The technical articles I take more or less at face value. Theoretical physics–in the gray backet.

Green crud–I post that here to expose you all to what is still out there so as to rally you. Trump won’t always be President.

Jeff Wright: This article at phys.org is utter garbage and an outright lie. It claims the climate gate emails included “no wrongdoing and that the East Anglia scientists were engaging in normal scientific practices.” This is wrong. I’ve reviewed the entire set of climate gate emails and they demonstrated unequivocally that these climate scientists were involved in a conspiracy to silence and destroy anyone who questioned their results.

This writer is of the same ilk of those who claimed the Hunter laptop was fake, or those who claimed the Russians colluded with Trump. He makes claims without evidence or in defiance of evidence in order to slander those who disagree with him.

Why are you providing his work a bullhorn?

“Numerous inquiries found that there was no wrongdoing and that the East Anglia scientists were engaging in normal scientific practices. But the publication of data and correspondence without adequate context led some to see a conspiracy.”

But your stock buying–that we will watch
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-stock-ai.html

In almost every field of science. A few years ago on the radio, one station’s morning rush-hour news crew reported that a study about sex meant that having lots and lots of sex was good for us. That same morning they got an interview with one of the authors, and he said that this was not at all what their report meant. That same station was starting to suggest the same assumed result during the lunchtime news-hour, then the evening rush-hour news crew was again full on reporting that lots and lots of sex was good for us. The noon news crew may have heard the morning news or maybe talked to the morning crew, but the afternoon crew clearly was starting from scratch, making up their own conclusions.

“In fact, words like “may”, “might,” or “could” in headlines are always a give-away. They tell you that the story is not about an actual discovery, but a speculation that remains unproven.”

The scientific reports themselves can be misleading or outright biased. Terms like “linked to” or “associated with” can mean that a paper used some sort of proxy that was measured in order to drawing conclusions about some factor that is difficult to measure or didn’t give desired results when it was measured. (Homework assignment: are these two terms used like that in the paper Robert linked to?) The uncertainty of science, as Robert says whenever he uses that phrase, is that a paper may be over certain about its results and conclusion, but more than that, it may not be good science, either.

Here is a scientist-statistician who sees that science is broken:
https://www.maciverinstitute.com/perspectives/william-briggs-why-science-is-broken

So, what happens when the study/experiment/report is flawed and then the news reports their own conclusion outside of what the authors had said? Now we get two levels of ambiguity in addition to our own misinterpretation of what the news report said.

We live in a world in which predicting the future is of vital importance. “If I go there, I will find food and get to live another day.” “If I manufacture a million cars, I can sell almost all of them for enough profit so my company survives another year.” Science helps us to understand the universe around us so that we can make more accurate predictions, and we can make strong buildings and create cities secure enough that very few predators (e.g. lions, tigers, or bears) enter and eat us, our young, or our pets.

But if science is broken, will our future airplanes be safe? Will we spend too many resources on the wrong things and end up, as a species, as mountain lion food? Will our doctors hand out good advice or will they turn a minor new flu into an economic and social disaster, resulting in millions more deaths than would have occurred if we did all the usual procedures for mitigating the flu — and can we ever trust our doctors, scientists, and vaccines ever again?

It is of vital importance that our science be trustworthy. It is important that we understand we cannot follow “the” science, because it does not lead, only informs. Science must not be confused for morality, ethics, or ideals. Science does not know good from bad, right from wrong, or virtue from evil. But we must get reliable information from science — and the news — so that we can make those determinations ourselves.

“‘That’s our fault,’ Harvey admitted. “We interview one guy who says Kahoutek is going to be the Big Christmas Comet. We interview another guy who says, well, it’s a comet, but you won’t see much without a good set of field glasses or a telescope. Guess which one we quoted on the six o’clock news?'”

Point being that the press has to make it sexy to get ratings, so that they can get sponsors. (And public media is as bad in its own way – for sponsorships, “advertisers” and “donors” are functionally identical.) That’s inevitably going to have an impact on content, even without a sponsor trying to influence the story – the reporter, almost in the next breath, tartly rebuts a criticism of one of his stories by pointing out that the sponsor of that piece exercised creative control….

They also just make stuff up.

My favorite was from the USMC- about how “Popeye was a sissy too.”