DUFF & NONSENSE!

It's not just bankers who are corruptible crooks

Anyone with even a slight knowledge of the charlatanry that has been exposed in the so-called 'scientific' world of global warming will suspect already that the phrase 'scientific ethics' is now an in-house joke.  Of course, many learn-ed opponents of the 'warmers' have dismissed them as not being truly scientific at all in the rigorous sense of the word, but now I read of  behaviour in a branch of very real science and, moreover, unlike so-called global warming, this is one of critical importance to us all.

According to a story at Yahoo News, a former Head of Research at Amgen, a huge international biotechnology company with headquarters in California, has announced that during his ten years in this position he checked out 53 "landmarked" papers from reputable labs published in top medical science journals under their supposedly strict rules which govern checking and peer-reviewing of new scientific papers.  The man concerned, Glenn Begley, said that of those 53 papers making claims that such and such a procedure had efficacious results in the treatment of cancer, 47 of them were impossible to replicate in laboratory tests!  Another giant bio company, Bayer, had similarly pathetic results according to the Yahoo report:

Scientists at Bayer did not have much more success. In a 2011 paper titled, "Believe it or not," they analyzed in-house projects that built on "exciting published data" from basic science studies. "Often, key data could not be reproduced," wrote Khusru Asadullah, vice president and head of target discovery at Bayer HealthCare in Berlin, and colleagues.

Of 47 cancer projects at Bayer during 2011, less than one-quarter could reproduce previously reported findings, despite the efforts of three or four scientists working full time for up to a year. Bayer dropped the projects.

Begley suggests that there is in the scientific community a widely held belief that anything published in a prestigious journal must be right and reliable.  Nothing, apparently, could be further from the truth which, I might add, any old global warming sceptic (er, like me) could have told them years ago!

The problem goes beyond cancer.

On Tuesday, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences heard testimony that the number of scientific papers that had to be retracted increased more than tenfold over the last decade; the number of journal articles published rose only 44 percent.

Ferric Fang of the University of Washington, speaking to the panel, said he blamed a hypercompetitive academic environment that fosters poor science and even fraud, as too many researchers compete for diminishing funding.

Ah yes, that naughty 'F' word - Funding!

"The surest ticket to getting a grant or job is getting published in a high-profile journal," said Fang. "This is an unhealthy belief that can lead a scientist to engage in sensationalism and sometimes even dishonest behavior."

The academic reward system discourages efforts to ensure a finding was not a fluke. Nor is there an incentive to verify someone else's discovery. As recently as the late 1990s, most potential cancer-drug targets were backed by 100 to 200 publications. Now each may have fewer than half a dozen.

"If you can write it up and get it published you're not even thinking of reproducibility," said Ken Kaitin, director of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. "You make an observation and move on. There is no incentive to find out it was wrong."

All of which brings us back to bankers who appear to be on a par with medical research scientists!

 

Monitor me and die of boredom, why don't you?!

Further to my preceding post on government monitoring of all electronic communications and to the gasps of Shlock-Horror from the usual liberal hypocrites who love using governmental powers to beat you up if you break one of their beloved shibboleths on race or colour, forgive me if I yawn!  Acording to them it was going to be the culmination of George Orwell's prophecies when camerers were placed in public places but the only result has been an increase in police arrests following outbreaks of public disorder or criminality.  So what's not to like about that?

The same applies to monitoring communications but if you don't like the idea of your late night, computer visits to 'Pussy Galore's Delights' then don't go there.  Or, if you really cannot resist the urge, then keep going happy in the knowledge that your infinitesimally tiny number of electronic bytes will be the equivalent of four snowflakes in Russia in the winter.  Unless, of course, one of Pussy Galore's 'gels' gets bumped off suddenly, in which case the plod will be quickly at your door - and quite right, too!  And if that's embarrassing, well, tough!

That, of course, is a trivial possibility compared to the all too real dangers and potential tragedies that are being plotted even as I write.  I would rather risk losing my dignity by being exposed as 'Pussy Galore's oldest customer, in all senses of the word, than have bits blown off me in a tube train.  In fact, I would prefer it to reading about other people having bits blown off them, too.  And I would remind so-called liberals that semtex is soooo 20th century now!  In the future, the weapon-of-choice for your urban terrorist is likely to be infinitely more serious and far-reaching in its consequences than anything we have seen so far.

Yes, of course, no-one trusts governments but all that is needed are some simple and effective safeguards.  For instance (and I don't suppose this is comprehensive), the legislation should make it crystal clear as to which suspected crimes and misdemeanours would allow a person's electronic records to be investigated.  Inside the security agencies, only specific and senior officers should be able to give consent to such investigations and they should be warned that they personally will be held legally accountable for their decisions.  In other words, no more hiding behind a minister who, we all know, hasn't a clue!  At this stage, we are dealing with intelligence matters rather than legal ones and so the basis for proceding with an investigation should be 'reasonable suspicion', not 'reasonable proof'.  Obviously, any unauthorised investigation, or release of information, not concerned with the sort of matters covered under the Act would be a criminal offence with severe penalties.

Over 3,000 people were slaughtered on 9/11 and many more injured.  I am not being flippant when I suggest that "you ain't seen nuthin' yet"!

 

"There is providence in the fall of a sparrow"

Another of those creepy coincidences about which I wrote a few days ago.  Last week I read a long article by James Bamford at Wired.com providing details of the zillions of dollars the Americans are putting into new facilities which will allow them not only to monitor and store every single electronic action in the USA but also most of the rest of the world as well.  In building these capabilities they have to bear in mind that electronic communications world-wide are expanding at a phenomenal rate.  You do not need to read the following quote if you don't want to, it can be summarised as: big, BIGGER, BIGGEST:   

Given the facility’s scale and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a man’s pinky, the potential amount of information that could be housed in Bluffdale [the site of the facility] is truly staggering. But so is the exponential growth in the amount of intelligence data being produced every day by the eavesdropping sensors of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. As a result of this “expanding array of theater airborne and other sensor networks,” as a 2007 Department of Defense report puts it, the Pentagon is attempting to expand its worldwide communications network, known as the Global Information Grid, to handle yottabytes (10²⁴ bytes) of data. (A yottabyte is a septillion bytes—so large that no one has yet coined a term for the next higher magnitude.)

It needs that capacity because, according to a recent report by Cisco, global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year. (A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.) In terms of scale, Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, once estimated that the total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes. And the data flow shows no sign of slowing. In 2011 more than 2 billion of the world’s 6.9 billion people were connected to the Internet. By 2015, market research firm IDC estimates, there will be 2.7 billion users. Thus, the NSA’s need for a 1-million-square-foot data storehouse. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

Most of this ocean of information (in fact if you think of each piece of info as a raindrop in the Pacific Ocean it will give you some idea of the scale of the enterprise!) is of absolutely no interest.  However, as any good intelligence man will tell you, that doesn't mean it's never going to be of interest, so a wise security agency will always hang on to it just in case!  And whilst it might be necessary to sweep wide, it is even more important on occasions to be able to dig deep:

The NSA is more interested in the so-called invisible web, also known as the deep web or deepnet—data beyond the reach of the public. This includes password-protected data, US and foreign government communications, and noncommercial file-sharing between trusted peers. “The deep web contains government reports, databases, and other sources of information of high value to DOD and the intelligence community,” according to a 2010 Defense Science Board report. “Alternative tools are needed to find and index data in the deep web … Stealing the classified secrets of a potential adversary is where the [intelligence] community is most comfortable.” With its new Utah Data Center, the NSA will at last have the technical capability to store, and rummage through, all those stolen secrets. The question, of course, is how the agency defines who is, and who is not, “a potential adversary.”

Needless to say, in this 'computer race', the equivalent of the Anglo-German naval race before WWI, the 'enemy' keep improving their techniques:

There is still one technology preventing untrammeled government access to private digital data: strong encryption. Anyone—from terrorists and weapons dealers to corporations, financial institutions, and ordinary email senders—can use it to seal their messages, plans, photos, and documents in hardened data shells. For years, one of the hardest shells has been the Advanced Encryption Standard, one of several algorithms used by much of the world to encrypt data. Available in three different strengths—128 bits, 192 bits, and 256 bits—it’s incorporated in most commercial email programs and web browsers and is considered so strong that the NSA has even approved its use for top-secret US government communications. Most experts say that a so-called brute-force computer attack on the algorithm—trying one combination after another to unlock the encryption—would likely take longer than the age of the universe. For a 128-bit cipher, the number of trial-and-error attempts would be 340 undecillion (10³⁶).

According to Bamford, in the great competition between the code makers and code breakers, the former were winning hands down.  Hence, the multi-zillion effort to develop ever bigger and faster computers which, if what Hamlet said is true, that "there is providence in the fall of a sparrow", then pretty soon not only will these listening devices hear the fall but they will even hear and record the faint sigh of its last breath!

Meanwhile, over in Building 5300, the NSA succeeded in building an even faster supercomputer. “They made a big breakthrough,” says another former senior intelligence official, who helped oversee the program. The NSA’s machine was likely similar to the unclassified Jaguar, but it was much faster out of the gate, modified specifically for cryptanalysis and targeted against one or more specific algorithms, like the AES. In other words, they were moving from the research and development phase to actually attacking extremely difficult encryption systems. The code-breaking effort was up and running.

Legal quibbles concerny the privacy of US citizens which in the Bush years kept the MSM squawking like startled chickens are now ignored.  Bamford records one NSA scientist who approached the White House on Obama's inaugeration and told them of the threat to privacy was given a polite brush off!  So much for the difference between liberals in opposition and liberals in government.

Back to my original comment on coincidence, this morning our MSM are squeaking about similar threats to the privacy of British subjects whose electronic messaging is, according to the government, going to be monitered by GCHQ, our equivalent of the NSA.  Cue the usual suspects leaping up an down in protest, including, I'm sorry to saythe normally sensible, David Davis MP. It is worth noting, and I am grateful to Richard North of EU Referendum for reminding me,  that the government announcement of its proposals in this area does not actually come out of the blue.  The EU issued a directive on this activity back in 2006 and recently have indicated that they will be formulating new directives to all member states to bring these procedures up to date.  In other words, in this case, as in others, HMG is just doing what it is about to be told to do by Brussels!

I have run out of time so I will return later to discuss why I do not necessarily feel threatened by these procedures and what safeguards need to be established so that governments do not take advantage.

Special request

My regular commenter and, er, poetry lover, DM, asked that following my last post I reproduce this famous wartime 'poem' which is, I think, an RAF lament given that their airfields tended to be somewhat isolated.  You cannot get much more isolated than the Orkneys!

 BLOODY ORKNEY by, possibly, 'Aircraftsman Plonk', circa 1941'

This bloody town's a bloody cuss
No bloody trains, no bloody bus,
And no one cares for bloody us
In bloody Orkney.

The bloody roads are bloody bad,
The bloody folks are bloody mad,
They'd make the brightest bloody sad,
In bloody Orkney.

All bloody clouds, and bloody rains,
No bloody kerbs, no bloody drains,
The Council's got no bloody brains,
In bloody Orkney.

Everything's so bloody dear,
A bloody bob, for bloody beer,
And is it good? - no bloody fear,
In bloody Orkney.

The bloody 'flicks' are bloody old,
The bloody seats are bloody cold,
You can't get in for bloody gold
In bloody Orkney.

In its way, a masterpiece!

A wicked parody

And you can take the word "wicked" in my title either in its traditional meaning of extreme naughtiness or in the contemporary sense, as used by our 'youfs' and 'youfettes', as being really rather admirable.  It will depend on your view of the parody itself.  However, first of all let me give you the object of parody.  This is the famous, and rightly so, poem by Henry Reed written in memory of basic weapon training in the army during WWII.  You have to imagine (or in my case, remember, because nothing much had changed in the 15 or so years when I had to sit through this) a warm Spring afternoon with recruits half listening to a weapons training NCO repeating the same lines he has delivered a thousand times before.  As a poem it stands on its own merits and seems to have remained a favourite even with many people who never experienced that particular situation.  I find it tremendously evocative and moving:

NAMING OF PARTS by Henry Reed

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
          And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
          Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
          Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
          They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
          For to-day we have naming of parts. 

Well, that's the original poem and now here is the the 'wicked parody' which is sharp, deadly accurate and very, very witty.  My thanks to Bishop Hill for finding it on another blog, and even greater thanks to a commenter called 'Sleepalot' who wrote it:

SCARING THE PROLES by 'Sleepalot'

Today we have scaring the proles. Yesterday,
We had narrative writing. And tomorrow morning,
we will be taxing them into the dirt. But today,
Today we have scaring the proles. CO2 bubbles
harmlessly through coral reefs east of Papua New Guinea,
And today we have scaring the proles.

This is the adjusted temperature data. And this
Is the residual anomaly, whose use you will see,
when you are given your graphs. And this is the raw temperature data,
Which in your case you have not got. The trees
stand unflinching, steadfast against all adversity,
Which in our case we have not got.

Now this is the graph, and you hold it like so,
And you cover this end with your thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone grinning. You can keep a straight face,
if you have enough faith in the Cause. The daisies
shadow the lawn with their leaves, never letting anyone see
Any one of them grinning.

And this you can see is our model result. The pupose of this
is to extend our reach. As you see, We can change these
parameters just as much as we please: we call this
building consensus. And rapidly backwards and forwards,
the advocates are alarming and corrupting MPs:
They call it building consensus.

They call it building consensus: it's easy enough
if you can keep a straight face: like the trend,
and the scale, and the narrative, and the tipping point,
which in our case we have not got; and the skeptics
excluded from every arena, and the advocates going backwards and forwards,
For today we have scaring the proles.

How about that as the very best joke to read on April 1st?!