In October 2019, a state court determined that North Carolina’s congressional districts had been severely gerrymandered and struck down the state’s map . The court’s ruling was informed, in part, by tens of thousands of alternative maps demonstrating that the district boundaries had very likely been manipulated for political gain, the very definition of gerrymandering. Researchers had generated a slew of alternative, computer-generated maps designed to help identify potential patterns of bias. The approach is increasingly used, alongside other tests, to ferret out alleged gerrymandering. District manipulations can be so subtle that they’re undetectable just by looking at them. “The eyeball test is no good,” says Jonathan Katz, a political scientist and statistician at Caltech. U.S. states redraw their district lines every 10 years to adjust for changing demographics picked up by the national census. The last round a decade ago raised eyebrows, most notably for districts drawn in Mich...
To err is human, which is really not a very good excuse. And to err as a scientist is worse, of course, because depending on science is supposed to be the best way for people to make sure they’re right. But since scientists are human (most of them, anyway), even science is never free from error. In fact, mistakes are fairly common in science, and most scientists tell you they wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s because making mistakes is often the best path to progress. An erroneous experiment may inspire further experiments that not only correct the original error, but also identify new previously unsuspected truths. Still, sometimes science’s errors can be rather embarrassing. Recently much hype accompanied a scientific report about the possibility of life on Venus. But instant replay review has now raised some serious concerns about that report’s conclusion. Evidence for the gas phosphine, a chemical that supposedly could be created only by life (either microbes or well-trained...
Comments
Post a Comment