Freedom of Science

People living in glass houses should not throw stones.

Doctor of Physics Sean Carroll recently threw some stones at economists. According to Doctor Carroll economists cheat their data and they cannot be trusted.

This is incredible arrogance. Physicists make their living by doctoring data.

Let’s compare the graphics.

This is the original item.

Doctor Carroll intentionally misrepresents this graph as a fit to data in order to continue the physics mythology that physics is a precise science and Doctors of physics fit their data honestly.

In the comments section AJ wrote that

this line is not being fit to the data. It is merely a curve which indicates ‘good’ ratios are below the curve and ‘bad’ ratios are outside the curve.

Now let’s look at Doctor Carroll’s curve.

As Ian Clarke commented

Regardless of where the points actually lay, if you insist on drawing a line, and you require that the line goes through 0,0 - then it is inevitable that the line will indicate a positive correlation between corporate tax rate and government revenue.

The curve fitting you criticize is indeed flawed and manipulative, but so is your line-fitting, because by insisting on a line, you make a positive correlation inevitable regardless of the actual data.

But let’s not quibble about minor statistical details.

Let’s look at this fitted line:

There is something missing. Where are the data points? In order to save their religious doctrine of Big Bang physicists fit a line to no data.

Which is the greater fraud? Fitting a line to non-existing data is the biggest fraud. 

“Fitting a line” to non-existing data is called a definition. Take a blank page draw a line on it and then fill in the axes. Throw the dart first and circle the bullseye around it.

But there is data.

Physicists observed the galaxies for 50 years and extrapolated to 6 billion years. That’s like as if you observed the weather in Central Park for 0.0000000001 second and then wrote the entire past and future weather report of the entire globe. The only difference is that weatherman’s report will be found to be wrong when compared to the actual weather. Scholastic doctors of physics do not need to fear any punishment for their criminal extrapolation because no contradicting evidence can exist.

People who extrapolate 50 years of observations to 6,000,000,000 years should not throw curve fitting stones to economists. Physicists are the real crooks here, not the economists.

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