Lars P. Syll

A$AP Rocky and The Rule of Law Donald Trump has said he is working to free the American rapper A$AP Rocky, who has been held in police custody in Sweden for weeks. “I will be calling the very talented Prime Minister of Sweden to see what we can do about helping A$AP Rocky,” Trump tweeted from aboard Air Force One on Friday … Rocky … has been in police custody since early July as Swedish police investigate his alleged involvement in a fight in Stockholm that...

Today’s court ruling will not lay this infamy to rest  [embedded content]

The validity of statistical induction In my judgment, the practical usefulness of those modes of inference, here termed Universal and Statistical Induction, on the validity of which the boasted knowledge of modern science depends, can only exist—and I do not now pause to inquire again whether such an argument must be circular—if the universe of phenomena does in fact present those peculiar characteristics of atomism and limited variety which appear more and...

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Two must-read statistics books Mathematical statistician David Freedman‘s Statistical Models and Causal Inference (Cambridge University Press, 2010)  and Statistical Models: Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2009) are marvellous books. They ought to be mandatory reading for every serious social scientist — including economists and econometricians — who doesn’t want to succumb to ad hoc assumptions and unsupported statistical conclusions! How...

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Alan Turing — mathematician, war hero, father of computer science and artificial intelligence — will be the face of Britain’s £50 note. Honour to whom honour is due. Great.

In Frankreich wurde entschieden, dass Patienten zukünftig homöopathische Mittel selbst zahlen müssen. Auch in Deutschland ist eine Debatte entfacht. Die Homöopathie ist eine obskure Irrlehre. Vermeintliche Heilungserfolge erklärt sie mit einem mystisch-magischen “Gedächtnis des Wassers”, mit “Energie” und “Schwingungen.” Dieser Hokuspokus ist um nichts wissenschaftlicher als die Geisterbeschwörungen der Santeria-Vodoo-Priester in Haiti. Homöopathie ist durch die moderne...

Hier encore j’avais vingt ans  [embedded content]

Un livre publié en 2010 par Naomi Oreskes et Erik M. Conway, traduit en 2012 sous le titre Les Marchands de doute (éditions Le Pommier), a magistralement démontré, au terme de plusieurs années d’enquête, comment de grandes entreprises, souvent soutenues par des groupes d’intérêt et des organisations farouchement hostiles à l’idée même de régulation, étaient parvenues à mettre massivement en doute les résultats scientifiques les mieux établis … Dans tous les cas, les méthodes...