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Right, right, you never said you disagreed. You’re “just asking questions”. The messenger matters less than the data, the collection methods, and the approach

Right, right, you never said you disagreed. You’re “just asking questions”. The messenger matters less than the data, the collection methods, and the approach to analysis. Bias can be a reason to more carefully examine a conclusion and the methods, particularly if a source has had quality issues in the past. But simply throwing out accusations of bias in the absence of literally any other reason to doubt a pretty straightforward conclusion (removing sources of NO2 makes NO2 go down, shocking!) is not a meaningful contribution to a discussion. Every researcher is biased. Every source of funding is biased. Hell, you haven’t even shown that they’re significantly biased, the only thing you’ve pointed out is that apparently some of their grant funding came from the EU, as if that’s some sort of smoking gun. Did their bias lead them to an invalid conclusion? Do you believe it did? Do you have a reason to believe it did? If so, state it. If not, what was the point in making your comment other than to sow doubt?

saltysalt 2y ago
Asking questions is how we learn. If I disagreed, I would have wrote that instead.
- stouset 2y ago
  What, exactly, were you hoping to learn by accusing Airparif and the EU of bias? All this time I’ve been asking questions of you, hoping to learn about your thought process: Who should be performing these measurements? Who should be funding them? Who is someone without bias in the outcome of this process? What is an example of any result on any topic you accept as having been produced by an unbiased party with unbiased funding sources? What do you think are deficiencies in this research caused by the authors’ biases? Not only won’t you even attempt to answer these excruciatingly simple questions, but you make it obvious that you have no desire to. So it seems more than just a little disingenuous to suddenly hold up “just asking questions” as a virtue when you have zero interest in answering any yourself.
  - saltysalt 2y ago
    You should try addressing my original question, rather than deflecting with yours. Have you provided any evidence of their independence? But you clearly can't. I give up.
    - stouset 2y ago
      This is ridiculous. The standard isn’t “are they unbiased” because it is utterly unachievable. You know this and you cling to it anyway. What matters is whether their bias materially influenced their conclusions. They have provided analysis and data backing that analysis. It is now up to you as a skeptic to find fault in that. “They are biased” is lazy, intellectually dishonest, and utterly unconvincing. It is a canned response that can be given to literally every conclusion ever reached and so can (and has been) dismissed out of hand.

saltysalt 2y ago

Asking questions is how we learn. If I disagreed, I would have wrote that instead.

stouset 2y ago
What, exactly, were you hoping to learn by accusing Airparif and the EU of bias? All this time I’ve been asking questions of you, hoping to learn about your thought process: Who should be performing these measurements? Who should be funding them? Who is someone without bias in the outcome of this process? What is an example of any result on any topic you accept as having been produced by an unbiased party with unbiased funding sources? What do you think are deficiencies in this research caused by the authors’ biases? Not only won’t you even attempt to answer these excruciatingly simple questions, but you make it obvious that you have no desire to. So it seems more than just a little disingenuous to suddenly hold up “just asking questions” as a virtue when you have zero interest in answering any yourself.
- saltysalt 2y ago
  You should try addressing my original question, rather than deflecting with yours. Have you provided any evidence of their independence? But you clearly can't. I give up.
  - stouset 2y ago
    This is ridiculous. The standard isn’t “are they unbiased” because it is utterly unachievable. You know this and you cling to it anyway. What matters is whether their bias materially influenced their conclusions. They have provided analysis and data backing that analysis. It is now up to you as a skeptic to find fault in that. “They are biased” is lazy, intellectually dishonest, and utterly unconvincing. It is a canned response that can be given to literally every conclusion ever reached and so can (and has been) dismissed out of hand.