The second is procedural: was the experiment conducted correctly? Well, because this is the Post, it isn't even an accurate depiction of the original article in the Mirror (which is ... some vague UK version of the Post, mainly stories about how a C-list celeb combed their hair.)
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For instance, the Mirror only lists one Cancer (Robert Maudsley), and four Leos. The Post has inexplicably reduced the number of Leos to two - actually leaving out a serial killer who terrified me as a child: John George Haigh, the Acid Bath Murderer.
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He killed six people, and dissolved their bodies in acid before forging documents to access their funds. He missed the gallstones. I saw pictures of them in a book. There was something quite ... stark about them. I still remember the photo.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Haigh#%22Acid_Bath%22_murders …
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But even the article in the Mirror: what determines the full list of 'serial killers'? There isn't a methodology, it's just a series of names chosen for convenience. A serious investigation would need a definitive method of approaching the question: "construct a list...
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of alllllllllllll the serial killers, ever". There is no such list, of course. Do war crimes count? What countries? What timeframe? How can we be sure we found all the non-English-speaking murderers? etc.
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The third is mathematical. Obviously, the article says 'majority' and then lists 8 killers out of a list of 35. Not a majority. But let's *assume both the above are true* and approach the question 'are there significantly more Taurus serial killers than chance'?
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We can model this easily. Let's take 35 people and split them entirely at random into 12 'zodiac bins' 1000 times. What's a typical figure for the highest value? Remember, we want to know if 8 is unusually high.
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We don't need to do any statistics here - you can see 8 is a very typical highest value for our randomly distributed killers, slightly higher than the mode but quite close to the center of the distribution.pic.twitter.com/WJ0UGMP8Ko
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We see all of the above in science all the time: (1) Absent, partial, or weak theory. (2) Incomplete or untrustworthy methodology or procedures. (3) Incorrect or unjustifiable calculations. Tolerance / likelihood of each changes markedly between fields!
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And scientists think differently, due to their work, their field, and their personal idiosyncrasies. My boi
@GidMK, who yells at alt-med cretins on the internet all day, would probably first think "astrology is silly". But, when I clicked this idly before, my first thought was...2 replies 0 retweets 16 likesShow this thread


My bet is that this is paid media attention for a security company or something. Smells like that flavor of nonsense
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Replying to @GidMK @jamesheathers
Dang, I was off Book promo. Close, thopic.twitter.com/ZDOJnutyBm
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Replying to @GidMK @jamesheathers
@MrMMarsh used to do a lot of great stuff looking at the whole "advertising posing as science" thing, it's a truly absurd field of hilarious nonsense0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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