|
|
Duncan Kunz
Joined: 19 Oct 2000
Posts: 582
|
Quantitative Research Methodologies
 Tue Jul 31, 2001 4:39 pm
|
 |
|
This post started out as my response to my colleague Mr. Chemtrailsorg's excellent comment on the important of certain maeasurments to validate the chemtrail hypothesis. However, based on its length, I believe that a separate thread may be more beneficial. I look forward to the forum's comments or critiques.
Admittedly, there are those skeptics who, like many chemtrail-hypothesis proponents, have so much emotion tied up in their views that almost no evidence will convince them one way or another. Most others, including myself, would be convinced of anomalous behavior simply by a sound body of evidence. Our colleague Mr. Thermit's recent work on altitude and military-civilian aircraft altitude correlation is an important step in that direction.
I have been giving quite a bit of thought to the methodology of data collection to test the chemtrail hypothesis. Here are some inputs.
1. While developing a correlation between aircraft altitude and appearance of contrails is an interesting project and one that should be undertaken, I do not consider it the highest priority. Here's why:
Although contrails tend to form under certain atmospheric conditions (temperature and relative humidity), there appears to be controversy regarding the exact conditions under which they do so, especially the "start-and-stop" phenomena. Temperature/humidity considerations are only a part of the equation; shape of the airfoil/fuselage, temperature of the exhaust, and perhaps combustion components all may play a part in the presence or absence of contrails.
Also, there is a significant difference between atmospheric conditions on the ground and at altitude (this is why some researchers' reports of contrail formation (presumably at yyy feet) with an ambient temperature reading of 60 deg F (at xxx feet) are, at best, unreliable).
Let's say a detailed altitude/contrail formation study showed that the vast majority of contrails formed above 6000 m. Anti-chems might say that such an observation proves that, since the contrails only appear at "nominal" altitudes, the contrails are normal (which may be true, but is logically invalid). Pro-chems, on the other hand, might say that TPTB know this and are flying their "sprayplanes" at nominal altitudes to disguise their activities (which may be true, but is also logically invalid).
We end up with sound data - a good thing - but it will not convince the die-hards on either side of the argument!
2. It seems to me that any coherent study of contrails - with the goal of proving or disproving the chemtrail hypothesis - should be based on (1) what we can find out through structured observation; (2) what is relevant to the question of possible dangers of the putative chemtrails; and (3) what can be reported and repeated among the scientific community (that's us).
Attempting to tie the contrails to any other politico-military-economic scheme is at best irrelevant; at worst, impossible. For example, few people outside the chemtrail community believe that HAARP is anything but a typical government-sponsored scientific study (or boondoggle, as I personally believe). But in any case, it's irrelevant. Chemtrails either exist or they do not; trying to determine tie-ins with any other hypothesis, while good cocktail-hour conversation, is not going to help us determine the validity of the chemtrail hypothesis itself.
In a way, these tie-in attempts are like the guy looking at his Father's Day gift before he unwraps it and going through a major argument in his head as just what color tie it is. Hey, it might be a pair of socks instead! Determine if there is any validity to the belief in chemtrails, then look for tie-ins - otherwise we're just bouncing around in all directions and nothing really gets done.
So how do we determine the validity of the chemtrail hypothesis? (For the purpose of this discussion I will define "chemtrails" as something deliberately exhausted from aircraft that's not part of the normal combustion process that may be harmful to health.)
Measure the contents of the exhaust plume.
Testing rainfall for pH, trace metals, and other anomalous materials is fun and exciting, but really doesn't tell us much. It there's a high pH reported, it could simply being people not knowing enough to use properly calibrated testing media; or, the acid levels could be the result of an industrial polluter five thousand miles away. The same argument goes for other solutes, metals in suspension, or anything else in the rainfall sample.
The same thing goes for the 'fibrils' recently popularized by some persons. What the 'fibrils' are, what kind of flashlight you use to see them, whether or not they fluoresce, whatever microscopic or chemical evaluations show - it's meaningless. We don't know where they come from, how long they've been there; and any attempt to tie them to contrails is simply speculation.
So, how do you measure the contents of the exhaust plume? There are two approaches.
The first is in-situ collection. I will not bore you with my complete failure to interest people in getting a sponsor such as Merle Haggard to assist; my posts here quickly degenerated into silliness, such as working up a "partnership" between Merle Haggard and Mark Sky (!) My posts on the same subject at the Seattle board, the Carnicom board, and the debunker's board were met with complete silence. Sometimes I think that very few people on these boards really care to find out the truth about contrails, but that's a different story....
In any event, in-situ collection and subsequent analyses is probably cost-prohibitive, which leaves us with remote absorption spectroscopy. How accurate is it and how much will it cost? I don't know; but I believe that if all the people involved were to spend one-tenth of the time they spend posting about the problem in working some overtime, we'd be able to afford it in a week! Measuring the contents of the exhaust plume is the single most important step. It will tell us, with no doubt or equivocating, whether or not there is anything anomalous in aircraft exhaust. Period.
Determine if a correlation exists between contrails and health.
Anecdotal reports are, for all practical purposes, worthless. There are nineteen reasons why someone seeing suspect contrails might have an asthma attack later in the day, only one or two of which might show a causal rather than casual relationship. Your great-aunt's lung cancer, while undoubtedly a tragedy, simply cannot be show to be caused by cigarettes, second-hand barbecue-smoke, exhaust from the Nissan Xterra - or contrails.
One approach that makes sense is to:
(A) Determine, by pre-agreement, (1) what constitutes heavy contrail exposure; (2) correct for time for the effluent to settle; (3) calculate the "offset" between release point and ground contamination caused by winds and other atmospheric phenomena.
(B) Take detailed and accurate surveys of admissions to hospitals, clinics, and doctors' offices for suspicious medical presentations (rashes, cardiopulmonary complaints, respiratory ailments, etc.).
(C) Account for non-anomalous causatives (e.g., temperature inversions, high ambient pollution, hot weather, incidence of non-contrail induced influenza, the demographics of the reporting community) and correct the sampling for such causatives.
(D) Use simple regression techniques to determine if there is a correlation between heavy "spray days" and heightened admissions to health facilities.
Now walk with me here for a minute.
If Item 1 (measurements of the exhaust plume) and Item 2 (correlation between contrails) are both negative, we've been wasting our time for three years, and we can all go home and play with the dogs.
If Item 1 is positive and Item 2 is negative, then we can assume that certain contrails are anomalous, but they don't seem to be making us sick. We can then come up with another hypothesis as to why they're there, and try to determine whether or not that hypothesis holds up.
If Item 1 is negative and Item 2 is positive, then we might assume that, although we can't measure any anomalies in the exhaust, but there might be something there that's making the folks in the area sick. We'd then try to refine our plume-measurement to find out if there really is any stuff, and what it might be.
Finally, if Item 1 and Item 2 are positive, we'd have pretty good evidence that, yes, there is something different about those contrails, and, yes, that something could be making people sick.
THEN we could work the other hypotheses in and really try to get the results out to the mainstream press.
Regards,
------------------
Duncan Kunz / duncan.kunz@prodigy.net
Mesa AZ / 480-891-2525
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Duncan Kunz on 07-31-2001] |
| |
|
|
Thermit
Joined: 08 Jul 2000
Posts: 3136
Location: Texas |
|
Tue Jul 31, 2001 7:16 pm
|
|
|
Thanks Duncan for your logical analysis and input.
I think that some effort should be given to the spectroscopy idea. It removes many of the legal and financial issues associated with an in-situ collection type undertaking and provides the means for repeated measurements which is certainly very important. I would recommend that Flight Exlorer be utilized in conjunction with such an undertaking to determine if each sample is from an indentifiable or unidentifiable flight. Adding a blind or double-blind aspect to the study could enhance the validity of such a study.
Personally, I feel that the health correlation testing will be more problematic. This being because, IMHO, the effects of Chemtrails upon health are not universal, but rather seem to be concentrated in certain individuals. Just like allergies and chemical sensitivities vary from person to person. For example, 3T3L1, our Science moderator, became aware of some possible correlation with her health and Chemtrails, although I have never experienced any such correlation. Perhaps the research could concentrate on people who do feel they have such sensitivities. Although doing a blind study (keeping them from observing the sky during the research period) will be tricky! 
[Edited 2 times, lastly by Thermit on 05-18-2002] |
| |
|
|
Duncan Kunz
Joined: 19 Oct 2000
Posts: 582
|
|
Wed Aug 01, 2001 5:51 pm
|
|
|
Dear Mr. Thermit:
There's no question that attempting to correlate contrails with health problems would be difficult. I doubt if the CDC breaks out its reporting by a small enough area to make good research for local incidents tied in with regimes of heavy contrail concentration. I am not aware of any other Internet-accessible health reports, so we'd have to really do some homework in even designing a methodology - and just as much homework in implementing it.
But I disagree that we should concentrate on "people who ... feel they have such sensitivities". This is because of what statisticians call the "halo effect". People who believe they are sensitive can believe that for several reasons: (1) they really are; (2) they have some aspects of hypochondria; (3) they want to believe that they are, which could lead to an unconscious reporting of health problems where none are measurable.
Let's turn it around. I could guarantee to "disprove" chemtrails if I asked a selected group of people to try to correlate their illnesses to contrails in their neighborhood - especially if the were all like Jay Reynolds! But such a "study' would be ludicrous because of the bias in the reporting individuals.
I'm not meaning to cast aspersions on Dr. 3T3L1, by any means. I consider her an esteemed colleague and an honest person, who, like you and me, is using what she can to determine the validity of the chemtrail hypothesis.
But my point is, that if we take anything but a random sample of people who present themselves for health concerns, we are simply adding another variable to the study. The question we should be addressing goes something like this:
"Is there a correlation between the appearance of persistent contrails and certain health complaints of the general population? If such a statistically-valid correlation exists, a follow-on study might be to classify those people who actually did present themselves. At that time we'd see if there was a significant preponderance of "sensitives", lactating mothers, Hispanic teens, or any other population.
But we need a big sample for the study to be valid. The only way we could get that large sample (and avoid inserting an unnecessary variable) would be to go for the general population.
Regards,
------------------
Duncan Kunz / duncan.kunz@prodigy.net
Mesa AZ / 480-891-2525 |
| |
|
|
 
|
|
All times are GMT. The time now is Sat May 26, 2012 8:58 am
|
|
|
|
|
Login
