We seek to understand the world, but it's made harder when part of it is hidden from us.
Leaked documents, represent a kind of ground truth, showing how the world really works. Telling us what's for sale, what the real agendas are, how powerful spies are, and how coordinated governments are. They are almost the opposite to conspiracy theories, as they present observations that can prune conspiracy theories.
But there are too many documents to read, so let's compare notes. What surprised you and caused you to update your view of the world?
Feel free to give a low effort reply, it's better than nothing.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I remember this one. It got reported as climate scientists hiding rising temperatures in their data, which was then trivially debunked. It was actually that they had to apply statistical obstacles to hide the fact that their proxy data was badly flawed. They had used ice core and tree ring measurements to estimate temperatures over the 2000-year period before modern records. (This was and is standard practice.) But starting at around the 1960s, when such real-world data became available, the proxy data wildly diverged. The proxy models predicted lowering temperatures, while the real-world data showed rising temperatures. So, instead of throwing out the models and truncating a 2000-year theory to a few decades, they used "Mike's Nature Trick" to "hide the decline".
As I recall, the paper discussed here was influential but not ultimately important. However, the same methodologies were used to create the famous "Hockey Stick Graph," which purported to show that global temperatures had been flat or wven mildly declining until modern industry and CO2 emissions. It was probably this graph, or the idea of this graph, that did more than anything else to convince the public that climate change was a real and present threat. I haven't seen it in a while.
More options
Context Copy link