I read something on FoxNews that make me wonder if Obama ever took a science class.
President Obama brushed off criticism over his administration's inaccurate reporting on job creation Wednesday, telling Fox News the accounting is an "inexact science" and that any errors are a "side issue" when compared with the goal of turning the economy around. He said job growth is his No.1 responsibility.
It is true that there are inexact sciences; psychology and economics are just a few. The reason that they are "inexact" is that theories found in these fields must take into account numerous 'free-radical' variables and these variables can have adverse affects on a theories predictive viability. However, even though these are "inexact" sciences, like in any other science, theories are confirmed by their data and in these areas though there are 'free-radicals' we still want a theory to be supported by a considerable amount of data in order to validate the conclusions made by that theory. If a theory's conclusion is not support by its data, even in "inexact" sciences, the theory and its conclusions must be rejected as being invalid. This is taught in every single science class that I ever took in school. Maybe they did not teach this at Harvard. Data confirms or disconfirms a theory in any science, plain and simple. (Actually, what I should say is that a theory is confirmed by its instances, i.e., events that validate the predictions made by the theory. However, if theory predicts x but the data says not-x, i.e., (~x), then the theory is disconfirmed by data that is contrary to theory's predictions.)
Ok, so now turn to Obama's claim that errors made when accounting for the number of jobs "created" by the stimulus bill is a side issue. That claim is purely false because if his conclusions that the stimulus is helping to create jobs but that conclusion is not supported by the data, then Obama's theory that the stimulus is helping the economy must be rejected. The accurate data says that a claim is false, then one cannot assert that that claim is true, but this is what Obama has just asserted. The data that Obama is basing his assertion, i.e., the stimulus is aiding the economy, is false for the following reasons:
1. It was claimed that if the stimulus was not passed then unemployment would reach 8%; however, unemployment is at 10.2% (perhaps even greater) and continues to increase.
2. The numbers of "jobs created" as reported by http://www.recovery.org have been shown to be false but Obama has been based many of their claims about the growth of the economy upon the figures given by this website.
Given (1) and (2) are true in that the data is not supporting Obama's claims, then Obama's claims that the stimulus is aiding the economy and that the errors are simply "side issues" are false.
