Details, details
"In the end, nature is the checker."
Pier Oddone
In a book entitled Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal 1955-1992, edited by H. Bradford Westerfield, there is an article by Richards J Heuer Jr entitled "Do You Really Need More Information?"
In the article, written in 1979, the author challenges the assumption that a lack of information is the principal obstacle to accurate intelligence conclusions and sees the problem as being one of analysis and interpretation.
"Information that is consistent with our existing mindset is perceived and processed easily," Heuer writes. "However, since our mind strives instinctively for consistency, information that is inconsistent with our existing mental image tends to be overlooked, perceived in a distorted manner, or rationalized to fit existing assumptions and beliefs."
In other words, there is so much information around that we select those bits that support our prejudices and downplay or dismiss the ones that run counter to our prejudices.
Thus in order to achieve an element of objectivity the analyst should closely examine his/her fundamental assumptions. "The analyst should then try to disprove, rather than prove, each of the alternatives," writes Heuer. "He or she should try to rebut rather than confirm hypotheses.
"One key to identifying the kinds of information that are potentially most valuable is for the analyst to ask himself what it is that could make him change his mind. Adoption of this simple tactic would do much to avoid intelligence surprises."
I would assume that all first-year students of journalism or science are still initiated in the need for "objectivity". I would also assume that they are taught about the great Russian agronomist T.D. Lysenko (1898-1976) who became the scientific and administrative leader of Soviet agriculture, and of Sir Cyril Burt (1883-1971), professor of psychology at University College London, upon whose work the whole educational system of the UK became based. Both maintained long careers of false data and distorted science in order to support the prejudices of their masters. But this happened in the last century and one would assume that we've learned from the past...
Flake #1
In 1999 researchers at the Dubna Laboratory of Heavy Ion Nuclear Reactions in Russia, headed by Yuri Oganessian, claimed to have created an element with 114 protons, the heaviest ever. Not to be outdone, a team of government and university scientists at Berkeley, California headed by Victor Ninov claimed to have made three atoms of 118, which quickly decayed into 116 and 114. Their method was encouraged by the calculations of Robert Smolanczuk, a Fulbright scholar from the Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies in Warsaw, who was working at the Berkeley lab at the time. Before Smolanczuk's calculations it was thought that the "cold fusion" technique would not be able to create elements above element 112.
Ken Gregorich, also of the Berkeley lab, expected researchers there or in Russia soon to fire krypton at bismuth to make element 119, and because 119 would decay into the yet-undiscovered 117, 115, and 113, science could gain four new elements in one fell swoop.
Bill Richardson, head of the U.S. Department of Energy which runs the Berkeley laboratory, used the discovery to highlight the importance of openness at U.S. national labs. "Scientific excellence does not recognize national boundaries," he said.
Flake #2
But by 2002, both discoveries had been withdrawn and Victor Ninov had been fired for falsifying the data that provided the base for the claims. "In the end, nature is the checker," said Pier Oddone, deputy director of the Berkeley lab, who handled the Ninov probe. "Experiments have to be reproducible."
Jan Hendrik Schön, of Lucent Technologies Bell Labs, was named the 2002 Materials Research Society (MRS) Outstanding Young Investigator in February of that year. Schön's great breakthrough was in nanotechnology, and he claimed to have made a computer transistor out of a single organic molecule. It was an achievement of almost incalculable brilliance, and would have been the beginning of a move away from silicon-based electronics and towards organic electronics. But by October 2002 he was in disgrace. An investigative panel found that he was guilty of "data substitution," "unrealistic precision" and "contradictory physics." Bell Labs fired Schön on the day they received the report. It was the first case of fraud in the lab's history.
Although Schön acknowledged that the data was incorrect and admitted to falsifying some data, he claimed that he did so to show more convincing evidence for the behavior that he had observed.
Wake up and smell the truth
In the realm of physical science, replication and verification of new truths takes a few years, and if they cannot be reproduced then they become falsehoods. In the realm of the political and social and in matters appertaining to man, it takes a little longer-a few generations.
A report released in October 2004 entitled Contaminated: the next generation, backed by the WWF (formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature), showed that children as young as nine have more manufactured chemicals in their blood than their grandparents and that these substances are suspected of disrupting development and hormones. Eighty manufactured chemicals were detected in blood tests for 104 substances on 33 people. Children were found to have 75 in their blood, as did their parents, but their grandmothers only had 56. Children had concentrations of chemicals banned and no longer in production from even before they were born.
If it takes generations for banned pollutants to dissipate, how long will it take for the historically high amounts of debt to be recognized and eradicated-or are we no longer subject to the natural laws of the market?
Pier Oddone
In a book entitled Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal 1955-1992, edited by H. Bradford Westerfield, there is an article by Richards J Heuer Jr entitled "Do You Really Need More Information?"
In the article, written in 1979, the author challenges the assumption that a lack of information is the principal obstacle to accurate intelligence conclusions and sees the problem as being one of analysis and interpretation.
"Information that is consistent with our existing mindset is perceived and processed easily," Heuer writes. "However, since our mind strives instinctively for consistency, information that is inconsistent with our existing mental image tends to be overlooked, perceived in a distorted manner, or rationalized to fit existing assumptions and beliefs."
In other words, there is so much information around that we select those bits that support our prejudices and downplay or dismiss the ones that run counter to our prejudices.
Thus in order to achieve an element of objectivity the analyst should closely examine his/her fundamental assumptions. "The analyst should then try to disprove, rather than prove, each of the alternatives," writes Heuer. "He or she should try to rebut rather than confirm hypotheses.
"One key to identifying the kinds of information that are potentially most valuable is for the analyst to ask himself what it is that could make him change his mind. Adoption of this simple tactic would do much to avoid intelligence surprises."
I would assume that all first-year students of journalism or science are still initiated in the need for "objectivity". I would also assume that they are taught about the great Russian agronomist T.D. Lysenko (1898-1976) who became the scientific and administrative leader of Soviet agriculture, and of Sir Cyril Burt (1883-1971), professor of psychology at University College London, upon whose work the whole educational system of the UK became based. Both maintained long careers of false data and distorted science in order to support the prejudices of their masters. But this happened in the last century and one would assume that we've learned from the past...
Flake #1
In 1999 researchers at the Dubna Laboratory of Heavy Ion Nuclear Reactions in Russia, headed by Yuri Oganessian, claimed to have created an element with 114 protons, the heaviest ever. Not to be outdone, a team of government and university scientists at Berkeley, California headed by Victor Ninov claimed to have made three atoms of 118, which quickly decayed into 116 and 114. Their method was encouraged by the calculations of Robert Smolanczuk, a Fulbright scholar from the Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies in Warsaw, who was working at the Berkeley lab at the time. Before Smolanczuk's calculations it was thought that the "cold fusion" technique would not be able to create elements above element 112.
Ken Gregorich, also of the Berkeley lab, expected researchers there or in Russia soon to fire krypton at bismuth to make element 119, and because 119 would decay into the yet-undiscovered 117, 115, and 113, science could gain four new elements in one fell swoop.
Bill Richardson, head of the U.S. Department of Energy which runs the Berkeley laboratory, used the discovery to highlight the importance of openness at U.S. national labs. "Scientific excellence does not recognize national boundaries," he said.
Flake #2
But by 2002, both discoveries had been withdrawn and Victor Ninov had been fired for falsifying the data that provided the base for the claims. "In the end, nature is the checker," said Pier Oddone, deputy director of the Berkeley lab, who handled the Ninov probe. "Experiments have to be reproducible."
Jan Hendrik Schön, of Lucent Technologies Bell Labs, was named the 2002 Materials Research Society (MRS) Outstanding Young Investigator in February of that year. Schön's great breakthrough was in nanotechnology, and he claimed to have made a computer transistor out of a single organic molecule. It was an achievement of almost incalculable brilliance, and would have been the beginning of a move away from silicon-based electronics and towards organic electronics. But by October 2002 he was in disgrace. An investigative panel found that he was guilty of "data substitution," "unrealistic precision" and "contradictory physics." Bell Labs fired Schön on the day they received the report. It was the first case of fraud in the lab's history.
Although Schön acknowledged that the data was incorrect and admitted to falsifying some data, he claimed that he did so to show more convincing evidence for the behavior that he had observed.
Wake up and smell the truth
In the realm of physical science, replication and verification of new truths takes a few years, and if they cannot be reproduced then they become falsehoods. In the realm of the political and social and in matters appertaining to man, it takes a little longer-a few generations.
A report released in October 2004 entitled Contaminated: the next generation, backed by the WWF (formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature), showed that children as young as nine have more manufactured chemicals in their blood than their grandparents and that these substances are suspected of disrupting development and hormones. Eighty manufactured chemicals were detected in blood tests for 104 substances on 33 people. Children were found to have 75 in their blood, as did their parents, but their grandmothers only had 56. Children had concentrations of chemicals banned and no longer in production from even before they were born.
If it takes generations for banned pollutants to dissipate, how long will it take for the historically high amounts of debt to be recognized and eradicated-or are we no longer subject to the natural laws of the market?
