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timtyler comments on A Thought on Pascal's Mugging - Less Wrong Discussion
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Looking at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_of_particle_collisions_at_the_Large_Hadron_Collider
...the defenders are doing a PR whitewash job. They can't even bring themselves to mention probabilities!
Maybe its because there would be no point to mentioning probabilities smaller than e^(-10^9) (the evidence you get from the fact that the sun still exists) citation, since humans don't deal well with small numbers.
But no, "whitewash job" :P
IMO, this is most likely to do with the percieved difference between "no risk" and "some risk". I am sure the authors were capable of producing a quantitative report - and understand that that is the scientific approach - but sat on any figures they might have had - after being instructed about the presentation of the desired conclusion.
This sounds a bit conspiracy-ey. Any evidence for your claims, e.g. a trend of similar papers using probability assessments rather than just stopping at "these collisions have happened a very large number of times and we ain't dead yet"?
Risk assessments are commonly quantitave.
Fair enough. So we might have enough data for the analysis. But "are commonly quantitative" isn't even weak evidence either way - that is to say, this paper being less quantitative doesn't ring any alarm bells per se, since it's not unusual. But we can get evidence by looking closer: are qualitative risk assessments more likely to be "instructed about the desired conclusion" than quantitative ones? What complicating variables can we prune out to try and get the causal relationship whitewash->qualitative?
Basically what I'm trying to communicate is that there are two ways you could convince me this was a fraud: you could have better knowledge of the subject matter than me and demonstrate directly how it was a fraud, or you could have detailed evidence on frauds, good enough to overcome my prior probability that this isn't a fraud. Saying "they were probably able to produce a more quantitative report, but didn't, so it's a fraud" is neither.
I never used the term "fraud". You seem to be reading more into this than was intended. I just think it is funny that an official LHC risk assessment paper presumably designed to reassure fails to come up with any probabilities - and just says: "it's safe". To someone like me, that makes it look as though it is primarily a PR exercise.
IIRC, others have observed this before me - though I don't have the reference handy.
I would classify a supposedly scientific paper that "sat on figures" and "was instructed about the desired conclusion" as a fraud. If you would prefer "whitewash" (a word you did use) instead of "fraud" I would be happy to change in the future.
But the paper was quite a bit longer than "it's safe," seemed quite correct (though particle physics isn't my field), and indeed gave you enough information to calculate approximate probabilities yourself if you wanted to. So to me it looks like you're judging on only a tiny part of the information you actually have.
Because it doesn't actually say the words "not greater than 1 in 3E22 and that's just calculating using the cosmic rays that have hit the earth in the last 4.5E9 years" means it should be ignored?
Uh, what? I think I said "PR exercise", not "worthless document".
I am most disappointed the Brian Cox quote didn't make it into that article. The quote was actually newsworthy, too.