Wash Post’s Chris Mooney’s claims called ‘nonsense’ – Claimed Surprisingly Strong Link Between Climate Change And Violence
Statistician Dr. Matt Briggs: Mooney shows a graph from their paper which is so silly that I refuse to picture it. He presents this graph, as do the authors, as if it were data. Which it is not. It is the output from a preposterously complex regression model (they “control” for 13 things!). Baseball fans: when do more beanballs, and hence more retaliations take place, in chilly April when the season has just begun and all are of good cheer, or late in hot August when tempers are up and when games start to feel a lot more crucial? Is the observed discrepancy therefore caused by climate change? Good grief, what a rotten paper, what a rotten theory.
