What a bitter, bitter old man.

[elfs]

John McCain once pledged to overturn Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Then, facing a harsh election against a right-wing foe, he said he was not in favor of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but he would never overturn a working policy unless the Pentagon told him that doing so would not be harmful to troop recruitment or morale.

Over the weekend, there was much buzz over a leak from the Pentagon regarding the ongoing troop morale study, the one that asked such penetrating questions as, "If Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed and you are assigned to bathroom facilities with an open bay shower that someone you believe to be a gay or lesbian Service member also used, which are you most likely to do?"

The survey, painfully and obviously skewed to make the matter as contentious as possible, instead turned in a result that, for the most part, revealed that troop morale, retention, and enlistment would not be adversely affected.

McCain's response came this weekend when he said, "We need to look at whether it's the kind of study that we wanted."

Translation: It didn't say what I assumed it would say, therefore something is wrong with the study and not with me. And as a Congressman, I can order the Pentagon to do the study over and over again until it finally says what I want it to say.

Comments

[kengr]

You actually expected something different?

After that video of him responding over and over "The policy is not not pursue" (or words to that effect) in response to questions about *actions* (documented actions at that) that were in violation of said policy, he's lost all credibility with anyone with a brain unless his denial suits their agenda.

Heck, his response reminds me of back when I was in High School. 18-year-olds had just been given the vote. So one of Washington's senator's spoke at the school.

The seniors, being of voting age, got to be there in the auditorium. The rest of us got to watch on closed circuit TV (the school had a *good* student A/V crew).

After his speech, there was a Q&A. And he lost any chance of anybody there vooting for him.

Because we could *hear* the question from the audience. We then heard his aide "repeat" a somewhat altered version. Then the senator "repeated" a still more altered version. And hre then altered something completely different (but theoretically with a *tiny* connection to his version of the question).

Like I said, even the kids who were of his party were talking about his utter failure at honesty/integrity in playing that sort of game with a legitimate question.

So, as I said, his visit *cost* him votes.

So McCain is doing the same thing. He's alienating voters. The ones who agree with his nonsense are apt to vote for somebody else who is more openly in their camp.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

but, but, didn't you see the memo? politics and media nowadays is all about confirming existing biases because that is the surest path to currying votes, increasing viewership and gaining market share. We can't go contradicting biases or people might start questioning the idea that strongly held beliefs are the same thing as facts and *then* where would we be?! come on...

/sarcasm

it's kinda sad. I can see why Elf would be disappointed, because McCain's had occasional glimmers of a decent person underneath the party line BS. More than one person said to me of McCain and his concession speech after the '08 results were in, that if the guy making that speech had been the guy running for president, he probably would have won. (even with Mz. Psychochick as VP)

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Or maybe, just *maybe*, John McCain only said what he said back when he said it, that he thought that "When the Pentagon says it's okay" basically equated to "When hell freezes over". This provided him an easy escape should anyone actually call him on his actions.

But it seems that in Senator McCain's little world, hell *has* frozen over, causing a few political paradoxes, which of course, he's dealing with politically.

For all intents and purposes, he expected military culture to never change. But then, the culture of the young people joining the military started changing. And the older people in the military started retiring.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

While I'm glad the results turned out the way they did, I think McCain's response is actually appropriate: there ARE a non-negligible number of real homophobes who are enlisted in the military. If they are being under-represented or misrepresented in the survey results, then pushing for policy changes knowing that to be the case is equally inappropriate.

Personally, I don't like McCain, but I do think that if a decision like repeal of DADT is to be made (and, personally, I really hope it is) ... it should be done with accurate facts, not just facts that favor one side or the other.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Um, in science, when you set out to prove one thing, and fail spectacularly and prove that the opposite is true, that's still a discovery. If anything, it proves that your discovery is *not* biased, and that evidence is overwhelmingly against your theory, proving some other theory or revealing an entirely new theory.

But in politics, it means you need to tweak the numbers some more.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

I thought science of all valued repeatable observations. One experiment isn't enough to prove anything.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Of course, but a credible one experiment is an experiment *worth* repeating. :)

The first effort at finding extra-solar planets was totally bungled, but the same sort of equipment and (slightly modified) procedure was used in later discoveries.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

And as a physicist-by-training, let me clarify a point about science:

Science can' prove a damn thing. However, it can disprove things.

So, when Doing Science, you really create a model of the world, then beat the hell out of it, by performing experiments to prove it wrong. Over and over. And the experiment has to be reproducable in order to prove that the results were not random.



I'm not trying to quibble with gromm's comment or belittle him. I just want as many people as possible to be aware of the questions you need to ask when someone says, "Studies show…" Specifically, you should ask, "Umm… what was the study trying to disprove? What was The Question the researchers were asking?"

(Note: By "The Question," I don't mean specific survey questions. Every experiment, every survey has A Question behind it. Always one; too difficult to interpret the results otherwise. And, oddly, The Question is in the form of a statement.

And the experiment has to account for every other Question that could potentially produce the same result.

Otherwise, the experiment is very poorly designed and, therefore, unreliable.)


Y'see, if the study was designed to ask, say: "Will lifting DADT decrease unit cohesion," then the study is useless. There's nothing falisfiable in that question, so there's no way possible to find a clear answer for it. Lifting DADT will obviously have some effect on unit cohesion in some units due to some soldiers. The study, therfore, is meaningless.

OTOH, suppose a study is designed with this assumption, "Lifting DADT will not reduce unit cohesion to a degree large enough to be noticable (vs. noise)."

That is falsifiable. The last bit about "noticable vs. noise" is the key bit. Like I said before, we already know that there will be some change to unit cohesion. But is that effect any different from the soldiers answering the survey questions randomly?

If it is, then you've answered, "Yes," to The Question (which was, "Will lifting DADT reduce unit cohesion to a clearly noticable degree?"). If you could easily explain the study results by saying the soldiers answered randomly or lied, then you've proven … nothing, one way or the other, leaving The Question unanswered.


This is why we all need to ask, "What was The Question you were going for? How did you test it; did you turn The Question into a falsifiable statement and design the experiment around that?"