The Empathy of Mittens

[Alcon]

Ben -- I'd engage you on that claim, but the last time, you send me off exhaustively running regression analyses about whether gay marriage affected the divorce rate.  When they came back showing an inverse correlation between legalizing gay marriage and the relative change in the divorce rate between states, you dismissed it because it wasn't statistically significant.  In other words, you found weak evidence against your hypothesis, as opposed to any evidence for your hypothesis, but you affirmed your hypothesis anyway.

Children in interracial marriages also, all else being equal, have worse outcomes than comparable white couples.  Should the state legally restrict interracial marriage?  Isn't it in the interest of the state to encourage stable gay relationships, since gays adopt, unadopted foster children perform horribly on all metrics, and the evidence says stable gay relationships provide good outcomes in children?  There are so many holes in this logic.  I can't imagine how anyone could accept it...unless, of course, they were the sort of person who believes something until the opposite is proven to statistical significance, but demands no empirical evidence for his own beliefs.  Then I could totally see that!

This argument is just so intellectually bankrupt and laden with rationalization, it's almost painful.

[Alcon]

also, this:

"Why not tell her the truth? Tell her, 'I believe that my sexual desires are more important than the need for you to have a father.'

...is an incredibly mean-spirited, reductionist version of love.  I hope that's not how you see your relationships, with just the "heterosexual" variable flipped.  Terrible, man

[Alcon]

"Ben -- I'd engage you on that claim, but the last time, you send me off exhaustively running regression analyses about whether gay marriage affected the divorce rate.  When they came back showing an inverse correlation between legalizing gay marriage and the relative change in the divorce rate between states, you dismissed it because it wasn't statistically significant."

You did the analyses. It wasn't statistically significant. Ergo, there was no inverse correlation, simply noise. For a correlation to exist and not simply be an artifact of the sample it has to be statistically significant.

You know that's not how statistical significance works, and that it operates on a probabilistic spectrum.  But that's not the point:  Did you, or did you not, affirm your original hypothesis?  Do you, or do you not, still believe the claim you made originally?  I am pretty sure you didn't abandon it, but I may be wrong.

Change for change sake isn't sufficient. I realize you don't feel that way, but in order for a policy change to be enacted, it ought to provoke positive change. That did not happen. Ergo, I do not believe that the change is worth it. You're free to disagree with me, but we ran the numbers. No correlation. The problem is that there's just not enough gay people to move the overall numbers significantly in one direction or another. Even if there was a negative impact, it would not show.

So much awful here:

1. If there is a correlation, even if it doesn't reach statistical significance, the effect is more likely to be positive than negative.

2. When have I ever said that I don't think policies should have net-positive effects?  Sometimes the net-positives can be more abstract, so I don't want to be overly simplistic about it, but we both agree that policies should do good and not bad.

3. In sum, you are saying, "Eh, there's more likely to be a positive outcome than a negative one -- but screw it, it's not worth it."  Maybe there's an external reason for that but, all else being equal, this is a logically untenable argument.

Black/Black has worse outcomes than White/Black or White/White. Ergo, your thesis has a false premise.

How does that make for a false premise?  That doesn't even make sense.  What's the premise that's made false by this?

Anyway, your logic fails again.  Why throw money after incentivizing black/black couples to have children, if they have worse outcomes?  We should encourage them to marry white people, by that rationale.  The rationale here seems completely analogous, except partner racial preference is probably more flexible than sexual orientation; and shifting black/black marriages to interracial marriages would probably have relatively better outcomes than forcing gays to play straight.  Where there are differences in the analogy, they work against you.

Scarce dollars suggests that the state has an interest to spend those dollars on the best case scenario (married mother and father), not on alternatives.

Terrible response.  We have children who are waiting to be adopted.  Incentivizing gay relationships will increase in the number of gay couples seeking children to adopt, which is certainly a more efficacious use of societal resources than the foster care system.  You're identifying the wrong opportunity cost, presumably because you're ridiculous.

Now, if you have a specific point concerning this specific point, then fire away. Else, since you're an incredibly busy man, you should spend your precious time elsewhere.

I've consistently been really, really specific in my criticisms, to the point where I ran a regression analysis and debated statistical analysis with you.  This is totally bizarre if you're trying to zing me here.

[Alcon]

.

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When the first response is this:

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This tells me that I hit the nail square on the head.

People believe that men and women are interchangeable parts. They do not believe that there is a role or a need for fathers in the lives of their children.

All else being equal, your preference for a theoretical female partner -- the person you will love for your entire life -- can be reduced down to "sexual desire" and that's it?  That's what you've loved about the women you love, just sexual desire?

I really hope you just phrased it that way for rhetorical reasons.

[Alcon]

What, that legalization of gay marriage has a negative effect on divorce rates as a whole? No, I don't believe that to be the case. As you said, the evidence showed no correlation as a whole. That may change.

I suspect we will find a drop in overall marriage rates over time (ie, fewer people choosing to get married). We shall see.

...

There is nothing to indicate that the result we did get is anything other than random fluctuations.

...

I'm saying, "eh, that sucks. There's nothing to indicate any statistical correlation one way or another. This one's a punt".

You still are misconstruing how confidence intervals work.

Then I withdraw my comment. I apologize. I'm just saying, for me to support the policy requires a bigger jump than a statistically insignificant result. Surely you can respect that?

All else being equal, the evidence here is that the policy does more harm than good.  All else may not be equal, but if your argument is that we shouldn't treat a 51% chance as preferable to a 49% chance, I do disagree.

That interracial marriages do poorer than marriages that are single-race? If Black/Black does worse, then this premise is not true.

uh, considering that whites greatly outnumber blacks, that isn't necessarily true, even if it were relevant to my construction somehow (see below.)

Couple things here.

One, 'incentivization' comes into play with adoption. Yes, I think placements should be done to place with the best option available for the children.

Yes, and incentivizing gay people to enter relationships and then adopt is a much better option available than leaving them in foster homes because stable gay couples might have marginally inferior outcomes to stable heterosexual relationships (although I'm not sure the research actually agrees with that, but putting that aside for the moment...)

Two, I don't believe that gay people should be forced play straight. Never said that. It depends on the gay person. Do I believe they can be happy getting married to a woman, having children? Absolutely. Do I believe they will be happy never getting married at all? Absolutely. Not getting married is a perfectly valid option for gay men and women.

Yes, much as not getting married is a personally valid option for those in heterosexual unions (interracial or black/black) that aren't as high-outcome.  You do realize that this is not how you rebut a reductio ad absurdum?

Massachusetts closed down a Catholic charity devoted to adoption simply because they did placements in accordance to their Catholic faith.

Are their children waiting to be adopted? Absolutely. Is the ideology of the state more important than seeing these children placed? Also true. If the state does not want Catholic charities operating on Catholic lines, then I see no reason to argue why the Church should provide adoptions to gay men and women at all. Quid pro quo.

How does this rebut my point in any way, shape, or form?  Not all existing charities are Catholic.  Also, I doubt that your opposition to gay adoption by Catholic charities has anything to do with the state's action.  If it does, I don't think you mean "quid pro quo" (what for what?) as much as you mean "unethical passive-aggressive bull."

and again, how does this rebut my point?  it doesn't.  you're the worst.

I used to be on the other side of this argument, but, things change.

Yes, you converted to Catholicism.  I wonder if you knew how statistical significance worked beforehand.  There are people who agree with me who have terrible arguments to defend their views too.

I'd rather not resurrect another thread and another topic here, is all. That combined with your comment about how incredibly hard you worked and how strapped for time you were...

I ran a hell of a lot of data analysis for you to not bother to even understand how statistical significance works.

IT'S A CONTINUUM.

A CONTINUUM.

C-O-N-T-I-N-U-U-M.

you're the worst.

and aren't you a Canadian anyway?

[Alcon]

The confidence intervals indicated that the pattern we did find could be attributed entirely to random chance.

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The evidence says no such thing. The evidence indicates no change in the general divorce pattern that can be attributed specifically to gay marriage. Stop lying.

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When the difference is statistically insignificant? Absolutely not. We should treat them exactly the same rather then applying false attribution. This is bad science. 

Yes -- which is true of a statistically significant result too.  It's an arbitrary line.  However, a proposition that fails to reach statistical significance is not a 50/50 proposition.  For instance, if a poll finds Obama +4 with a MoE of +/-3%, it is likelier that Obama is up than he is down.  You seem to be treating the result like we should ignore any evidence that has a >5% probability of being statistical noise. 

The evidence that gay marriage tempers the overall decline in marriage rates is weak, and not statistically significant.  Indeed, I doubt gay marriage does much to temper this rate.  The point wasn't that you keep equivocating statistical insignificance with being unusable data.  That's not true.  See my Obama +4 example above; the fact that it's statistically insignificant does not make it equally likely that Obama or Romney are winning.  Similarly, when you are making a binary decision, the fact that evidence supporting one option doesn't reach statistical significant doesn't mean the decisions are equally good.

(For the record, I don't thin that gay marriage tempers the heterosexual divorce rate.  You simply initially claimed it did the opposite.  Evidently, your intuitions are more reliable to you than validly-conducted results that fail to come out significant at the 95th confidence interval.  Interesting.)

The relative sizes have no bearing on the percentage differences. Are you really a statistician? You certainly don't sound like one. Black/black marriages are more likely to fail than either black/white or white/white. That there are more white/white marriages and they are on average more likely to succeed actually puts more evidence in my favor than yours. Larger samples are less likely to bear extremes.

I'm not a statistician.  You misread.

I was replying to this statement: "That interracial marriages do poorer than marriages that are single-race? If Black/Black does worse, then this premise is not true."  This is not true.  The fact that a small subset of same-race marriages (black/black marriages) have inferior outcomes to same-race marriages overall does not mean that, in aggregate, single-race marriages overall don't do better than interracial marriages overall.

In any case, we can agree that interracial marriages have inferior outcomes to white-white marriages, according to the statistics?  Why should the state recognize interracial marriages involving blacks and whites?  (This is not rhetorical -- there are several answers to this you can give.) 

Not according to Massachusetts. Massachusetts says that it is better that the children do not get adopted at all, than to see Catholic adoption services place children in accordance with their beliefs.

I disagree with that, so I'm not sure why you're demanding my argument has to be consistent with it.

"stable gay couples might have marginally inferior outcomes to stable heterosexual relationships"

Again, MA was willing to shut down adoption agencies and see fewer placements than to see placements outside of what they believed to be the ideal. So clearly, placing children in inferior outcomes is not acceptable to the state.

Is there a typo here?  If not, I'm not following your rationale.

Uh, you do realize that I believe that sex outside of marriage is sinful? If you choose not to marry, you're not having children to raise.

And how does that address my rebuttal?

Of course not, because that would mean you are wrong. Read up on it. The state said comply or close, so they closed. If the state valued children above their agenda then they would have permitted the Catholic adoption agency to continue to operate.

What in the world?  I was implying you oppose gay adoption on theological levels, not as a quid pro quo response to state action you see as offensive.  As far as I can tell, this response has nothing to do with that.  I'm familiar with the case, and I don't agree with it.

I was a physicist, so yes I do understand it. From what I can see, if the numbers support your bias, you'll defend them come hell or high water rather than admit that they are merely the result of random chance.

If you think that failing statistical significance is synonymous with proving results "merely the result of random chance," then you received really crappy Stats training.

I do. You're just pissed off that you had to admit that the difference was and is statistically insignificant. Hey, it's your work. You want to argue that you screwed up, find by me. Doesn't enhance your credibility when I'm the one defending the accuracy of your work.

Why would I be pissed off that legalizing gay marriage doesn't have a statistically significant correlation with improving (relative or absolute) overall divorce rates?  I never claimed that happened.  I've said several times I doubt that's true.  I have never advocated for this claim, except in saying that a weak positive correlation indicates something is less likely to be true than the inverse.  I've explicitly said how many times I don't forward the hypothesis you're now accusing me of being "pissed off" wasn't confirmed in my analysis?  How many times did I explain that the intention of my analysis was to test your claim that gay marriage should be assumed the causal agent for increasing divorce rates?  Do you not remember this exchange well or something?

[Alcon]

Christ. No, it's not an 'arbitrary line.' It's directly related to error bars and sample sizes. You clearly do not understand statistics.

You're telling me 95% isn't an essentially arbitrary measure for statistical significance?  The fact that concepts are based on it doesn't mean it fundamentally isn't arbitrary.

That would be an example of a statistically significant result. If he were +1 with an MOE of +/- 3, would you draw the conclusion that Obama was more or less likely to be ahead?

...

O+4 with a MOE of +/- 3 is statistically significant. No wonder you are struggling. You don't even understand statistical significance.

Pretty sure you'e wrong.  Here is a theoretical poll where Obama is up 4:

Obama 47%
Romney 43%

The range of within-MoE values for Obama is +/-3% -- i.e., between 44% and 50%.  Romney's MoE is 40% to 46%.  Anything from Romney +2 to Obama +10 would be within MoE.  MoE isn't calculated on percentage margin.

But you're avoiding the point: say it's an Obama +1 poll.  Does that indicate it's more likely that Obama is leading -- yes or no?  Your argument says no; reality says yes.

And you continue to lie. I think I'm done here.

I said, very explicitly, that the results surprised me and that I no longer advance the position that gay marriage has a statistically insignificant result on divorce rates.

The difference between you and me, is that I have abandoned my contention in the face of data, while you have not changed your own position an inch.

Lie about what?  None of what you just "corrected" me on is inconsistent with what I said.  You did, as I've said before, concede that gay marriage does not have a statistically significant deleterious effect on divorce rates.  What argument did I forward that my data invalidated (outside of the contested interpretation of statistics here)?

I am. Care to continue to call me 'math impaired?'

Yes, until you argument makes sense.

The fact that some same race marriages do worse than other same race marriages, indicates that the common factor is that race can and does influence your marriage. Why is this? Because black people are more likely to grow up in broken homes and are less likely to have a positive example of marriage to look up to.

I know you don't like this conclusion, which is why you persist in blasting me. Which is fine. But, it does get tiresome.

...

Christ. Why should the state recognize marriage between black men and black women, since they are more likely to fail?

YES.  That's the point of a reductio ad absurdum.  You're finally getting it.

By your logic -- shouldn't the government prohibit interracial marriages so as to encourage more "optimal" (white-white) marriages?  Is that a problem for you because it increases the number of black-black marriages?  Or is there some other reason why this is objectionable?

Also, I like how you totally blew off my rebuttal to your ridiculous claim that same-race marriages couldn't be better-off in aggregate because a subsample of them (black-black marriages) weren't.

Will you concede that gay marriage has no effect positive or negative on divorce rates in America? Will you finally discard your thesis now that you've conclusively demonstrated it to be false?

Please quote me when I've ever advanced this thesis.  I've said explicitly several times that this is not my thesis.

Because you're insisting that the Catholic church ought to capitulate to your position.

I don't mind if the Catholic Church doesn't marry gays.

Really simple. Placement is not the number one goal of adoption agencies. Agenda trumps placement, at least in MA.

Have I suddenly turned into the state of Massachusetts?

Ok, good. I wasn't sure. Had you said that earlier, would have saved me some time.

Wait, so I'm not the state of Massachusetts...I just have to preemptively list things I disagree with the state of Massachusetts on, in case you might mention it?

Your rebuttal assumes that since I believe some people shouldn't marry, that I'm condoning children out of wedlock.

So, you wouldn't want to incentivize inferior-outcome interracial and/or black-black marriages, if that didn't result in more children out of wedlock?  If it weren't for the sex-out-of-marriage issue, you'd oppose government incentivization of those relationships?  Or would you support interracial marriage to "elevate" black-only marriages even if they have inferior outcomes to white-only marriages?

(I'm not trying to ask shock questions -- I'm trying to see how your position would ethically analyze these situations, and then explain why I think it's problematic, if I think it is.)

[Alcon]

Also, dude, please find me one instance in which I ever claimed I thought it was likely that legalizing gay marriage decreases heterosexual divorce rates.  In the process, I'm sure you'll find me saying the opposite a bunch of times.

Even if I found a weak, statistically insignificant correlation, I'd never assume causality.  Why would legalizing gay marriage cause a decrease in heterosexual divorce, especially in the short-term?  That hypothesis seems ridiculous to me.  Which is why I never argued it.

Also, for anyone out there still reading this: if I'm missing the obvious and Ben is somehow right here, let me know...

[Alcon]

Statistical significance is no more arbitrary than, say, newtonian mechanics. Probability is probability. Is there a chance that the results we obtained could have arisen through random chance? Yes. Is there a chance that results that are statistically significant could have arisen through random chance? Also yes, but extremely unlikely.

I wouldn't call a 5% chance "extremely unlikely."  My point is that you're acting like a 4% probability of statistical chance should be accepted as truth, but a 6% chance shouldn't.  Moreover, you're equivocating anything between 5% and 95% to 50%.

That's O+2.

No, it's not.  Where would you see that poll expressed as Obama +2?  Certainly not on this site, FiveThirtyEight, RCP, any web site I've ever heard of.

That's what you're struggling with. Again, back to our coin flip example. I flip six coins, 4 heads and 2 tails. What's the probability that the next flip will be tails?

50% with a fair coin, but that's definitional, not empircal.  Here's a better example: you have a gumball machine with red and blue gumballs.  The gumball machine comes 50/50 by default, but you're buying it used, so it's possible someone has extracted red and blue gumballs -- basically, there's a good reason it would be 50/50, and a potential reason why it might not be.  (Like with the gay marriage example.)

You randomly draw six gumballs.  Four are red, and two are blue.  Statistical significance is failed.  Is it equally reasonable to predict the next gumball is red as it is to predict it's blue?

Thank you. Why then are you asserting I said otherwise? I conceded this point when you first asked about it here.

I haven't asserted you've said otherwise since you clarified that, as far as I know.  When did I?

That you were unwilling to concede that your results indicate no inverse correlation whats

Statistically insignificant correlation is not zero correlation.  Also, was there more to that sentence?

I think we have a winner here.

I believe marriage is a sacrament. I've never said that the reason that gay marriage should not be permitted is because they are more likely to fail. I have always stated that I believe the state has a desire to perpetuate itself - something gay marriage does not do.

You clearly have reading comprehension issues. I blew it off because it's already been addressed. Go reread what I said.

White/white marriages fare better than white/black and black/black. White/Black marriages fare better than black/black - ergo single race marriages are not automatically superior. Why? Already addressed.

Are you serious?  We've been speaking in aggregates and averages this entire time.  Why would you possibly think that we suddenly shifted to talking about whether all black-black marriages were inferior to all white-white marriages?  That's absurd.  Obviously, there are straight marriages that are inferior to most gay marriages in terms of child-rearing...tons of them.

You are, again, missing the critical question of the analogy.  Interracial marriages tend to have outcomes worse than white/white marriages, but marginally better than black/black marriages -- in other words, incentivizing interracial marriages can be expected to reduce the overall societal outcomes.  Didn't you say that was a reason against incentivizing gay marriage?  Didn't you object to gay adoption on the basis that it was inferior in outcome, even if it was better than being not adopted?  I know you have separate religious arguments, but I'm trying to thresh out your secular argument.

Incentivizing interracial marriage, by your argument (I think), would mean encouraging inferior outcomes, because the outcomes of interracial marriages are closer to black/black marriages than white/white marriages; therefore, if a white and black marry each other instead of someone of their own race, the aggregate utility is lower.  Think of it as a black/black marriage having a utility of .4, interracial marriage as having a utility of .6, and a white/white marriage having a utility of .9.  Incentivizing interracial marriages accordingly incentivizes inferior outcomes for children, both in raw terms (like black/black marriages would) and overall (unlike incentivizing black/black marriages.)

I don't want to ignore your other points yet, but I'm not quite sure how they fit into our back-and-forth on this, so I'm going to temporarily put them on reserve.

70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock. Are you asserting that black/black marriages are responsible for 70 percent of black children being born out of wedlock? Really, alcon, really?

Uh, what?

Your first post in this thread. Now, can we move on please?

No, we can't, because I didn't say I agreed with the causality argument.  I've said I don't many times.  Find me the quote where I said I agreed with it.

[Alcon]

Yawn, you're only arguing this in order to salvage your position. Rather than actually change your position in the face of contrary data, you're arguing over what "is" really means.

Is it statistically significant? No. Is statistical significancy arbitrary? No.  End of story.

No, I'm arguing over how statistics work.  And you're not responding to my argument.  Seriously, you're the worst.

Is it O+2? Yes. Now, you're arguing from authority.

Obama +2 over what?  I don't even understand how that usage would make sense.  Moreover, no one uses it.  This isn't an appeal to authority.  This is an appeal to definition.  You presumed I meant an unspecified, arcane definition for no particular reason.  This is especially ironic considering that you just accused me of arguing over the meaning of "is."

In order to prove that you've got a coin that is not fair - you have to do a statistically significant number of trials and show that the deviation from true is statistically significant.

...

Not unless I can empty the tank and count the contents. Just the 4 and 2 is insufficient information.

Yes, so if you get a 4-2 flip on a coin, you can't be 95% or more confident that it's not a fair coin.  You cannot be 95% or more confident that the next flip is likelier to be heads than tails.  However, you can be between 50% and 95% confident that the next flip will be heads.  As you flip more times, if the 2:1 heads patterns sustains, the confidence gradually will shift up from <95% to >95%.  However, in the interim -- because statistical significance is a continuum -- you will have a point where you are about 60% confident, about 70% confident, and so on.  You are erring by treating this as a 50/50 proposition until you hit 95%. 

In simple terms:  The question is not whether you reject the null hypothesis of the coin being 50/50.  That is not required to hold that the next flip is empirically more likely to be heads than tails.  Think of it as a binomial distribution.  Say you flip a coin 50 times.  Thirty flips come back heads.  Your confidence interval is .451 to .736.  In other words, it's not statistically significant.  Does that mean a prediction that the next flip will be heads is equally reasonable to a prediction that it will bet tails?  No; the confidence interval (a bell curve, I think) is much more toward the "likelier heads" side than the "likelier tails" side -- in fact, 50/50 is barely within the confidence interval.  Therefore, even though you can't reject the null hypothesis that the coin is 50/50, it's more reasonable to predict heads than tails.  In other words, although the observed probability that the coin is unfair may be well under 50%, the observed probability that the next flip will be "heads" may not be equal to the observed probability that it be tails.

Seriously, print this explanation out, take it to a Stats prof, and tell him to email me if I'm in error.  It can be a simple Yes/No.  I can provide my email address.

Earlier up in the thread, which is why I had to clarify it YET AGAIN. I'm tired of having to clarify my position.

Haha, I asked you when I said something and you respond "earlier."  Thanks. 

Yes, it [statistically insignificant] is zero correlation.

Alternatively, email this sentence to a statistics professor and see what he thinks.  I really wonder about all of those times I ran statistical significance tests on an observed correlation; I never noticed that the correlation reset to zero after I ran the statistical significance test.  I wonder what the hell "weak correlations" were, since those didn't always reach statistical significance.  So much of my life is being turned upside down!

I'm not going to answer any more posts from you until you concede this point.

lol

[Alcon]

O+2 R-2. Think vector notation. Romney needs to gain 2 points to tie Obama, since a gain for Romney will be the same as a loss for Obama.

Wrong.  Did you not notice how Obama and Romney don't add up to 100%?  A gain for Romney could be a loss for Undecided/Other.  I clearly gave an example where this was possible.  Again, I've never seen anyone present polling results in the format you're claiming you assumed I meant.

And yet, you won't accept an appeal to definition when it concerns statistical significance.

Wrong.  I've never objected to defining statistical significance.  I objected to the equivocation you are making between statistically insignificant

This is why there's no correlation. It is, as I stated before, a mathematical equivalency. Not arbitrary whatsoever and is fundamentally connected with sample size.

wrong.  there's no correlation because it's a binomial distribution? what?  binomial distributions don't have to be 50/50, they just have to entail two options.

So you're willing to be 20:1 odds that the next flip is heads?

Wrong.  How bad at this are you?  Why would I be willing to bet that the probability of the coin flip being heads is .952?  You've bizarrely substituted the standard statistical significance confidence level for the observed probability (and messed that up too; it's 19:1.)  I don't even.

Let's put aside the coin example, because an unfair coin seems counterintuitive.  Imagine that they're ballots from an unspecified voting precinct from a tied election like 2000.  Let's pretend the only candidates were Bush and Gore.  If I pulled 20 random ballots from that precinct, and 14 were for Bush and 6 were for Gore, my confidence interval would be 48.09% to 91.91% Bush.  As you can see, 50% Bush is within the confidence interval there.  You cannot (with statistical significance) reject the null hypothesis that the precinct is 50/50.  However, the vast majority of the confidence interval is to the "Bush" side.  Therefore, if we picked another random ballot, it is more reasonable to expect it to be a Bush vote than a Gore vote, even though we can't reject the null hypothesis that Bush and Gore were even in the precinct.  Get it now?

Weak correlation is when you have multiple studies, some with statistical significance, and some without.

wrong. "weak correlation" can exist within a study.  query "weak correlation" (in the texts, not the titles) in JSTOR or Google Scholar or whatever and you'll see plenty of examples.

Glad I could help you pass your stats class!

[Alcon]

Alcon is doing the Lord's work here but I kind of miss when this thread was all about Romney's lack of empathy.

Sorry.  If it's any consolation, this exchange is helping to show that stone-hearted antipathy is a pretty reasonable response to the world.