Peter Coles (who is himself gay) looked at the story Gay men and heterosexual women have similarly shaped brains, research shows, going back to the actual research paper.
In Cerebral Asymmetry: is it all in the Mind? he argues that the statistics behind the conclusion are suspect:
Faking waves, by way of AstroKatie
Conclusion:
So what is the reality? Homicide and suicide rates have declined in Australia since the 1990s. Deaths results from firearms have plunged even more dramatically. In Australia, mass shootings similar to Port Arthur,
Hoddle Street and Strathfield have not occurred for over a decade.Is this the result of the gun laws introduced by the Howard government? While some (particularly gun advocates) dispute their impact, several studies conclude the laws have made a difference .
Claims that Australian gun laws have increased crime are pure spin and deception. They say more about American partisan politics than about the reality in Australia.
Earth Just Tied for Its Warmest April on Record, NOAA Says
Earth Has Its Warmest May on Record Globally, Spring Could Be Warmest
May 2014 Was the Hottest May in Recorded History
Those stories about a slowdown or “pause” in global warming? Just statistical noise, or a #FauxPause.
Links to Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes have been circulating around the Web. However, see:
Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated by Half
A new study by British and Canadian researchers shows that the global temperature rise of the past 15 years has been greatly underestimated. The reason is the data gaps in the weather station network, especially in the Arctic. If you fill these data gaps using satellite measurements, the warming trend is more than doubled in the widely used HadCRUT4 data, and the much-discussed “warming pause” has virtually disappeared.
Well no, actually, it didn’t. But once a myth lurches into life, there’s no stopping it
…the epidemiologist Mark Nelson from the University of Tasmania, Australia, designed a formal trial of the curse based on protocols for testing the effects of drugs. He compared people who were in the tomb at key times with people who were in Egypt but not in the tomb. His report, published in the British Medical Journal in 2002, concluded that being in the tomb did not significantly hasten death. The ‘participants’ in the study lived on average for more than 20 years after the tomb was opened, whether they visited it or not.
…the mummy’s curse as we know it is a product of 19th-century England. Dominic Montserrat, an Egyptologist from the Open University, traced the first mention to a science-fiction book called The Mummy! (1827) by the little-known novelist Jane Webb Loudon, who was inspired after attending a public unwrapping of a mummy near Piccadilly Circus in London. Loudon set her story in the 22nd century and featured an embalmed corpse who threatened to strangle the book’s hero, a young scholar called Edric.
Following up on Yesterday’s post.
Arctic sea ice delusions strike the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph. The The Guardian takes down its UK competition, with a sub-head that neatly summarizes the issue:
Both UK periodicals focus on short-term noise and ignore the rapid long-term Arctic sea ice death spiral
David Rose and his tabloid “reporting” of Arctic sea ice and other nonsense looks at the story and includes a graphic showing the change in the Arctic over 33 years:
From Bayes: How one equation changed the way I think
Bayes’ Rule is a simple formula that tells you how to weigh evidence and change your beliefs. I don’t go around plugging numbers into a formula all the time, but nevertheless, becoming familiar with Bayes has shifted the way I think in some important ways.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 