WSJ: "Bad Theories Happen to Good Scientists?”

Chicago AM Sunday 5 August 2012

Editors, The Wall Street Journal

Gentlepeople:

The Wall Street Journal's Matt Ridley, in an article “When Bad Theories 

Happen to Good Scientists” [3 parts, July 21 and 28, August 4] describes 

“confirming bias”, a psychological phenomenon where the traditional 

approach to a new hypothesis (try to destroy it ) appears in the case of 

climate change, to be “like defense attorneys building a case, collect 

confirming evidence.”  He adds that “much published research on the 

impact of climate change consists of confirmation bias by if-then 

modeling,”

Could the confirming bias sufferers by cured by a simple mathematical 

model?  Project the 4.5 billion year age of the planet on to an 80-year 

human lifetime. Such a model shows one year of earth time equivalent 

to 0.562 seconds of an 80-year human life span. This means humans 

first appeared in our model earth 39 days ago. They had no idea of 

measuring temperature before Galileo's 1593 thermometer invention, 

4 minutes ago to our senior citizen. Discovery of carbon dioxide in 

1630? 3 minutes 30 seconds ago. 

If a doctor took a senior citizen's blood pressure and got 120 over 80, 

took a second reading 5 minutes later and got 124 over 78, would she 

call an ambulance?

Arnold H Nelson  ah_nelson@yahoo.com