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This is a repost from askepticrtn.com it is important concisely written work that needs to be shared and amplified in the Canadian Blogosphere.
Another Resignation at Statistics Canada
February 12, 2012 in General Science by askeptic
On February 01, Philip Cross, Chief Economic Adviser at Statistics Canada announced his leaving the agency. He follows the head of the agency, Munir Sheikh, who resigned last year over Government plans to redesign the Census. Mr. Cross is leaving for much the same reason.
At issue is replacing a compulsory census questionnaire with a voluntary questionnaire. In essence, this means replacing a random sample with a discretionary sample. Discretionary samples have their applications, but making inferences about the population isn’t one of them. Unfortunately, making just these types of inferences is whole point of the Census. That’s why Mr. Sheikh wrote in an open letter to the Government:
“I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion … the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census . . . It can not.” “Under the circumstances, I have tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister.”
Mr. Cross is quoted in the Globe and Mail as expressing concern “that the free exchange of ideas at the agency is diminishing, and that internal dissent is no longer being tolerated by senior managers – particularly when it comes to discussions about the 2011 census and new national household survey.” He goes further by saying: “a lot of good can be offset if you get one big thing wrong – and the big thing in this instance is census and NHS.”
At least we know the two people at Statistics Canada (well, formerly at StatsCan) with some sense of public service and responsibility. Now that they’ve left, StatsCan should be free from such annoyances.
Long form census data is worthless. The efforts to gather it, a waste of taxpayers money. Minister Tony Clement claims that he has his magic mojo working, enabling StatsCan to overcome the limitations of the mathematical and statistical sciences. I hope he shares it with the rest of us.
One question remains though, who will be rewriting all those science textbooks?
Gaining a better understanding of the reality which we inhabit aka doing Science. Brian Greene takes us on a light, generalist cosmological journey. Enjoy. :)
That being said, here is a video from DiscoveringReligion that takes some of the more inane arguments put forth by our deluded christian friends vivisects them in great detail and sends the now ensaddened god squad packing.
And of course, neither am I. Our perception depends on where we are focusing our attention at the time. 75% of people did not notice that the person dealing with them changed. So…do you still think you are on the ball?
Those zany scientists, always finding out new shiny-bright science facts. The periodic table has just gotten a little more crowded say hi to as yet unnamed elements 114 and 116.
“The elements were recognized by an international committee of chemists and physicists. They’re called elements 114 and 116 for now — permanent names and symbols will be chosen later.
You’re not likely to run into any of this stuff. Scientists make them in labs by smashing atoms of other elements together to create the new ones.
“Our experiments last for many weeks, and typically, we make an atom every week or so,” said chemist Ken Moody of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who’s part of the discovery team.
In contrast to more familiar elements like carbon, gold and tin, the new ones are short-lived. Atoms of 114 disintegrate within a few seconds, while 116 disappears in just a fraction of a second, Moody said.”
Wow, these elements disappear faster than Peter McKay can change his story about flying about in helicopters on the taxpayers dime.
“Both elements were discovered by a collaboration of scientists from Livermore and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, near Moscow. They made them by smashing calcium ions into atoms of plutonium or another element, curium. The official recognition, announced last week, cites experiments done in 2004 and 2006.”
Enjoy the updated periodic table. :) – Oh and feel free to leave any suggestions for what we should call the new elements in the comments section – I’m putting forth Hawkensium and Planckium.
A big thanks to tildeb over at Questionable Motives for bringing this video to my attention. The video is about the potential futures of climate change, but from a risk management perspective. It brings into stark relief the choices we are facing and some of the possible consequence of our potential action and inaction. I encourage my readership to copy and paste the video onto their blogs/social media as it is such an important issue.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
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