Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
It wasn’t a foregone conclusion. If there are 9 elections where someone is a 92% to win, there’s a greater than 50% chance at least one of those elections will see an upset.
I'm not sure the probabilities calculated by 538 are quite that simple. I could be wrong but my impression is that the 92% is a conservative summation of more specific state by state probable outcomes. I haven't dug into the stats that deeply and nor do I want to but my understanding is that a sequence of unlikely outcomes would have had to occur for Romney to win and that sequence had a lower probability than .08.
It's worth noting that at no time this year did Obama have less than a 60% chance of winning.
To describe the Obama win as anything other than the expected result at any time this year would have been false.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Russell Brown,
‘Obama doctrine’
The most important thing about the Obama Doctrine is that, like similar efforts by previous (moderate) presidents, it works.
It is by no means perfect of course. But the approach of leaping into conflict as quick as you can clearly does not work. Personally I favour approaches that work.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Russell Brown,
At what point do you start to get feedback loops? How much of an impact does being told what’s very probably going to happen, or what everyone else thinks, or what you care about, have on individual choices?
Which is why many countries ban polls.
But to get back to the point. It's not that the voters have no say but rather that by the time the actual voting day comes around most people have (as they should) already made up their minds. Polling just samples that prior to the actual event of voting.
The minus for the MSM is that the results of the actual voting become less newsworthy.
The real problem with polls though is when they are innacurate AND they cause feedback loops. That's an issue with almost all the New Zealand polls because the margin of error quoted is complete bollocks. And that NZ polls to have real sampling issues.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Russell Brown,
Ah …. xkcd.
How do you justify spending hours of TV time on a subject that is a forgone conclusion ... pretend it isn't forgone.
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But he did make clear that the decisions didn’t get escalated properly
It is a failure of management if the staff below do not feel it is possible or appropriate to pass information of this kind upwards.
It is simply poor leadership.
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Hard News: Weekend Compendium, in reply to Russell Brown,
Does that underline the value of having the likes Russell Poulter there in the universities, beholden to no one?
Yes. But ... they aren't really beholden to no one, because New Zealand is such a small science community and universities are as full of political bureaucracy as the CRIs and MAF.
My caution about commenting on kiwifruit is an example of the tangled threads, PFR is independent of MAF but dependent on government funding and industry support. I don't work much directly on kiwifruit but if my comments upset the kiwifruit industry it might affect my colleagues, also MAF inspects us for compliance so if I piss off MAF ... it all gets messy very fast.
But yes Poulter did a good job except on a pessimistic day I wouldn't agree with him about planting in Te Puke ... on an optimistic day maybe, it's all a bit uncertain as yet :).
That's probably the best thing about the SMC ... it can provide links to "independent" scientific comment for the media. It doesn't replace journalism but it helps.
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Hard News: Weekend Compendium, in reply to Mark Graham,
This seems to be a part of active management of media by Govt, Depts in trying to hide issues
The thing I see internally and externally is the extreme unwillingess to be wrong.
Everyone makes mistakes, everyone. So why is it not possible for people to simply stand up and say I/we made a mistake?
I think part of the problem is we seem to live in society that is terribly punishing of failure. Given everyone makes mistakes, why to we react by demanding the heads of anyone who fails?
But another part of the problem is people who refuse to get help to check their work in case they made a mistake, getting their work checked would imply they could make a mistake.
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Hard News: Weekend Compendium, in reply to Sacha,
Isn’t that more about a lack of straightness in responses?
But none of the science people in MAF/MPI will be allowed to respond at all. I'd bet all responses will have to go through MAF's media team and be approved by management.
Given the value of the industry affected and the possibility of legal liability you can't blame them for being cautious. Anyone who stands up and says "yeah we f'd up" is really going to lose their job and not many people are willing to do that.
The thing not being talked about is that the risk has been known for over 30 years. Green kiwifruit is all ONE genotype, they are all clones. Gold is also a second single genotype, again all clones. There was simply a huge risk to banking a billion dollar a year in export earnings on a single genotype. That's why the scientists have tried so hard to develop some genetic diversity in kiwifruit. But doing that takes time and funding and it's hard to get funding for basic breeding programs. Limiting research to exclude GM kiwifruit makes that work harder as well.
This disease MAY have been preventable but eventually something was going to get kiwifruit so long as we relied on a limited gene pool. If we had had more funding for science and innovation maybe we'd have more varieties to try now ... maybe.
It's worth noting that the kiwifruit industry has been pretty good about funding research from their grower levies, they probably have done as much as they could be asked to do.
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As an employee of PFR, commenting on kiwifruit stories is fraught. What I can say is many of my colleagues worked ridiculous hours during the early stages of the outbreak. The optimism shown at the end of the 4th part of that story is mixed with pesimism about the difficulties of breeding a new cultivar. Whether folks here are optimistic or pesimistic depends on the day of the week. We don't really know how this will turn out for the kiwifruit industry. All we can do as scientists is do the best job possible to find a solution.
From a media perspective it was a very good story. Lots of important information delivered really clearly.
From the perspective of wanting heads to roll ... it's all very well demanding heads to roll at MAF/MPI but that doesn't take into account the tremendous pressure that the businesses involved put on MAF/MPI. Every time MAF tries to make sensible decisions about biosecurity they are faced with political pressure to make business easier. I have no doubt the decision to allow pollen importation was much more complicated than simply trying to decide if it was safe.
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Up Front: Staying In, in reply to Max Rose,
“Dude, I didn’t need to know that”
And really that is simply true many times. Heck I feel that way sometimes when my workmates feel the need to discuss their baby's latest excretions.
Some things simply have no impact on my relationship with a person. Their orientation or kink does not impact on how well we work together, so do I need to know? But if they are a friend they may need me to know, which is a different thing.
So "why are you telling me this?"
Actually I guess that's perhaps a reason I'm not keen on anonymity. If you won't tell me your name then what kind of relationship do we have? How much do I care? To some degree there is value for me in knowing the diversity of peoples feelings and behaviours. But beyond that ...