  the 'prevailing hypothesis' that 'global warming is bad for the planet" and especially bad for "rich powerful humans living in previous temperate climates now faced with real estate price affecting climate change", since the universities are funded predominantly by people who have an invested interest in keeping their real estate prices high, they might well not get any funding for such an experiment.
This was seen all the time in research on marijuana when the US was on the  mission for police acquisition of tanks and helicopters called 'the war on drugs', all research that said 'marijuana might have beneficial medicinal effects' went unfunded. Indeed a researcher suggesting such a matter of research might well find himself in jail or at very least refused tenure and kept under surveillance for years. In contrast if a researcher found marijuana was unhealthy for budgigars, because the second hand smoke affected the quality of their bird song as judged by several choir masters and symphony conductors this researcher was likely get untold millions in grant money and likely become the next president of the university.
Politics, economics, and legal considerations are all such principal biases to day that grossly effect science.  Science was once a 'search for truth' in a rather intellectual and joyful pursuit principally by very wealthy bored white folk like Edison and Jefferson.  Increasingly  science seems  predominantly 'applied science' where the proposed use of the scientific product is already decided. Scientists are designated to 'reverse engineer' a product that arrives at the political or even religious or legal truth.  This is no longer science aimed at finding 'truth' but in fact science held hostage by bullies with guns in fact.  The question is whether this hasn't been the case most often.  Da Vinci is known for his air machines but not as well known as the man who developed the best armaments of the day. Indeed it seems that the day job of most scientists is working for the 'man' and only in the night job can they practice their 'science'. It's much like musicians who put out elevator music cover songs in their day job and write their own experimental music alone at night.
Some might indeed argue that all is politics. Then the field  "political science" would really just be a euphemism better named 'scientific politics' as in 'scientific warfare'.
As an example I would suggest that noone today is being funded to produce a gun that will make the shooter and the one shot fall in love and want to never kill humans again. No private industry or university is conducting experiments in this or funding researchers to make love guns.  Just an example. I'll believe science is once again free from politics, religion and law when I learn that a 'cupid gun' is in the works, especially if it is going to be provided as 'freeware'. But then I'd know that it must be something else, conspiracy theories being so seductive.
In reading research on the internet I'm amazed at how the untrained are routinely being duped by what is usually called 'pseudoscience'.
An example of questionable scientific  'validity' would  be  my saying 'buy black beans, I'm a scientist, and black beans are my preferred beans for quality farts'.  This is 'anecdotal evidence' and doesn't involve the traditional experimentation with groups and hypothesis and inter rater reliability. However because I am a 'scientist' and you don't know that 'black bean producers of Canada' is giving me awesome kick backs for my promotional books, then you will no doubt believe that there is 'scientific proof that' black beans are superior to brown beans or white beans in the production of 'quality' farts. All manner of 'celebrities' have been used to promote all manner of things when a celebrities usual only superior trait is the achievement of 'celebrity' and 'celebrity' status.
Indeed you might well not even know that the word 'quality' is a political and not a 'scientific' words. There are such unscientific 'words'.  I personally think my farts smell best so as a measurer of quality of product I will be 'biased' in this regard as each human might and my dog for sure is.
The study of science is the basis for living in what is today a scientific world.  Understanding the 'arguments' about products and people and ideas and political platforms is indeed difficult and precarious without  scientific training.  As one of countless examples marketting agencies have duped the world into believing that many products are 'organic' without realizing that an unholy alliance between marketting spin doctors lawyers and mass food producers came up with the most miniumum criteria for the labelling of a food 'organic'. Even the Canadian Food Certification system which is one of the world's best scientific studies of food source and provision isn't widely understood or known by the average shopper who is commonly duped by the word 'organic' when they should instead be looking for the Canadian Food Certification label.
Indeed if I were to produce a mass destructive instrument today and name it as was done in the 60's and 70's I would n't call it just the 'peace missile' . Instead I'd call it an "organic peace missile' and put some yogurt in it guaranteeing I'd get at least a million or more votes in favour of this overr my competitors 'killer flying bomb' applied science product. Indeed listening to my marketting agency I would have got the funding for the production of my 'organic peace missile' containing yoghurt by insisting that it would be 'guaranteed' to 'prevent global warming'.
It is therefore important to study 'biases' in 'scientific experiments', understand how science and religion and politics and philosophy are distinctive, understand that 'fallacies' in logic are similiar to the 'effects' that can influence experiments and really understand economics and funding to comprehend the limits of the telling of the 'truth' by 'science'.