[LEAPSECS] final report of the UK leap seconds dialog

Thu Feb 5 09:39:30 EST 2015

I trust Kevin Birth.  Withoutquestioning the efforts of the stakeholders such as Peter Vince to beimpartial, it is well known that there are dozens of ways a person makes hisopinions known inadvertently.  A slight change of tone, a choice of words,a brief look, was all it took for the OJ Simpson jurors to know what the otherswere thinking.   Books have been written about body language and facialsignals people give off and others pick up.   Also, there were overtpro-leap seconds statements like the one from the Science Minister.  

Sorry, I was putoff by some of the anti-American and anti-finance statements.  I alsodidn't think much of the Christian who said changing time offended hisreligious views.  I've read the Bible, and the Koran.  I wasn'tlooking for leap seconds back then, but I do remember that the Sun was made onthe fourth day.  The Bible does not mention the Earth as rotating, andbriefly alludes to a pillar holding up the sky.   Yet a religiousstakeholder quoted an information sheet saying the Earth was "God'sclock".  How can that be if there were days before there was a Sun?  Cesium atoms came before our Sun, according to the Big Bang, and (if you read between the lines) to the Bible too,

I see theculture thing was a big factor for some.  The WWI memorial whose sundialwould not mark 11 AM on Nov 11, was mentioned, but I can't believe this memorial was brought up when the idea of switching England's time zone was floated.   Or if WWI had ended on the 9th day of September,would England not have daylight time so it can mark 9 AM correctly on that day?  Do all the British really eat lunch at 12:00?  I know plenty of Americanswho eat as early as 11 or as late as 1.   I am convinced that culturemeans being able to pretend UTC is still GMT, and this survey had aforegone conclusion.  
They showed a movie fast-forwarding 600 years to the future.  I wonder if everything was the same except that clock readings were different - or were children going to school in the dark.  It doesn't say.
All that said, the report was not entirely biased.  According to it, astronomers do not agree with another one of Seaman's unjustified claims, that this would be hugely expensive for them.   I guess that's why the IAU ended up not taking an official stand.  If Seaman could have convinced the other astronomers that getting rid of leap seconds had large costs, they would have gone his way.

      From: Kevin Birth <Kevin.Birth at qc.cuny.edu>
 To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com> 
 Sent: Thursday, February 5, 2015 9:06 AM
 Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] final report of the UK leap seconds dialog

I've looked at the report and it is bad social science.  The protocols are
too leading to provide reliable information.  Basically, from a
methodological perspective, the deck was stacked in this "research" to
ensure the results it obtained.

That said, the report does reflect a dominant opinion of the UK if for no
other reason that it reflects how sophisticated some stakeholders in the
UK have become at pushing public opinion in a particular direction.
Embedded in the questioning and report was even former minister Willets'
concern about US influence.

There is an incredible need to sound social scientific research on the
consequences of eliminating leap seconds, but a protocol based on
information sessions followed by soliciting opinions is completely
unsound.  In social scientific research, it is extremely easy to shape the
opinions of those studied so that those opinions reflect one's own views
rather than learning anything new. In fact, most of the report merely
echoes things that have already be said on this listserv.

This report does demonstrate how hard it is to do quality social
scientific research on this topic, and how likely those who enter into
such research with an opinion will shape that research to support their
opinion.

Cheers,

Kevin

Kevin K. Birth, Professor
Department of Anthropology
Queens College, City University of New York
65-30 Kissena Boulevard
Flushing, NY 11367
telephone: 718/997-5518

"We may live longer but we may be subject to peculiar contagion and
spiritual torpor or illiteracies of the imagination" --Wilson Harris

"Tempus est mundi instabilis motus, rerumque labentium cursus." --Hrabanus
Maurus

On 2/4/15 9:49 AM, "Steve Allen" <sla at ucolick.org> wrote:

>The final report of the UK leap seconds dialog is at
>http://leapseconds.co.uk/reports-findings-dialogue/
>
>Search for the word "congestion" where it looks as if it once had a
>footnote mentioning a system which has avoided leap second problems by
>adopting a purely atomic time scale.
>
>--
>Steve Allen                <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
>UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB  Natural Sciences II, Room 165    Lat
>+36.99855
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