The Relativity of Wrong

Recent political comment brings me back to a point I'd written about before, under the label of Successive Approximation.  The better title, unsurprisingly, is Isaac Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong. 

I first became aware of Paul Ryan's lie when my wife asked me, having mentioned nothing about context, whether a runner could conceivably mis-remember his marathon of somewhat over 4 hours as having been somewhat under 3 hours.  As has been reported in many places, and some reporters having done some experiments, the answer is no.  It is completely implausible that someone, especially someone with only one marathon, could make that mistake as an honest mistake.  Confusing a little over 4 for a little under ... maybe.  You would likely have trained for some time under 4 and that number could have stayed with you longer than your disappointment in not making your goal. 

But confusing your over-4 hours, a perfectly respectable time to cover a marathon if nothing to brag about for an open class man, for sub-3 -- a time that entitles you to some bragging (as a friend worked to earn the right to) and is achievable only with some serious training and talent -- is not an accident.

The political side of this, well, not so very interesting.  Except for the fact, perhaps, that Ryan is supposed to be a leading light for Republican number-crunching.  Number types are even less likely to make a mistake like that.  At least as a mistake. 

More interesting, and perhaps useful, to the local purpose is to look some at how to assess the relativity of wrong.  The route I took in the successive approximation post was quantitative.  Some articles have taken something like that, observing that his claimed time was about 70% of his actual time, or, conversely, that he lied by about 30%.  That's actually much too generous to his lie.  The problem with that is that if he had claimed the world record time (a bit less than 2 hours faster than he ran, as opposed to the somewhat more than 1 hour of his actual lie), it would only be scored as 50% wrong.  You can't run faster than the world record, or you'd be the record holder, which even Ryan didn't claim.  So, the most he could have lied by is about 2 hours (iirc his actual time was 4:01, and the world record back then was about 2:07, so 114 minutes).  His actual lie is about 65 minutes (taking 2:50-something as 2:56) wrong, so 57%, more than half, of the span that he could possibly have lied by.  That could be refined some by comparison against, say, the race winner's time, or the Olympic qualifying time.  But you get the idea.  And the 57% is about double what the other approach shows.  Compare how wrong something is with how wrong it could be.

But some things, and this is where I'll especially invite comments, don't lend themselves to that kind of quantification.  For instance, I'm comfortable with saying that it is more wrong to say that the earth has no greenhouse effect than it is to say that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas.  But how can we assess this comparative wrongness with the error in saying that CO2 levels have not risen over the past 200 years?

So I'll invite description of approaches to assessing relative errors, preferably with examples.  Note, too, that it's best to have them be objective examples -- so which candidate is better kinds of things are not going to work.  Marathon times and the radiative properties of the earth's atmosphere aren't partisan matters.

Heartland on Ice

What's old is new once again.  I'd actually written most of this in February, when Heartland was in the news.  But between one thing and another, hadn't posted it.  Now that  they're in the news again, it seems once again to be apt.  As usual, my interest is on the science.  Since a number of Heartland supporters are saying things in the vein of Heartland made a misstep in acting as they did, because it takes away from their message on the science.  The supporters think Heartland is doing well on the science.

Now that I've looked in to what Heartland Institute has had to say on sea ice, I can say with confidence that they are not doing well on the science.  They don't know (or lie about) the difference between ice area and ice extent, don't know how much area of ice there is, don't know where it forms, make up numbers even if you ignore the difference between area and extent, lie about what authors say in their scientific papers, treat 2 years as plenty for establishing a climate trend if it is in one direction, but ignore the 30 year trends when it isn't, don't know the difference between sea ice and ice shelves, don't understand how sea level changes, and others I'll let you classify yourself.

The gory details, examples being from their web site, are below the fold.  A different point is, I don't expect everyone to be expert on sea ice, or even pay attention to it.  If Heartland had ignored sea ice, that's fine (at least it is if they're not saying things which require understanding sea ice).  But they chose to write about it.  And the people whose articles I'm quoting are Jay Lehr, their science director, and James M. Taylor, a senior fellow for the Heartland Institute focusing on environmental issues.  In other words, major players in deciding what Heartland says about science, not someone who might once have said something stupid about sea ice while passing through the office.

Having done my homework, I'm comfortable in saying that Jay Lehr and James M. Taylor are unreliable sources on the science, and Heartland Institute is as well.  See below for my homework example.

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