Why You Shouldn’t Trust Epidemiologists: Natural Gas & Elderly Deaths Edition
I’m always on about Experts, which are credentialed trained individuals who support the regime, so I thought it well to show Experts in action. One way is through the use of the Epidemiologist Fallacy, which happens when a scientist says X causes Y, but where X is never measured, and the cause is confirmed by a wee p-value.
Now there is nothing more embarrassing in science than a researcher running around, simpering “Look at my wee p! Look at my wee p!” Yet it happens all the time. I won’t here prove that every use of a p-value contains a (separate) fallacy, but it is so. For proof go here.
You’d also think claims like “fracking natural gas kills people” would be based on measuring the cause, in this case measuring fracking natural gas exposure or, rather, intake. But you’d be wrong. Neither natural gas exposure or intake in the study I’m about to describe was measured. At all.
Yet the researchers still claimed that natural gas killed old people.
How do they get away with it? I’ll tell you. You won’t believe me, but I swear to you the reason I give is true. They get away with it because everybody else commits the Epidemiologist Fallacy, too. And misery loves company. Here are many examples.
Our example today is the peer-reviewed paper “Exposure to unconventional oil and gas development and all-cause mortality in Medicare beneficiaries” by Longxiang Li and a host of others in Nature Energy. Following a depressing trend, most of the paper is shunted to supplementary material. You cannot understand what is happening in papers anymore.
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