An Op-Ed article in yesterday’s New York Times by the pretentiously double barreled NASA Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson, seeks to stir dissent among democrats over the so called electability of Obama v Clinton.
.
The article purports to use advanced sophisticated astrophysics derived mathematics to calculate the predicted outcome of the General Election.
IT appears that Hillary Clinton is going to suspend her presidential campaign this weekend, at the urging of Democratic Party leaders and superdelegates. Before that happens, Mrs. Clinton and the superdelegates might want to know this: if the general election were held today, Barack Obama would lose to John McCain, while Mr. McCain would lose to Mrs. Clinton.
However, his essay is little more than the product of politically biased scientific incompetence:
Not only does his argument reach a standard no greater than basic high school math, his egregiously superficial disregard for the significance of the data, his utter failure to place the hypothesis in context and his cavalier disregard for mathematical accuracy, inevitably raise questions as to his credibility as a scientist and his political motivation.
.
Why would People Magazine (2000)’s "Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive" and self-promoting NASA superhero stoop so low as to condescend his vast talent upon us mere mortals to save us from the inevitability of our own actions.
It may come as no surprise that a 30 second glance at Wikipedia turns up this little gem:
In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Tyson to serve on the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry and in 2004 to serve on the President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy, the latter better known as the "Moon, Mars and Beyond" commission.
Before we dive headlong into the dangerously shallow depths of Tyson’s diatribe, perhaps it would be instructive to glimpse into the great legacy his mammoth brain has bestowed upon us.
Tyson coined the term "Manhattanhenge" to describe the two days annually on which the evening sun aligns with the cross streets of the street grid in Manhattan, making sunset visible along unobstructed side streets.
This unparalleled contribution to scientific endeavor is considered potentially as significant as that of the team of over-intoxicated astronomers who in 1963 discovered the "Manhattanspin" phenomena caused by looking up at skyscrapers after a half a bottle of Tequila each.
Tyson’s political astuteness has been savagely questioned in the past due to his out-of-touch failure to apply his scientific prognostication to determining the will of key demographics.
As director of the Hayden Planetarium, Tyson bucked traditional thinking to keep Pluto from being referred to as the ninth planet in exhibits at the center. He has stated on The Colbert Report that this decision has resulted in large amounts of hate mail, much of it from children. In 2006, the I.A.U. confirmed this assessment by downgrading Pluto to "dwarf planet" classification.
We begin our analysis of Tyson’s argument by quoting his elitist attempt at declaring his superiority over the man in the street:
This conclusion comes not from wishful thinking but from a new method of analysis on the statistics of polls that has been accepted for publication in the journal Mathematical and Computer Modeling. The authors, J. Richard Gott III, a professor at Princeton, and Wes Colley, a researcher at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, are not political scientists. They are astrophysicists.
For those of us who failed to inherit a fundamental grasp of the stellar significance of celestial phenomena, Tyson gracefully reminds us what a scientist does:
And one of the tasks of scientists is to clarify the apparent complexity of the universe by using the language of mathematics.
You could be forgiven for misreading Tyson’s voodoo mathematics as a reference to the use of ‘Mediums’ as a predictor for the General Election. Spiritual prophesy and even random dice throwing is conceivably as accurate as his amateurish science.
His attempt to obfuscate the use of ‘Medians’ as a phenomenon to be understood only by astrophysicists with a brain larger than a ‘dwarf planet’ hides the most basic simplicity of the concept.
Unfortunately in this regard, wikipedia also suffers from obfuscitis:
In probability theory and statistics, a median is described as the number separating the higher half of a sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half. The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one. If there is an even number of observations, the median is not unique, so one often takes the mean of the two middle values. At most half the population have values less than the median and at most half have values greater than the median. If both groups contain less than half the population, then some of the population is exactly equal to the median. For example, if a < b <c, then the median of the list {a, b, c} is b, and if a < b < c < d, then the median of the list {a, b, c, d} is the mean of b and c, i.e. it is (b + c)/2. </p>
Translation: A Median is 'the one in the middle'.
UN-SCIENCE 1 – "Weeks Prior"
Tyson states:
Here’s what they discovered: in swing states, the median result of all the polls conducted in the weeks prior to an election is an especially effective predictor of which candidate will win that election — even in states where the polls consistently fall within the margin of error.
Did he read his own article before publishing?
To give Tyson some credit, "in the weeks prior" is not specific in its duration. Technically a poll taken last month, back in 2006 or for that matter in pre-cambrian times could constitute as "weeks prior". But even those of us with sub-planetary dimensioned craniums would read "weeks prior" as relating to a period, close, if not immediately proximate to the election date and not simply at some arbitrarily chosen moment in time.
Last time I checked the calendar it was the beginning of June, and I’m fairly sure the election is in November. The first formal speeches of the campaign were presented a few days ago (after any of his polls) and neither candidate has selected a vice president.
Tyson’s argument that simple mathematical extrapolation of present polls constitutes a reliable predictor of electoral outcome is nothing but airy fairy nonsense.
Since Tyson’s argument fails at the first hurdle, we could convincingly end here. However, that would cheat us out of discovering the true depths to which Tyson will stoop in forgoing sound scientific principles in pursuit of an agenda.
UN-SCIENCE 2 – "Instability of the Data"
Any credible scientist will know that a fundamental requirement to justify the reliability of the results of an experiment is that the data must be stable or at least predictable in some sense.
If I flip a coin and it comes up heads, that does not mean that flipping a coin results in it landing head side up. To give any derived hypothesis from my experiment any sense of confidence, I must show that if I repeatedly flip a coin it will land as I predicted.
As above, Tyson fails miserably to follow even the most elementary scientific rigor.
To illustrate, lets pick a poll chart from Gallup showing the Obama v McCain forecasts:
But that’s only one poll, and the theory relies on the "Median" of a set of polls. Surely we should consider a result derived from a range of polls. How about one from the Real Clear Politics site that Tyson refers to as gospel in his article:
It is true this graph was derived from the "Mean" or average of other polls, not from the "Median". However, it doesn’t take a mathematical savant to see that there is substantial random instability in the polling results over even a short period of time.
Hence one can suppose that if Tyson had applied his math to a period a few days or weeks ago, he could have produced the opposite result to the carefully selected experimental period that supports his politics.
UN-SCIENCE 3 – "Charting Mystery"
434,523,414,3542,52,2125,124,5112,451,321,3421...
The sequence of numbers above if extrapolated and interpreted correctly hold the secret to life the universe and everything. Why? Because I say so. Unfortunately, you are all too stupid to understand what they mean, so you just have to take my word for it.
Sounds ridiculous? How about this:
That’s a sample of the fancy charts used to explain the relevance and meaning of Tyson’s results. Clearly, since it’s all based on Astrophysics, there is not a hope in hell’s chance for us to understand it, so adding units and labels to the charts would only serve to confuse us further.
Taking a leaf out of the "Idiots Guide to Karl Rove - 101", Tyson has learned that when spouting inaccuracies, it is enough to sow the seeds of doubt into an intended victim. Once captivated, provide arbitrary ‘evidence’ that can be mis-interpreted by the individual so as to convince themselves of the validity of your premise.
Coming from a blogger this could be forgiven as an amateurish mistake. However, abusing your position of privilege at NASA, co-opting credible scientists, disrespecting an institution that awarded you the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and bringing your profession into disrepute is unforgivable.
UN-SCIENCE 4 – "Really Clear Politics"
By his own admission, Tyson’s hypothetical experiment used data collected from "RealClearPolitics.com".
By arbitrarily choosing selected polls to support his thesis, he claims to have deduced a relevant and compelling forecast regarding the outcome of the General Election.
However, in order to have reached the pages on RCP from which the reference data was extracted, he necessarily must have skipped over one rather significant clue:
Either my eyesight is failing me and the blue name written in the far column in almost every single row is Obama, or Tyson is nothing short of a fraud and a pathetic excuse for a scientist and political pundit.
UN-SCIENCE "Footnotes"
Note that at no time do I attempt to disparage the validity or credibility of the authors of the paper to which Tyson refers. Indeed Wes Colley has gained somewhat of a following among College Football statisticians for the accuracy of his predictions.
It is not the theory in the paper that is in question here, it is the blatant incompetence exhibited by a notorious individual claiming to be a scientist, who assumes he’s so much smarter than the rest of us that we should care in any manner whatsoever about his political bias.
More Tyson Background
Tyson is a vocal critic of string theory; his opposition comes from the seeming over-reliance of string theory upon mathematical projections instead of testable variables.
His ardent objection to the use of strings in theoretical physics does not prevent him from spinning a mathematically mis-projected tenuous tangled web of misinformation when it comes to the imperatives of his political masters.
Furthermore, you may recall that Tyson justified his premise above by quoting a soon to be published paper authored by "J. Richard Gott III, a professor at Princeton" and "Wes Colley", noted College Football prophet.
Gott’s Wikipedia entry begins:
John Richard Gott III (Louisville, Kentucky, 1947) is a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University. He is especially well known for developing and advocating two cosmological theories with the flavor of science fiction: Time travel, and the Doomsday argument.
Paul Davies's bestseller How to build a time machine credits Gott with the proposal of using cosmic strings to create a time machine. Gott's machine depends upon the antigravitational tension of the (hypothetical) strings to deform space without attracting nearby objects. The traveler would follow a precise path around rapidly separating strings, and find that she had moved backwards in time.
So it seems that the venerable ‘anti-string’ Mr. Tyson enjoys the privilege of convenient selective endorsement as to the credibility of the theoretical output of his astrophysicist peers.
In Conclusion:
Perhaps the final clue as to the gravitas of Tyson’s authority was his selection as a speaker at the "Beyond Belief" symposium in November 2006. Though one may question his grasp of basic scientific principles, there can be little doubt over his mastery of incredulity.