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Podcast for 9 March 2015

Started by MrBogosity, March 08, 2015, 06:26:14 PM

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March 08, 2015, 06:26:14 PM
[mp3]http://podcast.bogosity.tv/mp3s/BogosityPodcast-2015-03-09.mp3[/mp3]


Co-Host: Jonathan Loesche

News of the Bogus:
28:36 - Biggest Bogon Emitter: Judge Liam O'Grady https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150227/18171630168/us-court-rules-that-kim-dotcom-is-fugitive-thus-doj-can-take-his-money.shtml

35:04 - Idiot Extraordinaire: PayPal http://torrentfreak.com/under-u-s-pressure-paypal-nukes-mega-for-encrypting-files-150227/

This Week's Quote: "It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state." —Bruce Schneier
March 09, 2015, 09:05:08 AM #1
Even well established fields like forensic pathology can be just as bad.  Here in Ontario, we had this guy called Charles Randal Smith, who acted as a forensic pathologist for 22 years, including being the head of pediatric forensic pathology at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (one of Ontario's most prominent hospitals) for the later half of that.

The more notable of his known errors are quite astonishing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Randal_Smith

He was particularly prone to misidentifying the cause of injuries (in one case mistaking dog bite wounds for scissor stab wounds), detecting injuries that didn't exist (mistaking a normal anatomical feature of an infant's skull for a fracture in one case, and a normal postmortem change in one child's body for an indication of sexual assault in another case), and apparently misplacing things or being very late (apparently misplacing tissue samples for eleven years in one case where they turned out to exonerate the person he helped convict, and in another being so late with his initial report that the case was halted permanently).

When 44 of the 220 autopsies he conducted were reviewed in 2007, 20 were found to have serious errors, 13 of which were involved with criminal convictions.

His work was so bad that a civil court decided that Crown Immunity (what is called Sovereign Immunity in some countries) applied to testimony, but not to faulty work behind that testimony.

Basically, this guy was completely incompetent to be performing pediatric autopsies, and not only did them for over twenty years, he was IN CHARGE OF AN ENTIRE PROGRAM on the matter at a major hospital for more than ten years.

There was a Judicial Inquiry about it (this is a little like a Coroner's Inquiry in the US, but doesn't require a jury, is conducted by a judge, usually recently retired, instead of a coroner, and can be convened to investigate anything that public demand or interest requires a major investigation of that the politicians don't want to touch themselves, rather than a suspicious death), and the findings included that there was no proper standards in place for qualifications, training, or oversight of pediatric forensic pathologists in Ontario.
March 09, 2015, 10:10:53 AM #2
It's a horrific story, but it's distinct from what we're talking about: he was incompetent and did the science wrong. With things like bite mark matching, there's NO WAY to do the science right! Because it's pseudoscience, with nothing at all to back it up.
March 12, 2015, 10:20:15 AM #3
About Bill Nye, if I can talk about something unrelated to the topic of the episode : the video provided shows him talking about the validity of the concept of race.
His argument demonstrates nothing related to the concept of race. He seems to conflate race and species, but they are not supposed to be equivalent.
Also, for a guy like him, deliberatly ignoring that what the concept of race would refer to is simply the result of the processes of evolution, the same processes that generated, with time, every single taxon designed to describe the living, applied at the species level, looks quite dishonest.

The relative isolation of groups within the species taxon giving rise to traits that are not shared by other groups within the species but are always passed on to the descendants of individuals of that particular groups is something that is well documented and has proved to be relevant in every other species studied. Hell, sometimes, the difference is only statistical and it still counts. Those populations, named in various ways, because there is no official taxon under the species level, as sub-species, race etc, in other species, are considered to be relevant for these species. Those populations still reproduce perfectly well within the species. There are examples everywhere in the living and humans aren't an exception ...

Those processes have to continue, even after a speciation event, otherwise no new species would come to be, it's just a logical conclusion so why ignoring it ? I probably should not make assumptions, but that and the anti-GMO stance looks like a case of chronic liberalism to me ... (Apparently it's in remission, but still ... :))



On another note, about justice systems. I often find myself conflicted when I hear about cases, any kind of case really, because I find that people are convicted by reasoning that completely defies logic. Well, at least, it seems to happen too much. I'm under the impression that reasonable doubt doesn't mean the same thing to me that it does to a professional of the justice system. It would look like base assumptions of epistemology are not considered in courts and that people often resort to statistical reasonings (sometimes imagined).
Statistical as in, yes it could have happened that way, but since there are more chances that it would not, we decide that the defendant is guilty. As if justice systems pretend to do predictions about a system, when they are only trying to validate an isolated observation.
I'm not completely sure of what happens because I have no experience as a professional in the field or as a jury, but since this episode touches it, and we also had the video from Rebecca watson in another thread, seems to be relevant. Are you guys satisfied with how it works, in a broad sense ? I think I'm not ...



March 12, 2015, 12:09:16 PM #4
Quote from: AdeptusHereticus on March 12, 2015, 10:20:15 AM
About Bill Nye, if I can talk about something unrelated to the topic of the episode : the video provided shows him talking about the validity of the concept of race.
His argument demonstrates nothing related to the concept of race. He seems to conflate race and species, but they are not supposed to be equivalent.

Actually, they are. It's the people who divided humanity into "races" who are misusing the term.
March 12, 2015, 12:39:55 PM #5
Quote from: MrBogosity on March 12, 2015, 12:09:16 PM
Actually, they are. It's the people who divided humanity into "races" who are misusing the term.

Are you refering to the way Darwin used it in his litterature ?
March 12, 2015, 01:34:41 PM #6
Quote from: AdeptusHereticus on March 12, 2015, 12:39:55 PM
Are you refering to the way Darwin used it in his litterature ?

Yes, and pretty much the way it had always been used before. Of course, by the traditional definition, Darwin's discovery would have put all life in the same race!
March 12, 2015, 03:48:34 PM #7
Quote from: MrBogosity on March 12, 2015, 01:34:41 PM
Yes, and pretty much the way it had always been used before. Of course, by the traditional definition, Darwin's discovery would have put all life in the same race!

Well, it means "group of common descent" but the descent in question will clearly depend on the context, and the use of the word was never restricted in that way.  Because of that, there is no reason not to use race for population under the species level. I would grant you that in a scientific field, the word would quickly become of lesser usefulness but that would not take away the validity of applying the concept in that context.

And anyway, if Nye thinks that race is equivalent to species in the question he is answering, that means he is not paying attention ... If he does, then his answer should be different.
March 12, 2015, 04:32:00 PM #8
Quote from: AdeptusHereticus on March 12, 2015, 03:48:34 PM
Well, it means "group of common descent" but the descent in question will clearly depend on the context, and the use of the word was never restricted in that way.  Because of that, there is no reason not to use race for population under the species level. I would grant you that in a scientific field, the word would quickly become of lesser usefulness but that would not take away the validity of applying the concept in that context.

And anyway, if Nye thinks that race is equivalent to species in the question he is answering, that means he is not paying attention ... If he does, then his answer should be different.

Keep in mind that the word comes from the idea as expressed in the Bible (though by no means originating from there) that animals reproduce after their own "kinds." That was the concept of race. And I'm unaware of anyone during that time who thought that man had multiple origins.
March 13, 2015, 03:06:43 AM #9
The word also had a broader use. You seem to imply that it did not, but it was applied to families, nations etc, which would make his use more suited to express lineage in a broad sense rather than the mere origin of the lineage.

It still fits, because the old ideas you mention were not mutually exclusive with the concept I'm describing.
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