terça-feira, 31 de maio de 2016

Lixo científico

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

  • John P. A. Ioannidis
There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.
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sábado, 28 de maio de 2016

Idade das Trevas


Este termo foi criado para designar um momento de pouco desenvolvimento na Europa. Eis cinco razões pelas quais a Idade das Trevas foi um período de progresso.
HISTORIADIGITAL.ORG|POR MICHEL GOULART

quinta-feira, 26 de maio de 2016

O erro fundamental do Marx


«Nothing that Lenin or Stalin implemented in Soviet Russia or Mao in China, for example, was not called for or implied in Marx’s own writings and arguments. For the socialist horrors of the 20th century, there is only one verdict to be pronounced against Marx: guilty as charged.»
MAIS


Nothing that Lenin or Stalin implemented in Soviet Russia or Mao in China, for…
CAPITALISMMAGAZINE.COM

sexta-feira, 20 de maio de 2016

O caminho da prosperidade

Why are we so rich? An American earns, on average, $130 a day, which puts the U.S. in the highest rank of the league table. China sits at $20 a day (in real, purchasing-power adjusted income) and India at $10, even after their emergence in recent decades from a crippling socialism of $1 a day. After a few more generations of economic betterment, tested in trade, they will be rich, too.
Actually, the “we” of comparative enrichment includes most countries nowadays, with sad exceptions. Two centuries ago, the average world income per human (in present-day prices) was about $3 a day. It had been so since we lived in caves. Now it is $33 a day—which is Brazil’s current level and the level of the U.S. in 1940. Over the past 200 years, the average real income per person—including even such present-day tragedies as Chad and North Korea—has grown by a factor of 10. It is stunning. In countries that adopted trade and economic betterment wholeheartedly, like Japan, Sweden and the U.S., it is more like a factor of 30—even more stunning.

Clássicos do Liberalismo


  • Friedman: Capitalism & Freedom
  • Hakek: Constitution of Liberty
  • Hayek: Road to Serfdom
  • Locke: Two Treatises on Civil Government
  • Mill: On Liberty
  • von Mises: Human Action
  • Montesquieu: Spirit of the Laws
  • Nozick: Anarchy, State & Utopia
  • Popper: Open Society & its Enemies
  • Smith: Wealth of Nations

quinta-feira, 19 de maio de 2016

A invenção do Meio Oriente

How the Middle East was invented

Much has been made of how European imperial powers reshaped the Middle East after World War I, a transformation often said to have begun 100 years ago this week when France and Britain signed the Sykes-Picot agreement. But fewer people realize that, in addition to creating the map of the modern Middle East, postwar European imperialists actually created the concept. The region we recognize as the Middle East today, a roughly defined but distinct swath of territory stretching from Turkey to Egypt to Iran, only came into being with the end of the Ottoman Empire and the disappearance of the older, now antiquated-sounding “Near East.”
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quarta-feira, 18 de maio de 2016

O papel das instituições no desenvolvimento

 “Institutions promote or restrict growth according to the protection they accord to effort, according to the opportunities they provide for specialization, and according to the freedom of manoeuvre they permit.”
W. Arthur Lewis in The Theory of Economic Growth (1970, p. 57),

30 dicas para a pesquisa acadêmica

30 tips for successful academic research and writing

As part of preparing for a workshop on academic publishing for early career academics, I jotted down some ideas and tips to share with the group which I thought I would post here. In the process of writing 12 books and over 110 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters over a career which has mostly been part-time because of juggling the demands of motherhood with academic work, I have developed some approaches that seem to work well for me.
These tips are in no particular order, apart from number 1, which I consider to be the most important of all.

Planning your research schedule
  1. Choose something to research/write about that you are passionately interested in. I find that most of my research and writing tends to spring from wanting to find out more or understand more about a particular phenomenon that intrigues me. In explaining it to myself I end up explaining it to others, hopefully in a new and interesting way that is worthy of publication.
  2. Be organised – planning time use is essential when there are many demands on your time.
  3. Make sure that you set aside one or more periods of time each week when you devote yourself to research and don’t let other demands impinge on this time.
  4. So I can easily see what I need to do and by when, I use a white-board with a ‘to do’ list with tasks listed monthly and their deadlines. I rub off tasks as I complete them (usually with a great sense of accomplishment!). Very low tech, I know, but effective as a visual reminder.
  5. Plan your research in chunks: this morning, today, this week, this month, next few months, this year, next three years. Have a clear idea for what you want to achieve in these time periods and try to stick to this as much as you can.
  6. I don’t tend to think more than a year ahead when it comes to research outcomes I want to achieve, but I find it helpful to write up at least a one-year research plan at the beginning of each year. Some people may also want to prepare a 3- or 5-year research plan.
  7. Be strategic about every bit of research time available. Think about the best use of your time. Difficult cognitive tasks requiring intense thought often need a lengthy period of time, so plan to do these when this is available to you. Easy or less time-intensive tasks such as correcting proofs, editing or formatting a journal article or chapter for submission or reading some materials and taking notes can be fitted in smaller periods of time.
Making a start
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Links relacionados

terça-feira, 17 de maio de 2016

A origem dos problemas do Meio Oriente

The secret pact that became a scapegoat for all of the Middle East’s problems

sexta-feira, 13 de maio de 2016

Igualdade burguesa

Bourgeois Equality

Ideas, not capital, transformed the world.

University of Chicago PressUniversity of Chicago PressContrary to economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty, our riches cannot be explained by the accumulation of capital, as the misleading word capitalism implies. The Great Enrichment did not come from piling brick on brick, or bachelor's degree on bachelor's degree, or bank balance on bank balance, but from piling idea on idea. The accumulation of capital was of course necessary. But so were a labor force and the existence of liquid water. Oxygen is necessary for a fire. Yet it would be unhelpful to explain the Chicago Fire of October 8–10, 1871, by the presence of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere.


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A Conversation between Deirdre McCloskey and Don Boudreaux on 'Bourgeois Equality'
Is our modern world the product of changing institutions or the result of shifting opinions about them? In a recent event hosted by the Hayek Program, Don Boudreaux and Deidre McCloskey explored this
SOUNDCLOUD ·

quarta-feira, 11 de maio de 2016

História escondida

«So there is an answer to the puzzling question of why Communist crimes are not important. It goes along with other matters (small things like genocide) that don’t count. And the answer is that the West has imported totalitarian ideologies wholesale, from Communism to Nazism.
So, in that spirit, I’m not sure how to end my article. Should I say “Sieg Heil” or “Long Live Comrade Stalin!” I suppose it will depend on which is politically correct on the day!»
The ghastly past of Communist rulers is being swept under the carpet
MERCATORNET.COM

Médio Oriente

Forget Sykes-Picot. It’s the Treaty of Sèvres That Explains the Modern Middle East.



Mitologia da depressão psicológica


7 Facts About Depression That Will Blow You Away


Adapted from A Mind of Your Own by Kelly Brogan, MD
A silent tragedy in the history of modern health care is happening right now in America, but no one is talking about it. We have been told a story of depression: that it is caused by a chemical imbalance and cured by a chemical fix—a prescription. More than 30 million of us take antidepressants, including one in seven women (one in four women of reproductive age). Millions more are tempted to try them to end chronic, unyielding distress, irritability, and emotional “offness”—trapped by an exhausting inner agitation they can’t shake.
It is time, even according to leaders in the field, to let go of this false narrative and take a fresh look at where science is leading us. The human body interacts in its environment with deep intelligence. Your body creates symptoms for a reason. Depression is a meaningful symptom of a mismatch, biologically, with lifestyle—we eat a poor diet, harbor too much stress, lack sufficient physical movement, deprive ourselves of natural sunlight, expose ourselves to environmental toxicants, and take too many drugs. Inflammation is the language that the body speaks, expressing imbalance, inviting change. We usually suppress these symptoms with medication but that is like turning off the smoke alarm when you have a fire going on. Let’s get the facts straight:
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Sociedade aberta e seus inimigos

  • "Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell. It leads to intolerance. It leads to religious wars, and to the saving of souls through the inquisition. And it is, I believe, based on a complete misunderstanding of our moral duties. It is our duty to help those who need help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy, since this does not depend on us, and since it would only too often mean intruding on the privacy of those towards whom we have such amiable intentions."
  • Karl Raimund Popper

Bloqueio

Darcy Ribeiro: O Brasil tem uma classe dominante que não deixa o país ir pra frente!


Do Facebook de Elvis Rocha

Darcy Ribeiro: "O Brasil tem uma classe dominante ranzinza, azeda, medíocre, cobiçosa, que não deixa o país ir pra frente!"

terça-feira, 10 de maio de 2016

669 milhões vítimas esquecidas

Desde 622 d.C, islã massacrou mais de 669 milhões de não-muçulmanos


Na verdade, nenhuma ideologia tem sido tão genocida como islâ…
Pelos números totais, nós atualizamos mais de 80 milhões de cristãos mortos por muçulmanos em 500 anos nos Estados dos Balcãs, Hungria, Ucrânia e Rússia.
Então, nós temos Índia. O número estimativo oficial de abates muçulmanos de hindus é de 80 milhões. No entanto, o historiador muçulmano Firistha (b. 1570) escreveu (em qualquer Tarikh-i Firishta ou o Gulshan-i Ibrahim), que os muçulmanos abateram mais de 400 milhões de hindus até o pico da lei islâmica na Índia, reduzindo a população hindu de 600 milhões para 200 milhões na época.
Com estas novas adições ao genocídio muçulmano de não-muçulmanos desde o nascimento de Mohammed seriam mais de 669 milhões assassinatos.

segunda-feira, 9 de maio de 2016

Um universo sem fim e começo



Scientists say the Universe had no beginning and no big bangUniverse Had No Beginning And No Big Bang, Scientists Say


The new model applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and accounts for dark matter and dark energy.
Phys.org reports:
The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a “Big Bang” did the universe officially begin.
Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.
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Mitos da segunda guerra mundial

FFF ARTICLES

 Ernst Topitsch’s Stalin’s War (1987), Viktor Suvorov’s Icebreaker (1990), Heinz Magenheimer’sHitler’s War (1998), and Albert Weeks’ Stalin’s Other War (2002), for example, all argue that Stalin’s purpose was not to protect the Soviet Union from an early attack. Instead, Stalin’s strategy was to intentionally create the conditions for a war to more easily break out between Nazi Germany and the Western powers. Such a war would weaken the “capitalist nations” and produce the conditions for communist revolution throughout Europe at the point of Soviet bayonets and tanks.
These authors also have argued that Stalin was planning an aggressive war against Nazi Germany, with the only problem being that Hitler attacked the Soviet Union before Stalin could break the nonaggression pact and invade Germany. Magenheimer even reproduced maps from the Soviet archives showing the planned directions of attack into the German heartland by Soviet military units. The differences of opinion among these writers have been about the date for Stalin’s aggressive war on Germany. Was it to have been in the summer of 1941 or the spring of 1942?
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Meu novo artigo sobre dívida pública



9.5.2016 – von Antony P. Mueller. Nicht nur in Griechenland und den anderen südlichen Ländern der Eurozone, sondern auch in Deutschland, Japan und den USA bewegt sich die Staatsverschuldung unaufhaltsam auf den Kollaps zu. Aus…
MISESDE.ORG

Mitologia da ciência

John Oliver Debunks 'Scientific Studies' You Believe

Superfan TV
May 9, 2016
On Sunday's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver debunked scientific studies that make outrageous claims. Oliver pointed to an example of an all too familiar subject of studies. "In just the last few months, we've seen studies about coffee that claim it may reverse the effects of liver damage, help prevent colon cancer, decrease the risk of endometrial cancer, and increase the risk of miscarriage. Coffee today is like god in the old testament: It will either save you or kill you, depending on how much you believe in its magic powers."
These studies can have serious consequences. Oliver explained that they are rarely replicated or fact checked. That hasn't stopped news organizations from actively reporting on the studies, leading the public to think their abstract findings are truth. The contradictory nature of the these salacious studies can lead people to dismissing actual science that has been peer reviewed like climate change and public health concerns.

domingo, 8 de maio de 2016

O racismo do Wilson

Prior to Wilson’s inauguration in 1913, African-Americans had been making slow but steady progress in federal employment and were about 5 percent of all federal civil servants nationwide, working side by side with whites. They occupied managerial positions as well, sometimes directing an integrated workforce.
Wilson’s Cabinet officers demoted African-Americans and denied them any further promotions to prevent them from ever being in supervisory positions over whites. Federal departments installed curtains to separate black and white clerical workers, segregated cafeteria sections by race for the first time and created separate bathrooms that black workers had to use in the basements of government buildings.
In 1914, the federal civil service instituted a policy of requiring photographs on all job applications, to ensure that more black workers would not be hired. In a New York Times op-ed on the Princeton students’ protest, Gordon Davis, a prominent African-American lawyer, described how his grandfather was peremptorily demoted from a well-paying position as a supervisor in the Government Printing Office to a messenger in the War Department, at half his previous salary. He lost a home and died “a broken man.”
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Ensino da mãe


sábado, 7 de maio de 2016

Ciência errada

Everything Is Crumbling

sexta-feira, 6 de maio de 2016

Guerras de Roma

4 Reasons the Romans Went to War
Ruthless conquerors and efficient warriors, we remember the Roman legions as a force that swept across Europe and the Mediterranean, crushing everything in their path. Territorial conquest was an important part of why they went to war, but…
WWW.WARHISTORYONLINE.COM