Leo Martins' Daily Rant

Si Lukashenko visita una ciudad, las autoridades locales reciben una lista de tareas previas al advenimiento[1]: vaciar los colegios y llenarlos de antidisturbios; encarcelar a los disidentes locales para que no armen jaleo (“detención administrativa”, 15 días), acicalar los lugares públicos que pisará el presidente, seleccionar el ganado más hermoso de las granjas, limar sus cuernos, cribar el trigo feo. Y forzar baños de masas. “La gente es obligada a ir a los desfiles”, continúa Kiril. “Por ejemplo los profesores; se les dice: preséntate con cuatro alumnos. Los directores de escuela están sujetos al poder bajo amenaza de recorte salarial o despido. Así se aplica una expresión soviética: dobrovolno prinuditel’no: voluntariamente obligado. Es obligatorio para todos los trabajadores públicos [70% de la economía][2]: escuelas, universidades, fábricas. Se aplica a desfiles, visitas oficiales, sábados de trabajo voluntario y conciertos de grupos oficialistas. Las empresas privadas también son ‘invitadas’ a colaborar: si no lo hacen, sufrirán todo tipo de auditorías”.

- Lukashenko a pie de calle

Critical science journalism takes a different approach and focuses on providing a balanced assessment of the work, one that highlights specific strengths but also emphasises specific limitations or flaws. It is no big secret that the majority of research findings published in peer-reviewed scientific journals will probably not hold up when other groups attempt to replicate them. This lack of replicability can be due to research misconduct, systematic errors or other cognitive biases, which commonly occur even in the most conscientious and meticulous scientists.

- The need for critical science journalism | Science | guardian.co.uk

A bedrock principle of U.S. democracy is that the coercive powers of government are never used for partisan purpose. The law is blind to political viewpoint, and so are its enforcers, most especially the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Any violation of this principle threatens the trust and the voluntary cooperation of citizens upon which this democracy depends. So it was appalling to learn Friday that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny. It was almost as disturbing that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have not personally apologized to the American people and promised a full investigation.

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After IRS, Benghazi, should I trust government? Column

But dems will not see it as partisan, they will imagine that these conservative groups are objectively dangerous. In the same way as dem scientists rarely realize flaws their ‘objective’ assessment of the conservative mind.

This doesn’t create new law, but it may make a few people think twice before hitting the ‘forward’ button,” he said. “We’re not going to see a flood of cases over emails that have been forwarded without permission. If nothing else, even if it is established that a particular business email qualifies for copyright protection, it may be difficult or impossible to quantify any financial loss, meaning that somebody could sue, win a finding of copyright infringement and receive zero damages.

- Forwarding an email can infringe copyright

Fair use allows the reproduction and display of literary works, including emails, for educational, research, critical, commentary and news reporting purposes. Whether a use is acceptable depends on four criteria: the purpose of the use, the nature of the work, the portion and “substantiality” of the work used and the effect on the market value for the work. This effectively means that portions of an email may be copied, forwarded, printed and displayed in print or on television if deemed for a legitimate purpose. Addit

- Email Copyright Laws in the US | eHow

Uses that advance criticism, education or scholarship are favored—particularly when the amount copied is small. Uses that generate income or interfere with an author’s ability to earn a living are not. Also, fairness means crediting original authors. Thus, a teacher who copied, without credit, much of another teacher’s course materials was found to infringe.

- Copyright in E-mail

China refused to confirm that Okinawa belongs to Japan after two Chinese scholars suggested re-examining the ownership of the archipelago that includes the island, adding to tensions over a separate territorial dispute.

- China Refuses to Confirm Okinawa Island Belongs to Japanese - Bloomberg

This would include commissioning statistical reviews of some papers, making authors fill out a checklist relating to common problems and removing the limit on the length of articles’ methods sections. Dr Kiermer recognised that in doing so it was just “scratching the surface” of a much bigger problem, which included issues to do with insufficient training, for example in the quantitative aspects of biology, as well as in mentoring. She also flagged up other issues such as the phenomenon of publication bias - where statistically significant, positive results are more likely to be published - as contributing factors.

- Research paper ‘sloppiness’ on the increase, warns publisher | News | Times Higher Education

[I]f it is to be even minimally serious, the ‘new atheism’ should focus its concerns on the virulent secular religions of state worship, so well exemplified by those who laud huge atrocities like the invasion of Iraq, or cannot comprehend why they might have some concern when their own state,

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Sam Harris, the New Atheists, and anti-Muslim animus | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

(that line is from Chomsky)

A Secretaria de Comunicação da Presidência (Secom) contratou uma campanha publicitária no valor de R$ 4,5 milhões para divulgar as atividades da Comissão Nacional da Verdade. O valor, pago com recursos da Secom, equivale a 45% do orçamento total previsto para a comissão em 2013, que é de R$ 10 milhões.

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Folha de S.Paulo - Poder - Comissão da Verdade tem campanha publicitária - 08/05/2013

Como todo empreendimento suspeito — seja público ou privado — a sinalização e o marketing se tornam mais importantes que os feitos

A news piece just out at Nature notes that Trivers approached Nature in 2008 about retracting the paper, but they were not interested. After all, why would they be? Nature’s business plan hinges on publishing studies that are exciting — studies that will be cited by a lot of other papers, and that will attract a lot of attention from the popular press. This means that Nature (and other high-impact journals like Science) are particularly prone to a few types of bad papers. One is the shocking result that would lead to a major paradigm shift if it were true — but it is not true. One is the paper that seems to represent a huge advance, but is a modest advance that seems bigger than it is because it fails to cite much of the relevant literature. And one is the type we’re potentially talking about here, where a paper presents some really beautiful results, which are beautiful because the data has been manipulated in some way. The problem is that this business model works great. The upsides of citations and press coverage apparently far outweigh the downsides of publishing incorrect, or incorrectly presented results.

- Basketball, Fraud, and the Broken University Incentive System | Lost in Transcription