47 - David Robert Grimes — Bad Science, Flawed Logic and Misinformation

David’s book, The Irrational Ape: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk, and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World (2019) is available here:
https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Irrational-Ape/David-Robert-Grimes/9781471178252

Additional References

Visit Letter here:
https://letter.wiki/conversations.
Looking for a correspondent? DM @JacksonAEdwards on Twitter or email [email protected].

Emily St Mandel, Station Eleven: A Novel (2014)

Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolved (2018)

John P. A. Ioannidis, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” (2005)
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

David Grimes and John Ioannidis, “Modelling Science Trustworthiness Under Publish Or Perish Pressure” (2018):
https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/13117;

Buster Benson, Why Are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement (2019):
https://busterbenson.com/

My conversation with Buster on the book can be found here:
https://letter.wiki/conversation/225

Timestamps

3:00–6:35 On Letter
7:56 Relative vs. absolute risk increase or reduction
14:10 False positives & Baysian analysis
24:00 The Sally Clark case: an egregrious miscarriage of justice.
26:14 The prosecutor’s fallacy
27:40 The hair analysis unit & Kirk Odom’s wrongful conviction
36:32 Cargo cults
42:50 False equivalence, esp. with regard to vaccinations
47:28 Statistical significance vs. effect size
53:45 Dietary science & surrogate outcomes
59:58 Berkeley admissions and Simpson’s paradox
1:05:45 Self-reporting and personality tests
1:08:14 The replication crisis in biomedical science
1:12:58 Disinformation and misinformation
1:17:51 Identity protective cognition