The Interpreter; Bayes Theorem; Nephites and Mayans

[_Lemmie]

Brant Gardner replies and B shears replies back:

Brant A. Gardner
on May 20, 2019 at 10:27 am said:

One of the problems we have in discussing this article is that it had a limited scope, but the objections run outside of the scope. For example, you note that “if there is no evidence that the Mayans had herds, there is no reason Dr. Coe would mention this fact in a book about the Maya.” The point is correct, but the evidence is incorrect. There is mounting evidence that herds were kept (and probably early–that appears to be the best explanation for a particular find in El Mirador). So, herds could be a “hit” for the Book of Mormon–but since it wasn’t mentioned in Coe, it couldn’t be used.

Using all of what we know about the Maya to discuss a comparison to only one book (which is an overview and never intended to be comprehensive) is arguing beyond the parameters set in the paper.


Billy Shears
on May 20, 2019 at 12:03 pm said:

My point is simply that the parameters set in the paper have a statistical bias. While it is fine to say that there are 131 positive correspondences between the Maya and the Book of Mormon and only 6 negative correspondences, there isn’t a statistically valid way to plug that into Bayes’ formula and evaluate how likely the Book of Mormon is to be historical. Valid Bayesian analysis requires looking at all of the evidence–not just the evidence that is selected based upon the parameters of comparing two books for correspondences and contradictions.

[_Res Ipsa]

This is a serious flaw in the analysis. I still don’t grasp the math, but I don’t need it to see the flaw. Something mentioned in the Book of Mormon but not The Maya, and vice versa, is evidence against the history hypothesis. It may be weak evidence, but using the Dale’s methodology, it should have been assigned the minimum value of two. All one would have to find is a total of 131 examples of this to cancel out the Dale’s most certain conclusion in the history of the universe.

[_Res Ipsa]

Shears has pointed out the the Dales rigged the game. Gardner responds that what he’s forgetting is that this is a rigged game. I thought the man was smarter than that.

[_Lemmie]

Brant Gardner is arguing this:

Using all of what we know about the Maya to discuss a comparison to only one book (which is an overview and never intended to be comprehensive) is arguing beyond the parameters set in the paper.

Meanwhile, people are responding to the authors, who make very different statements. From the authors, the final paragraph before the appendices begin:

Using Dr. Coe’s own book, we find that early Mesoamerica has a very great deal indeed to do with the Book of Mormon. The cumulative weight of these correspondences, analyzed using Bayesian statistics, provides overwhelming support for the historicity of the Book of Mormon as an authentic, factual record set in ancient Mesoamerica.

So Gardner sets limits now to the author's conclusions. Those limits should have been part of peer review, and been incorporated into the paper. Having an editor change the author's position now in the comments, in order to insist that objections stay within his narrowly defined scope, while the paper itself goes well beyond that scope, is just bizarre.

[_Philo Sofee]

Lemmee:
So Gardner sets limits now to the author's conclusions. Those limits should have been part of peer review, and been incorporated into the paper. Having an editor change the author's position now in the comments, in order to insist that objections stay within his narrowly defined scope, while the paper itself goes well beyond that scope, is just bizarre.

Pretzels.....its pretzels all the way down for apologists......

[_Lemmie]

Shears has pointed out the the Dales rigged the game. Gardner responds that what he’s forgetting is that this is a rigged game. I thought the man was smarter than that.

Exactly.

But seriously, I too am surprised by Gardner's involvement. I always appreciate his careful and well thought-out comments, but he is in a completely untenable position here. Why didn't peer review filter out those extreme comments that TWO editors have now stated are beyond the scope of the actual analysis in the paper?

[_Lemmie]

its pretzels all the way down for apologists

That sums it up entirely!

[_Res Ipsa]

Shears has pointed out the the Dales rigged the game. Gardner responds that what he’s forgetting is that this is a rigged game. I thought the man was smarter than that.

Exactly.

But seriously, I too am surprised by Gardner's involvement. I always appreciate his careful and well thought-out comments, but he is in a completely untenable position here. Why didn't peer review filter out those extreme comments that TWO editors have now stated are beyond the scope of the actual analysis in the paper?

The paper is beyond bad. The peer reviewers’ failure to catch that is inexcusable.

[_Lemmie]

Brant A. Gardner
on May 19, 2019 at 9:59 am said:

...Carefully examining the text for these complex interactions is a long way away from the statistical approach of the paper, so I won’t go into them. However, because I have have seen them (and written about them elsewhere), I also cannot allow a simple suggestion of a possibility stand as any kind of objection to the paper.

??? What? The authors have argued very specifically that they are "...carefully examining the text for these complex interactions..."

The authors on their careful examination:

... for purposes of our Bayesian statistical analysis, we accept the universe of facts summarized by Dr. Coe in The Maya as essentially true. We then rate the value of each “guess” in the Book of Mormon (or statement of fact) as evidence using three criteria:

1. Is it specific? Is it clear that the guess in the Book of Mormon is directly comparable to a statement of fact in The Maya?

2. Is it specific and detailed? Are there important details in each guess in the Book of Mormon that correspond to at least some of the details given in The Maya?

3. Is it specific, detailed, and unusual? Is the statement of fact in the Book of Mormon (or “guess”) unusual in the sense that someone writing the book in the early 1800s would probably not have the background or knowledge to include this statement of fact in his work of “fiction,” that is, the Book of Mormon?

Then Brant argues this process of comparing the statements is "...a long way away from the statistical approach of the paper..."

No, it is the exact heart of the paper:

The numbers 2, 10, and 50 are the strength of the evidence for the hypothesis, that is, the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction. The numbers 0.5, 0.1, and 0.02 are the corresponding strength of the evidence against the hypothesis; that is, these are points of evidence that support the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Illustrative examples are given below

I don't understand what is going on here. It almost seems as though Gardner has not actually read the paper, or else he disagrees with the premises of the paper so much that he cannot even support stating them.

[_Res Ipsa]

He may have read it, but he hasn’t carefully thought through what the authors actually did.