No, but how do I know that the authors used the same methodology? The most they say about it is "we developed our own methodology by guessing what they did, and we changed stuff around until the results from our methodology matched their results", which is very unconvincing to me.
The fact that they had to guess what the original author did is already an issue in itself. What we see here is that: 1. the original author did not sufficiently document their methodology and 2. when a best effort at reproducing the results is applied and we look deeper, we then discover that the results are wacky.
When someone comes along and proclaims 2+2=5, just because someone is right that they're incorrect doesn't mean their own assertion that 2+2=3 is any more correct, or that their reasoning for believing the original person was wrong has any validity.
Being accidentally correct is only barely better than being wrong, and for many uses (such as when the reasoning is extrapolated and used elsewhere) is no better at all.
They're not claiming 2+2=3, they're showing that the same methodology that proclaimed 2+2=5 also proclaims (as best as they can determine give the flawed documentation of the methodology) that 3+3=7, 1+1=3 and 17+17=137
They didn't! They mentioned receiving "eight lines of code" and, at the end of the article, write:
> It is especially telling that no matter what landmark we applied to the methodology, we have yet to get a negative result. There is, in fact, a real chance that you simply cannot get a negative result from this method.
My guess: The code is not shareable. Maybe its method is laughably disprovable?
Not that I can see. They claim to have reverse engineered the methodology, but they have not obviously published what they came up with. They also have no explanation as to why they can find positive correlations with all kinds of locations but no negative correlations with anything.
There is a quote in the article suggesting that they don't understand why the method is failing [0] because if they completely understood the mathematics they wouldn't say it. But their argument is that the results are obviously stupid for 2 reasons. Which is sufficient to stop looking. If they are correct on those two points then the method is faulty.
1) If applied to any landmark, that landmark causes significant cancer deaths.
2) The result is impossible because these people aren't exposed to anything from the nuclear power plants. The average nuclear plant is a remarkably environmentally-friendly thing.
[0] "There is, in fact, a real chance that you simply cannot get a negative result from this method."
hatthew · · focus · HN ↗
barney54 · · focus · HN ↗
hatthew · · focus · HN ↗
IMTDb · · focus · HN ↗
kbenson · · focus · HN ↗
Being accidentally correct is only barely better than being wrong, and for many uses (such as when the reasoning is extrapolated and used elsewhere) is no better at all.
cwillu · · focus · HN ↗
shoobiedoo · · focus · HN ↗
neolefty · · focus · HN ↗
> It is especially telling that no matter what landmark we applied to the methodology, we have yet to get a negative result. There is, in fact, a real chance that you simply cannot get a negative result from this method.
My guess: The code is not shareable. Maybe its method is laughably disprovable?
amluto · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
roenxi · · focus · HN ↗
1) If applied to any landmark, that landmark causes significant cancer deaths.
2) The result is impossible because these people aren't exposed to anything from the nuclear power plants. The average nuclear plant is a remarkably environmentally-friendly thing.
[0] "There is, in fact, a real chance that you simply cannot get a negative result from this method."