Comments, observations and thoughts from two bloggers on applied statistics, higher education and epidemiology. Joseph is an associate professor. Mark is a professional statistician and former math teacher.
Writing in Scientific American, Sean B. Carroll looks at a wide range of anti-science activists, from creationists to climate change deniers to anti-vaxxers and finds a common set of tactics.
In brief, the six principal plays in the denialist playbook are:
Doubt the Science Question Scientists’ Motives and Integrity Magnify Disagreements among Scientists and Cite Gadflies as Authorities Exaggerate Potential Harm Appeal to Personal Freedom Reject Whatever Would Repudiate A Key Philosophy
The account of chiropractors' reaction to the polio vaccine is especially interesting.
Children were especially vulnerable, so parents watched anxiously for
any sign of infection, often keeping them away from swimming pools,
movie theaters, bowling alleys, anywhere where there were crowds and the
dreaded microbe might lurk. Travel and business were sometimes
curtailed between places with outbreaks, and public health authorities
imposed quarantines on healthy people who may have been exposed, in
order to halt the spread of the disease. In the first half of the 1950s,
with no cure and no vaccine, more than 200,000 Americans were disabled by the poliovirus. The virus was second only to the atomic bomb as to what Americans feared most.
Then, on April 12, 1955, public health officials at the University of Michigan announced that a “safe, effective, and potent” vaccine had been found. This set off a national celebration that recalled the end of World War II. Church bells rang,
car horns honked, people wept with relief. President Eisenhower invited
the vaccine’s inventor, Jonas Salk, to the White House. In a Rose
Garden ceremony, the former Supreme Allied Commander told the scientistin a trembling voice,
“I should like to say to you that when I think of the countless
thousands of American parents and grandparents who are hereafter to be
spared the agonizing fears of the annual epidemic of poliomyelitis, when
I think of all the agony that these people will be spared seeing their
loved ones suffering in bed, I must say to you I have no words in which
adequately to express the thanks of myself and all the people I know—all
164 million Americans, to say nothing of all the people in the world
that will profit from your discovery.”
But, alas, not everyone joined the party and expressed such
gratitude. One group in particular did not welcome the vaccine as a
breakthrough. Chiropractors actively opposed the vaccination campaign
that followed Salk’s triumph. Many practitioners dismissed the role of
contagious pathogens and adhered to the founding principle of
chiropractic that all disease originated in the spine. Just a few years
after the introduction of the vaccine, as the number of polio cases was
declining rapidly, an article in the Journal of the National Chiropractic Association asked, “Has the Test Tube Fight Against Polio Failed?” It recommended
that, rather than take the vaccine, once stricken, “Chiropractic
adjustments should be given of the entire spine during the first three
days of polio.”
Opposition to the polio vaccine and to vaccination in general
continued in the ranks such that even four decades later, long after
polio had been eradicated from the United States, as many as one third of chiropractors
still believed that there was no scientific proof that vaccination
prevents any disease, including polio. That belief and resistance continues to this day, with some chiropractors campaigning against state vaccination mandates.
Dixon reportedly predicted the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the May 13, 1956, issue of Parade Magazine she wrote that the 1960 presidential election would be "dominated by labor and won by a Democrat" who would then go on to"(b)e assassinated or die in office though not necessarily in his first term". However, this premonition was reversed in 1960 when, as the election date neared, she incorrectly predicted that Nixon would instead win the election. She later admitted; "during the 1960 election, I saw Richard Nixon as the winner", and at the time made unequivocal predictions that JFK would fail to win the election.
Dixon was the author of seven books, including her autobiography, a horoscope book for dogs, and an astrological cookbook. She gained public awareness through the biographical volume, A Gift of Prophecy: The Phenomenal Jeane Dixon, written by syndicated columnist Ruth Montgomery. Published in 1965, the book sold more than 3 million copies. She professed to be a devout Roman Catholic and she attributed her prophetic ability to God. Another million seller, My Life and Prophecies, was credited "as told to Rene Noorbergen", but Dixon was sued by Adele Fletcher, who claimed that her rejected manuscript was rewritten and published as that book. Fletcher was awarded 5% of the royalties by a jury.
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President Richard Nixon followed her predictions[citation needed] through his secretary Rose Mary Woods, and met with her in the Oval Office in 1971. The following year, her prediction of terrorist attacks in the United States in the wake of the Munich massacre spurred Nixon to set up a cabinet committee on counterterrorism. She was one of several astrologers who gave advice to Nancy Reagan.
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The Jeane Dixon effect John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, coined the term 'the Jeane Dixon effect', which references a tendency to promote a few correct predictions while ignoring a larger number of incorrect predictions. Many of Dixon's predictions proved erroneous, such as her claims that a dispute over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu would trigger the start of World War III in 1958, that American labor leader Walter Reuther would run for president of the United States in the 1964 presidential election, that the second child of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his young wife Margaret would be a girl (it was a boy), and that the Soviets would be the first to put men on the moon.
And while we're on the subject, if you haven't seen it before, hold a mirror up to your monitor and check out the story "Mail Order Prophet."
Following up on yesterday's post, the standard narrative about the Wright brothers was they were two nobodies laboring in obscurity. When the breakthrough came, no one could believe it.
To support this account you'll often see this quote from Scientific American:
This would seem to be another of those "man will never fly" anecdotes, but context matters. For starters, the Wright brothers weren't unknowns; they weren't even particularly long shots. They were known to anyone who had been seriously following advances in heavier than air flight. Samuel Langley had reached out to them. Scientific American had given them positive write-ups in 1902 and this in 1903:
Even with the disputed flights, the magazine initially took a more guarded tone:
The Wright Brothers, in this country, who in 1903 made the first successful flight with an aeroplane, self-propelled and carrying its operator, have recently made a flight, the particulars of which have not been given to the public.
So if the Wright brothers were recognized as leading pioneers in the field, why was the press so skeptical, even hostile? One reason was that, due to fear of their ideas being stolen, the brothers had become extremely secretive, but the bigger factor was the astounding magnitude of the breakthrough. The brothers claimed to have made one of the all time great advances in transportation technology, but they offered no proof and no explanation for why no one had noticed the airplanes making multiple half-hour flights over the skies of Ohio.
The skepticism was justified. It was also short lived. As soon as confirmation came in, the brothers were hailed as having "already solved the problem of the century." Here was the lede of the Scientific American article that appeared less than four months after the "fabled performance" piece:
We love stories about how innocent and clueless our forefathers were about technology, particularly compared with how sophisticated we are today. At least with respect to the turn of the century, I think we may have gotten it exactly backwards.
Simon Sinek is one of the most successful of the TED Talk celebrities and this is one of his most popular videos.
Around the eight minute mark Sinek starts talking about the development of heavier than air flight -- something I know a little bit about -- and other than a couple of facts pulled so far out of context they are no longer in the same time zone, everything that follows is either lies or distortions. It's possible that what came before in the talk was more accurate (outside of my area of expertise), but I wouldn't count on it.
Putting aside the silly claim that the big secret behind the Wright brother's success was their inspirational leadership, let's focus on the ridiculous description of the work of Samuel Langley (yes, that Langley).
Langley was already a world famous astronomer and physicist when he started seriously pursuing a life-long interest in heavier-then-air flight in the 1880s. Among other things he had already invented the bolometer and helped lay the groundwork for the modern study of climate change.
He had some high profile failures with his early aircraft experiments which, due to his celebrity status, were mercilessly mocked by the press, but he did important theoretical work and showed some impressive results.
On 6 May 1896, Langley's Aerodrome No. 5 made the first successful sustained flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven heavier-than-air craft of substantial size. It was launched from a spring-actuated catapult mounted on top of a houseboat on the Potomac River near Quantico, Virginia. Two flights were made that afternoon, one of 1,005 metres (3,297 ft) and a second of 700 metres (2,300 ft), at a speed of approximately 25 miles per hour (40 km/h). On both occasions, the Aerodrome No. 5 landed in the water as planned, because, in order to save weight, it was not equipped with landing gear. On 28 November 1896, another successful flight was made with the Aerodrome No. 6. This flight, of 1,460 metres (4,790 ft), was witnessed and photographed by Alexander Graham Bell.
Langley then received the grant to develop a piloted airplane. The project did not go well, the failures were dramatic and the remarkable breakthroughs of the Wright Brothers cast a shadow over that part of Langley's legacy, but his reputation was still secure.
Here's how Scientific American put it in March of 1904.
In 1896, for the first time in history, a mechanical structure, free of any attachment to the ground and wholly without any supporting power but its own engines. made several flights of over one-half mile each. Mr. Langley had at this point reached the original aim of his researches in this direction---that of demonstrating, as a question of mechanical engineering, first. the conditions for, and second, the possibility of accomplishing, mechanical flight.
...
[On his decision to pursue his research after that success.]
[I]t requires moral courage of a high order for a man already secure in popular estimation as a savant to attempt to build a flying machine, since the effort is sure of ridicule by a large section of the unthinking public, which sees no merit save in absolute success.
Not to put too fine a point on it but beyond the fundamental dishonesty, there's a certain sleaziness about the way Sinek casually defames a true pioneer in order to pitch his books and up his speaking fees but sleaziness goes with the territory.
While there are a few worthwhile TED Talks out there, the defining videos, the ones that get tens of millions of hits, are almost invariably concatenations of bad history and bad science used to pitch various brands of snake oil, and every respectable news outlet that plays along is just another shill.
If Elon Musk or some other Silicon Valley visionary proposed some laughable plan based on non-existent technology, reporters would be scheduling interviews within the hour, but a solution supported by experts based on mature, tested systems will get little to no coverage.
One of the biggest crises facing California is a failing electrical grid, particularly during summer heat waves which are going to continue becoming more frequent and severe as the planet warms. Ground source heat pumps and similar technology could greatly alleviate pressure on the grid, especially when coupled with roof top solar. On top of that, its efficiency reduces demand for fossil fuels.
If we're going solve our problems, we can't go on being disinterested in solutions.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has called ground source heat pumps the most energy-efficient, environmentally clean, and cost-effective space conditioning systems available. Heat pumps offer significant emission reductions potential, particularly where they are used for both heating and cooling and where the electricity is produced from renewable resources.
...
Ground source heat pumps are characterized by high capital costs and low operational costs compared to other HVAC systems. Their overall economic benefit depends primarily on the relative costs of electricity and fuels, which are highly variable over time and across the world. Based on recent prices, ground-source heat pumps currently have lower operational costs than any other conventional heating source almost everywhere in the world. Natural gas is the only fuel with competitive operational costs, and only in a handful of countries where it is exceptionally cheap, or where electricity is exceptionally expensive. In general, a homeowner may save anywhere from 20% to 60% annually on utilities by switching from an ordinary system to a ground-source system. However, many family size installations are reported to use much more electricity than their owners had expected from advertisements. This is often partly due to bad design or installation: Heat exchange capacity with groundwater is often too small, heating pipes in house floors are often too thin and too few, or heated floors are covered with wooden panels or carpets.
... Capital costs may be offset by government subsidies, for example, Ontario offered $7000 for residential systems installed in the 2009 fiscal year. Some electric companies offer special rates to customers who install a ground-source heat pump for heating or cooling their building. Where electrical plants have larger loads during summer months and idle capacity in the winter, this increases electrical sales during the winter months. Heat pumps also lower the load peak during the summer due to the increased efficiency of heat pumps, thereby avoiding costly construction of new power plants. For the same reasons, other utility companies have started to pay for the installation of ground-source heat pumps at customer residences. They lease the systems to their customers for a monthly fee, at a net overall savings to the customer.
A good narrative (fact-based, complex, evolving) helps you see important things you otherwise have missed. A bad narrative makes you miss things you otherwise would have seen.
The coverage of streaming has been a case in point. Reporters and pundits, usually NYC based and with little knowledge of the entertainment industry, have credulously bought into a story of hype and Silicon Valley disruptors. (Journalists from traditional TV towns like LA and Chicago have done a much better job.) The really important business aspects have been underplayed or missed entirely.
For example, the standard Netflix-driven narrative argues that ad-based models are hopelessly old economy, not something forward looking people would waste their time with. As a result, what has turned out to be perhaps the fastest growing and most profitable part of the television industry has largely been ignored.
With the exception of Netflix, all of the other major players now have some ad revenue in their models either through streaming and/or broadcast. Amazon's ad-based division is IMDBtv. The service started a couple of years ago and, while we don't have access to the numbers, Amazon apparently likes what it has been seeing because the company's investment has grown considerably.
Original Programming
A reboot of the 2008 crime drama series Leverage was ordered by IMDb TV, making it the first major original series for the streaming service.
On October 3, 2019, IMDb TV announced it licensed the Canadian animated series Corner Gas Animated as a branded original series, joining the live-action comedy franchise Corner Gas and the feature film Corner Gas: The Movie, which were both on the streaming platform.
IMDb TV acquired the rights to Eleventh Hour Films and Sony Pictures Television's young-adult espionage series Alex Rider, which will be premiering on the streaming platform on November 13, 2020.
On October 29, 2020, Amazon announced Amazon Studios would produce the successor program to Judge Judy for the service after the long-running court show ends production in 2021.
Third-Party Content
IMDb TV announced it would begin streaming the NBC show Chicago Fire on December 6, 2019, making the deal the biggest single licensing pact to date for the streaming service. In addition, IMDb TV announced it would also begin streaming all five seasons of Universal Television's Friday Night Lights starting on December 31, 2019.
In February 2020, IMDb TV acquired the rights to more than twenty scripted TV titles controlled by Disney's Direct-to-Consumer & International Division.
IMDB TV began streaming several Star Trek films in June and July 2020.
Starting July 15, 2020, IMDb TV began streaming all 92-episodes of the AMC series Mad Men after completing a licensing deal with Lionsgate.
I've always found Erle Stanley Gardner more interesting and substantive than he's given credit for. His writing could be uneven and badly edited (perhaps inevitably given his output), but there was always a sharp intellect at play and a reluctance to insult that of the readers (a quality sorely lacking in many of his more respected peers).
The Case of the Careless Kitten is ESG at the top of his game, ingeniously plotted with surprising but logical twists. The client's innocence is confirmed in the middle of the book almost in passing. He plays almost no role in the in the amusing climactic courtroom scene (he's not even the defendant). Instead the focus is on pay back for Hamilton Burger in response t the DA trying to have him disbarred.
Recommendation aside, what makes this book of special interest is the way it spells out the central conflict between Mason and Burger. Both make intelligent, reasonable arguments about the courts and the role of defense attorneys. These arguments form the subtext of all the Perry Mason books.
Like all good pulp, there's a bit more here than seen at first glance.
I have a somewhat higher opinion of Lindsay Anderson than Kael (though it's been a long time since I've seen any of his movies), but this opening to her review of If.... is both fascinating and prescient.
PR has been a big part of the film industry since the silent days, but the modern, data-driven/demographics based approach seems to date back to the post-war era (with a big dose of McLuhan coming in at the end). Kael probably the first critic to understand the full extent of how the changes in the business of motion pictures. She would explore the subject in depth in "the Numbers," particularly focusing on the role conglomerates were coming to play. (Note how even in '68 she goes out of her way to point out that Paramount is a subsidiary of Gulf & Western.)
The work of a PR flack has not changed that much over the past fifty years, but the scale certainly has. Tens of billions have been spent recently on marketing and PR. With the advent of Netflix, buzz often crowds out other metrics as the primary measure of success. That show may not have many viewers but look how many people are talking about it.
IF…. (1968): SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS – Review by Pauline Kael From the advance rave quotes, I gather that many reviewers believe that If . . . . will be a great success with youth and that it is a masterpiece. One may suspect that in some cases the evaluation is based on the prediction. I think If . . . . will be a success, but I think it’s far from a masterpiece, and I should like to make this distinction, because so many people are beginning to treat “youth” as the ultimate judge — as a collective Tolstoyan clean old peasant. They want to be on the side of youth; they’re afraid of youth. (And this is not irrelevant to the subject of If . . . .) If they can be pushed by clever publicity into thinking “youth” will respond to a movie, they are then instrumental in getting “youth” to respond to it. Movie companies are using computerized demographic studies and market research to figure out how to promote movies. Here, taken from Variety, is the report on the technique adjudged most suitable for If . . . . by the same new “scientific” group at Paramount Pictures (a subsidiary of Gulf & Western) who worked out how to sell Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. The report predicted that If . . . . will repeat its British success in the United States “if it is given the same kind of intensive marketing support that made it such a hit in its premiere engagement in London,” and described the key element as “a very extensive screening program for critics, writers, radio and TV commentators, educators, and members of government,” continuing, “We went out of our way to pursue every means of reaching the public through newspaper editorials, radio and television panels or discussions, magazine features and lectures before important opinion-making groups. The outpouring of ‘breaks’ in all communication media was phenomenal and most unusual in that [the film] was treated as a news event away from the usual coverage of motion pictures.” It’s easy to recognize the standard advertising campaign aimed at the mass audience-— the big ads and the appearances of stars and moviemakers on the TV talk shows — but we are still novices when it comes to an advertising campaign that feeds the appetite of the media for something new and exciting, and we may not spot techniques directed at the selective, educated audience. Obviously, these techniques couldn’t work if the film didn’t have something in it for people to react to, but if it does, the publicity people can build up a general impression of urgent, clamorous response. It’s no accident when all those rave reviews come out before a picture has opened; the early reviewers get the taste of triumph as they rush to be the first to jump on the bandwagon. And when this atmosphere of consensus about the importance of a picture is built up, anybody who doesn’t go along begins to seem “out of it” — “not with it.” If . . . . has been so well sold that people were discussing it in the Village Voice weeks before it opened; that’s real marketing, and it means that the whole underground press has been alerted by now. “Youth” will “discover” another movie; in a flash forward, one can already hear the discussions on WBAI. Once this process has begun to work and the publicity has caught on, the film is important; people want to see it because they are hearing about it wherever they go. The publicity men have manufactured “news,” and the mass media don’t want to be scooped and left behind.
Beyond the recent political developments (which are especially good news for the state), we've had some pretty good weather this weekend. Quite a bit of the state has seen some rain or snow. Not enough to affect the drought -- that's not likely this year -- but we have reduced the wild fire risk for the time being in a lot of areas.
There should be a number areas where controlled burns can be conducted safely with minimal chance of them accidentally sparking a megafire and we desperately need those controlled burns. Over a hundred years of disastrous fire suppression policy has left us with tens of millions of acres that are going to burn in the near future no matter what we do.
By almost every standard whether you look at forest ecology, public health, economic impact, small fires ( the kind that were the norm before the arrival of European settlers) are better than megafires, but the incentives are heavily stacked on the side of doing nothing. What we need most now is decisive leadership and so far that's been more scarce than rain.
As much as 20 million acres of federal, state, or private land across California needs “fuel reduction treatment to reduce the risk of wildfire,” according to earlier assessments by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and other state agencies. That’s nearly two-thirds of the state’s 33 million acres of forests and trees, and six times the area that has burned so far this year.
This “treatment” can include prescribed burns set under controlled conditions—ideally, spaced out geographically and across the year to prevent overwhelming communities with smoke. It can also mean using saws and machines to cut and thin the forests. Another option is “managed wildfire,” which means monitoring fires but allowing them to burn when they don’t directly endanger people or property.
More than a century of deferred work, however, means it’s hard to get into places that need thinning. It’s also risky to do prescribed burns or allow natural fires to rage, since the fuels are so built up in many places, Westerling says.
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If the goal is to burn up excess fuel, why not just let the wildfires rage? The problem is that runaway fires in overgrown forests don’t achieve the same results as controlled burns. These intense blazes can level vast stretches of the forest rather than simply clearing out the undergrowth and leaving the big trees standing, says Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at UC Berkeley. Instead of restoring the health of the forests, large, uncontrolled fires often transform them into shrub land, where vegetation grows quickly and severe fires can rapidly return.
One of the movies for which the term "cult movie" was coined just showed up on the free-with-ads streaming service Tubi. If you've ever wondered how the same writer could produce the Exorcist and be behind the best of the Pink Panther films, you need to see William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration.
As Maltin's Guide puts it, "hilarious yet thought-provoking, with endlessly quotable dialogue and an amazing barroom fight scene." Unlike anything you've seen before.
Growing up in Arkansas, I remember KARK, the NBC affiliate in Little Rock, used an excerpt from "Karn Evil 9" as their opening theme.
Someone once defined an intellectual as anyone who could hear the the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. I wonder how many people would make that connection today.
Working from home I've been burning through a lot of instrumental music. (You come to miss the background noise.) I've been digging into Classical, Jazz and scores (mainly Goldsmith, Morricone, Thomas Newman), even some new stuff.
Around a hundred days, though, you start getting restless so I reached out to my friend Brian Phillips, a sometimes DJ whose knowledge of popular music is beyond encyclopedic, and asked for some recommendations that were eclectic and off the beaten path.
This isn’t really the best of analogies, but bear with me I am working under the clock here.
While everyone is aware of the basic facts, I get the feeling that most analysts have not yet really internalized the new cadence of the election and its implications. They are still tending to think of this as something that will basically happen next Tuesday instead of something that is 2/3 over. At this point, like Schrodinger‘s hypothetical cat, the election is largely locked in a box, its fate decided but unknown (though unlike with the cat, we do have some idea what’s going on in the box – like I said, this is not a great analogy).
(This, of course, does assume that we actually count all of the ballots that have been cast in person or received and certified by mail. Those not yet received may be in a kind of limbo.)
The first and most obvious aspect is that anything that happens, any political event, any news story will have no impact on the votes that have already been cast and certified. They are a fixed but unknown quantity.
The second point is a bit more subtle.
We are talking about a mixture of things that have happened and things that may happen. Since it appears that the early voting was heavily Democratic and it is assumed that the in-person voting will be mainly or at least disproportionately Republican, this basically puts a floor under Democratic support and a ceiling on Republican.
When you put these two ideas together it leads to some interesting conclusions.
Events and breaking news that can radically change results on election day are almost always on the downside. It is very difficult to imagine something breaking at the last minute that would double the turn out in a certain district. By comparison, it is not difficult at all to imagine events that would greatly suppress it. Given the extremely chaotic times we are living in, it would be foolish to rule out the possibility of some otherwise unimaginable black swan event, but it seems unlikely we see one that will cause a huge surge in voter turn out on November 3.
