Interesting Links for 18-08-2014

[andrewducker]

• It doesn't matter if a drug works - if it's not patented then it's not going to reach the USA
  (tags: Russia intellectual_property drugs USA )
• The first scientist in over 40 years to test LSD on humans
  (tags: lsd research psychedelics )
• Wombling Free - (On leaving your surroundings in a better state than when you found them)
  (tags: society people )

Comments

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I really liked it. I want a partner that supports me positively, not one who wears me down.

Reminds me of something I remember Scott Adams said about speaker training. The person that trained him in how to carry out public speaking _never_ gave negative feedback, they only ever praised the bits that were good.

And oddly, by the end of a two-week course he was extremely confident, and was using only those bits that had been repeatedly praised :->

[philmophlegm]

That's an interesting approach - but - how many presenting skills courses last two weeks? I'm lucky if I get two hours to run a presenting skills course. If you've got plenty of time on a course, and a good teacher-to-pupil ratio, you can do things like show participants videos of themselves speaking. When you do that, they tend to identify their weaknesses anyway

[andrewducker]

That sounds absolutely fascinating, and very-much worthwhile.

Oh, and focussed entirely, I'd note, on finding the positive and accentuating it!

[steer]

No p-value on the p-value paper?

Heh.... I think it's a result of the p-value of 0.05 being nailed in as a magic number in some disciplines... (that comes from a somewhat off-hand remark from IIRC Ronald Fisher that has since become sanctified). Some disciplines just regard that 0.05 as holy. That shocked me because if you're taught it as I was (as part of a stats course in a maths and stats dept) it's not even mentioned. You're shown how to derive it, what it's for, what it means and how to calculate it. The existence of a magic value of 0.05 in some disciplines was a real shock to me when I encountered it. When someone first told me "oh but it has to be below 0.05" I thought "what on earth are you talking about?" I assumed they were badly misinformed, but no, that was what they were taught if they learned stats in that field. Peculiar. (Of course this is just one data point, could be all other maths/stats depts also teach the 0.05 and mine was just a little more theoretical).

[andrewducker]

Yeah, the problem, I think, is in the difference between "People being taught statistics" and "People being taught statistics they can use to test their research"

The former understand what it is, and can use it in a variety of ways. The latter know which buttons to press in SPSS to get a number spat out that tells them if they were significant or not.

[steer]

Indeed -- statistics is hard. Most of the time someone asks me a question and my answer is that I'll have to consult a text book. The part about SPSS could have been me speaking. :-)

[I mean fair play, it's few people's main concern, they take up their time doing immensely complex data gathering activities in whatever science they use -- their main concern is to know enough to publish.]

[alitheapipkin]

Oh yes. I did the same stats module as the maths students when I was an undergrad by choice and spent a good chunk of my PhD falling out with my supervisors over the choice of appropriate stats. My professor pulled rank to make me do them in a way that I thought was meaningless, my external examiner agreed with me but then made me redo them with a much fancier method that *also* assumed a linear response that we never expected to get anyway...

[rhythmaning]

The City of London Corporation is a very strange beast. Largely unaccountable (arising, I think, from an ancient king granting rights in exchange for interest payments).

Googling provides a variety of criticism.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-medieval

http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/CityOfLondonCorporation

This might be particularly helpful: http://cityreform.org.uk/learn-more/what-is-the-city-of-london-corporation/

[andrewducker]

Thanks!

[matgb]

arising, I think, from an ancient king granting rights in exchange for interest payments

Not just the one ancient King, pretty much all of them. All but two clauses of Magna Carta have been repealed or replaced. The two that haven't are "trial by Jury" and "London is SPESHUL and we won't interfere".

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw1cc1929/25/9/section/IX

The article is actually a pretty good summary (unlike a lot of the media froth surrounding it-Monbiot's conspiracy bollocks picked up by Avaaz about the Remembrancer is a particular lowpoint in media coverage of it).

Basically, The City has never really been part of England-the-legal-jurisdiction (bit like, arguably, Cornwall was never officially added), and there are some very (very) weird traditions, the electoral system has always been bonkers, and for a bit there were almost no residents.

Um, yeah, it appears "Mat's brain" is a good resource on this one.

[steer]

More than two clauses -- if you follow your clicky through and walk back and forth your find them.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw1cc1929/25/9/contents
(I think four or five but some are a bit kind of "waffle").

[asher63]

Headline: "Neo-Nazis Condemn Anti-Semitism."

Alternate headline: "Somebody posts a weird website on the Internet."

[naath]

Those dragons are just so cute.