Research and Scholarship

Observations On The Revived Claim That Google “Steered 6 Million Votes” to Biden in 2020

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Ben Bartley reports on PJ Media: “Robert Epstein….director of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT), has concluded through a quantitative analysis of Google search engine manipulation and subsequent extrapolation to the population level that the company… added six million votes to Joe Biden’s column in 2020. If accurate, this was more than enough to have artificially swayed the election….The value of Epstein’s work is that it confirms what is immediately obvious to anyone paying attention who searches a contentious term in Google and then searches for the exact same term in a non-compromised search engine like DuckDuckGo.”

Observations:

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A Climate Scientist Explains How Science, Academia And The Media Collude To Mislead The Public

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The “climate scientist” in question is really a climate scientist: his name is Patrick T. Brown, and he is the co-director of Climate and Energy at The Breakthrough Institute. His article in the Free Press yesterday is essentially whistle-blowing on his own colleagues, and not only earns him an Ethics Hero designation, but also contains the Ethics Quote of the Month, which is both ethical in that he has the integrity and courage to make it, and a vivid description of unethical conduct that affects us all.

Here’s that quote:

“The paper I just published—“Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California”—focuses exclusively on how climate change has affected extreme wildfire behavior. I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.

“This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.

“To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.”

This is hardly shocking news, but it is shocking to have one of the scientists—Trust the science! Science is Real!-–who participates in fearmongering climate change propaganda as a means of controlling public policy stating outright what any objective and analytical observer should be able to figure out. Such objective and analytical observers are condemned and mocked routinely as “climate change deniers” and “conspiracy theorists.” His article shows that another description is warranted: right.

Read it all, even though it is likely to make you angry, and to want to shake the piece in the faces of your smug and ignorant climate change fanatic friends and relatives who keep citing “scientific consensus” as justification for expensive and futile efforts to avoid “Climate Armageddon.”

Other infuriating points:

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Unethical Website Of The Month: American College of Forensic Examiners Institute

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

This post is juuust a little bit late. The website in question is still up, but has been involved in “website maintenance” for years, though promising to be back in “a few days.” It won’t be: GOOD. However, it is instructive to consider the saga of this epically unethical website in light of the recent revelation that the most famous forensic expert of them all, Dr. Henry Lee, used fake forensic evidence to help send two teenagers to prison for 30 years for a crime they didn’t commit. It is also useful perspective for the current fealty the political Left and the mainstream media wants Americans to pledge to “experts” who will explain why progressive policy cant just “follows the science.”

When it isn’t performing its tax-payer funded role as a progressive propaganda mouthpiece, PBS is still capable of doing valuable investigative journalism. In 2012, a notable example was the Frontline series called “The Real C.S.I.,” blowing the whistle on the forensic science racket then being extolled weekly on network TV as all-but-infallible. There were a lot of head-exploders in the series, among them that fingerprints might not be as unique as we have assumed, but one of the main discoveries in the series was that criminal trials all over the country were being influenced by “graduates” of the American College of Forensic Examiners Institute (ACFEI), an on-line diploma mill founded and operated by a shady entrepreneur named Robert O’Block. ACFEI would certify someone as a forensics expert essentially for cash, though there was an “exam” that had a more than 99% pass rate. PBS interviewed a reporter who took the exam and got her certification despite knowing little more about forensic science than the average “C.S.I Miami” fan. O’Block, meanwhile, had turned fake credentialing into an empire, with 14 separate certification scams. These in turn churned out an estimated 70,000 fake forensic experts who were routinely admitted as legitimate testifying expert witnesses by judges who accepted O’Block’s meaningless certificates as sufficient proof of expertise.

O’Block also sent one certification to a prison inmate and bestowed another on his cat. ACFEI was never recognized by the US Department of Education’s Distance Education/learning Department, or the Federal Trade Commission/FTC, but most of the time neither judges nor defense attorneys took the time to check.

In 2017, O’Block, then 66, fatally shot himself after killing his 27-year-old girlfriend. On the disciples of this pillar of rectitude and ethics did a substantial segment of the American criminal justice system and its juries place their trust as they sent accused American to prison.

Investigative reporter Radley Balko wrote in part upon the occasion of O’Block’s demise,

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: The State of Certainty And Reliability of Climate Change Forecasts And Analysis

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Since some EA commenters have chosen to send their credibility to die on the metaphorical hill of Rep. Omar’s ridiculous climate change tweet of last week, I felt this paired set of reports made an important point. Amazingly, so far at least, these irreconcilable contradictions—and this is far from the only one in the climate change “settled science” debate—- don’t seem to shake the faith of climate change fanatics even a little bit.

Which itself is useful information….

Apparently “Bite Me!” In Response To Woke Pseudo-Social Science Research Is Facism

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

Frequent commenter Other Bill gets credit for the headline as well as the pointer to a telling, if ridiculous, story.

Oregon State University researchers had circulated a survey regarding LGBTQ students in STEM to engineering undergrads. As described in the scholars’ paper, published in the Summer 2023 edition of the “Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies,” many of the students surveyed resented the questions about their gender as well as the premise of the research, and demonstrated their disapproval by entering gag and satirical responses to request for their gender and ethnicity.

Among the answers:

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It’s Unethical For Democrats, the News Media And Activists to Gaslight The Public, But On The SCOTUS Affirmative Action Smack-Down, They Did It Anyway

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The coverage of the recent rulings in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard almost universally created the impression that they were further attacks on democracy by a rogue Supreme Court, foiling the will of the people. In particular, these decisions blocking institutionalized institutional racist discrimination, which is what higher education affirmative action is, were assailed as creating disastrous hurdles to black Americans as they strive to succeed in this nation plagued by systemic racism.

Two recent polls show that this narrative was fake news from the news media and misinformation from the Left. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey found that 65% of “Likely U.S. Voters” approve of the rulings, with 49% approving “strongly”. Just 28% disapprove of the conclusion that the prohibition on discriminating by race means no discrimination by race. You can read how the questions were posed here. Another poll from YouGov/The Economist asked “Do you approve or disapprove of Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action?” Both sexes, all races, every age group, and every level of income approved more than not. (See here.)

Yeah, I know: polls. In this case, however, these easily manipulated surveys perform a service. The Supreme Court’s function does not and should not involve following the mob, but appealing to mob emotions has been a central strategy by progressives as they seek to de-legitimize the one branch of the government they don’t control. An accompanying myth is that the Roberts Court is an obstacle to “the will of the people,” even when, as in this case, the will of the people is supported by the Constitution and our laws.

Even after a concerted and ongoing effort to inflict Marxist goals, racial quotas and “good” discrimination on the culture, our core values have stood up to the propaganda siege—so far.

There is hope.

“Nah, Colleges Don’t Indoctrinate Students! It’s A Conspiracy Theory!” Brown Replies, “Hold My Beer!”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The Washington Examiner reports that 40% of Brown students now identify as LGTBQ+. The Brown Daily Herald’s 2023 Spring survey revealed that 38% of students, more than five times the national rate, no longer consider themselves “cis.” The gay and lesbian population has increased by 26% and the percentage of students identifying as bisexual has increased by…wait for it!… 232%. Just eleven years ago, in 2010, only 4% of Brown University students said they were not conventionally heterosexual. Now it’s 38%.

Commenting on this phenomenon at the Victory Girls blog, Lisa Carr writes in part,

The new “cool kids” now are changing their names every other day, along with changing their identities to anything contrary to their biological sex. Joe becomes Joelene who is dating Mary who wants to be known as “Mike”. Mary is nominated for Homecoming King while Joe is the Homecoming Queen; both in their gender-fluid and ambiguous outfits. And yes, they are probably still wearing those filthy, ugly masks because society told them to stay scared. (But alas, don’t be scared to cut off your genitalia.) This is the new cult. This is the trend we are seeing in colleges but I would argue that this seed is being planted as early as elementary school….This is no longer about loving and accepting all. This is about subtle conversion by suggestion.

Apparently a Brown professor, Dr. Lisa Littman, argued that campus culture and peer groups were pressuring students into such epiphanies regarding their true sexual identities, and got herself fired for it. Continue reading →

Falsely Describing Bad Research To Advocate Irresponsible Policies Is No Way To Serve On The Supreme Court, Justice Jackson…[Corrected And Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

UPDATE: A critical Ethics Alarms reader informed me that in his view the text of this post was too similar to that of its main source, The Daily Signal, in an article by Jay Greene. Although I linked to the piece and also credited Greene with a quote, upon reviewing the post I agree that it included too many substantially similar sentences and phrasings. I apologize to the Daily Signal, Jay, and Ethics Alarms readers. I was using several articles in preparing the piece (including one from another source that was also extremely close to the Signal article), and for whatever reason, did not notice that I had leaned so heavily on Green’s phrasing. It has happened before over the past 13 years, though not often, and never with the intention to deceive. Thus I have revised the post; in the future, if anyone feels that an Ethics Alarms article does not properly credit sources or seems insufficiently original, the favored response is to alert me, rather than to accuse me in obnoxious terms of “plagiarism.”

Fans of affirmative action reacted to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s depressing defense of racial discrimination by praising her remarkably hypocritical dissent in the recent 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court declaring Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s admission policies unconstitutional. Those who believe that Justices should base their analyses on law rather than group loyalties were appropriately critical. Both, however missed some really ugly trees for the metaphorical forest, as Jackson injected false statistics into her dissent. They were, of course—we’re used to this phenomenon—uncritically accepted and used in subsequent media propaganda condemning the decision.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in part,

“Beyond campus, the diversity that UNC pursues for the betterment of its students and society is not a trendy slogan. It saves lives. For marginalized communities in North Carolina, it is critically important that UNC and other area institutions produce highly educated professionals of color. Research shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly (including, for example, prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication). For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”

Wow! Racial discrimination saves lives! The problem, or rather problems, are that as Jay Greene of the Daily Signal points out, 1) the claim that survival rates for black newborns double when they have black physicians attending is based on a misleading analysis 2) Even if the results of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study were as Justice Jackson claimed, they are unbelievable and 3) even if Jackson had described the results of the study accurately, and even if those results were credible, they still wouldn’t justify the use of racial preferences in medical school admissions.

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An “It Isn’t What It Is” Spectacular From CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This is disgraceful; what would be a better word? CNN’s assertion is deceitful and designed to mislead and misinform—but as I’m sure Brian Stelter would say if he still worked there, it’s responsible journalism because this is good deception. Or not deception at all. Who knows what Stelter would say; he’s an idiot: why am I even dragging him into this discussion?

Black fathers are often portrayed as absent because they are absent too often, and to a destructive degree that is a major factor in undermining success in the black community. The statistics on the problem vary widely because of different measuring methods; one states that 64% of black children are living without their fathers in the same household (the figure for white kids is 24%). Here’s another assessment from the Justice Department:

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OH NOOOO! Gallup Says Facism Is On The Rise In The US!!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Well, that may be a bit over-stated, though not in the parlance of the Democratic Party and its propaganda agents in the news media. What Gallup really found, in its annual survey of U.S. values and beliefs, is that social conservatism is on the rise, and has reached its highest level in a decade, since 2012. Gee…what…a…surprise…

Gallup, being, as much as it tries to fight it, also infected with partisan bias, doubletalks its explanation for charts like these:

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