47 - David Robert Grimes — Bad Science, Flawed Logic and Misinformation

David’s book, The Irrational Ape: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk, and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World (2019) is available here: https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Irrational-Ape/David-Robert-Grimes/9781471178252 Additional References Visit Letter here: https://letter.wiki/conversations. Looking for a correspondent? DM @JacksonAEdwards on Twitter or email humans@karma.wiki. Emily St Mandel, Station Eleven: A Novel (2014) Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolved (2018) John P. A. Ioannidis, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” (2005) https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 David Grimes and John Ioannidis, “Modelling Science Trustworthiness Under Publish Or Perish Pressure” (2018): https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/13117; Buster Benson, Why Are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement (2019): https://busterbenson.com/ My conversation with Buster on the book can be found here: https://letter.wiki/conversation/225 Timestamps 3:00–6:35 On Letter 7:56 Relative vs. absolute risk increase or reduction 14:10 False positives & Baysian analysis 24:00 The Sally Clark case: an egregrious miscarriage of justice. 26:14 The prosecutor’s fallacy 27:40 The hair analysis unit & Kirk Odom’s wrongful conviction 36:32 Cargo cults 42:50 False equivalence, esp. with regard to vaccinations 47:28 Statistical significance vs. effect size 53:45 Dietary science & surrogate outcomes 59:58 Berkeley admissions and Simpson’s paradox 1:05:45 Self-reporting and personality tests 1:08:14 The replication crisis in biomedical science 1:12:58 Disinformation and misinformation 1:17:51 Identity protective cognition