Detailed Abstractions

Weeks ago in a discussion with some colleagues, someone posed an interesting question:  “Do talk shows like Oprah’s have any real negative impacts?”

At first thought, I thought no.  Her ideas are mostly superficial and without critical thought, but is she really changing minds?  What we do know is that most of the people who watch these shows, or any other talk/political show, are generally seeking out information for which their beliefs already align.  Our tendency as humans is to do this – to seek out others who are similar in thought and background – to keep us comfortable with our thoughts & beliefs.

However, I don’t watch Oprah so I’m not familiar  with the consistency of her programming.  From that conversation I went to see what exactly Oprah does after book clubs and working out and found her anti-science stance can and does indeed harm others.

In a great article detailed by Newsweek, they demonstrated Oprah’s movement into the pseudo-medical realm with shows providing powerful anecdotes, while ignoring true scientific study to the contrary (whole thing here).  With the sub-headline of Wish Away Cancer! Get A Lunchtime Face-Lift! Eradicate Autism! Turn Back The Clock! Thin Your Thighs! Cure Menopause! Harness Positive Energy! Erase Wrinkles! Banish Obesity! Live Your Best Life Ever!, the document Oprah’s true harm to her audience.  First Suzanne Somers:

…Each morning, the 62-year-old actress and self-help author rubs a potent estrogen cream into the skin on her arm. She smears progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month.

…According to Somers, the hormones, which are synthesized from plants instead of the usual mare’s urine (disgusting but true), are all natural and, unlike conventional hormones, virtually risk-free (not even close to true, but we’ll get to that in a minute).

Next come the pills. She swallows 60 vitamins and other preparations every day….

…In addition, she wears “nanotechnology patches” to help her sleep, lose weight and promote “overall detoxification.” If she drinks wine, she goes to her doctor to rejuvenate her liver with an intravenous drip of vitamin C. If she’s exposed to cigarette smoke, she has her blood chemically cleaned with chelation therapy. In the time that’s left over, she eats right and exercises, and relieves stress by standing on her head. Somers makes astounding claims about the ability of hormones to treat almost anything that ails the female body. She believes they block disease and will double her life span. “I know I look like some kind of freak and fanatic,” she said. “But I want to be there until I’m 110, and I’m going to do what I have to do to get there.”…

For Oprah’s part, she did allow some doctors into the discussion, but severely limited their ability to affect the discussion:

That was apparently good enough for Oprah. “Many people write Suzanne off as a quackadoo,” she said. “But she just might be a pioneer.” Oprah acknowledged that Somers’s claims “have been met with relentless criticism” from doctors. Several times during the show she gave physicians an opportunity to dispute what Somers was saying. But it wasn’t quite a fair fight. The doctors who raised these concerns were seated down in the audience and had to wait to be called on. Somers sat onstage next to Oprah, who defended her from attack. “Suzanne swears by bioidenticals and refuses to keep quiet. She’ll take on anyone, including any doctor who questions her.”…

As with many of Oprah’s crusades, the anti-science crusade wasn’t just about hormone treatments which are proven harmful, but to give Jenny McCarthy a voice to go after vaccines, which are truly helpful:

…In 2007, Oprah invited Jenny McCarthy, the Playboy model and actress, to describe her struggle to find help for her young son. When he was 2½, Evan suffered a series of seizures. A neurologist told McCarthy he was autistic. “So what do you think triggered the autism?” Oprah asked McCarthy. “I know you have a theory.”

McCarthy is certain that her son contracted autism from the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination he received as a baby. She told Oprah that the morning he went in for his checkup, her instincts told her not to allow the doctor to give him the vaccine. “I said to the doctor, I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the autism shot, isn’t it? And he said no, that is ridiculous; it is a mother’s desperate attempt to blame something on autism. And he swore at me.” The nurse gave Evan the shot. “And not soon thereafter,” McCarthy said, “boom, soul gone from his eyes.”…

Again, she’s follows the same modus operandi, lots of targeted emotional and anecdotal discussions (read: propaganda), followed up with very little in the way of scientific evidence:

…But back on the Oprah show, McCarthy’s charges went virtually unchallenged. Oprah praised McCarthy’s bravery and plugged her book, but did not invite a physician or scientist to explain to her audience the many studies that contradict the vaccines-autism link. Instead, Oprah read a brief statement from the Centers for Disease Control saying there was no science to prove a connection and that the government was continuing to study the problem. But McCarthy got the last word. “My science is named Evan, and he’s at home. That’s my science.”…

The question I think all this raises, is have we gone to a point where civility is seen as more important that truths.  You see, I think most of us would have a hard time going against Ms. McCarthy.  Due to her tragic circumstances, we can easily see in ourselves the need to find the answer which others can’t seem to find.  We want things to make sense, in a world with more randomness that we are willing to admit.

But should this civility prevent us from saying what’s true?  You might have strong beliefs about something, and you might even be able to bring self-serving anecdotal evidence to bear, but none of that matters.  In the long run, Ms. McCarthy’s beliefs are not only irrelevant, but should be generally dismissed as they come from an uneducated (on her topic of choice anyway) and grief stricken celebrity.

Instead of reason winning out however, the power of celebrity, combined with the power of wanting more concrete answers to life’s questions the crusade against life saving vaccinations continues forward.  From Wired:

To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man in America. A pediatrician in Philadelphia, he is the coinventor of a rotavirus vaccine that could save tens of thousands of lives every year. Yet environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slams Offit as a “biostitute” who whores for the pharmaceutical industry. Actor Jim Carrey calls him a profiteer and distills the doctor’s attitude toward childhood vaccination down to this chilling mantra: “Grab ‘em and stab ‘em.” Recently, Carrey and his girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy, went on CNN’s Larry King Live and singled out Offit’s vaccine, RotaTeq, as one of many unnecessary vaccines, all administered, they said, for just one reason: “Greed.”

…So what has this award-winning 58-year-old scientist done to elicit such venom? He boldly states — in speeches, in journal articles, and in his 2008 book Autism’s False Prophets — that vaccines do not cause autism or autoimmune disease or any of the other chronic conditions that have been blamed on them. He supports this assertion with meticulous evidence. And he calls to account those who promote bogus treatments for autism — treatments that he says not only don’t work but often cause harm….

When reality demonstrates that many people ignore scientific evidence and their facts are replaced with celebrity hubris and propaganda, it should be a sign that all of us should take the time to understand where our true beliefs emanate.

Because please know, while many might read this and think, “that’s not me”, they mean that in a narrow sense as this is part of the human condition which we all share.  Only the truly arrogant among us can believe they can escape the human condition.

For those brave souls willing to go beyond our tendencies, I suggest we should all truly question our deepest beliefs in the face of new or competing information.  Anything less does a disservice to you, your family, and society at large.

That giant economic think-tank known as Google just announced their 3Q numbers.  Not only were the results good, but they had wonder news for all those worrying:  the recession has bottomed out:

SAN FRANCISCO, California — Google on Thursday declared the worst of the recession over and paved the way for a return to heavy spending on expansion as it reported a surprisingly strong 8 per cent jump in net revenues in its latest quarter….

Fear not friends – they aren’t basing this just on themselves, but all that economic data they have:

The optimism reflected what the company said was an across-the-board recovery in online advertising, with even the struggling financial services sector showing a return to growth….

Apparently though, Google forgot to tell Bank of America about its wonderful news (BoA 3Q):

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Bank of America Corp posted a $1 billion third-quarter loss as consumer credit woes eclipsed investment banking earnings, underlining why the bank remains on a government respirator….

I’m sure they just missed that… wonder what a really big blue chip company might be doing?  GE?:

General Electric’s third-quarter results showed just how fragile the U.S. economy remains, as its troubled financial unit dragged down earnings 44 percent, despite gains in divisions that make wind turbines, household appliances and broadcast television shows….

Not only are GE, BoA, and the 9.8% unemployed unaware of this great news, but even Google insiders don’t seem to know.  Looking at the public record, Google Insiders Sales, shows recent transactions for all senior officers dropping approximately 5% of their current Google holdings just last month.

Call me a raving skeptic if you will, but I’m thinking that you need to evaluate your decision making skills if you take your economic news directly from Google press releases.

Don’t get me wrong here, they make a great product and innovate better than almost anyone.   They are and will continue to be a force in computing for sometime to come because of their agile nature combined with some of the best minds in the world.  & I remember webcrawler… wow things are sooooo much better.

Regardless of their product however, it seems their investments into economic modeling & research in respect to business cycles is limited to zero.  I would add that if you’re an investor, that’s a good thing.  Better to let them do what they do best.

Why the press release then?  The only ones who know are those who drafted the press release and those with editing decisions prior to its release.  Without any information directly from one or more of these people, then reasoning is simply impossible to prove.

We can however ask some questions to try to find the likely answer.

(To be fair) The first possibility is simple honesty & stupidity.  Someone might have intended the “recession worst over” as a marketing technique to further enhance their aim to be seen as a very smart company.  All without realizing that overly simplistic analysis, based mainly upon very recent stock market activity and their profits do not make for effective proof.  Really, it’s just another anecdote that Google’s employees share.

Another, far more concerning possibility is their politics and desire to wish to see the President do well.  For years they have given most of their political donations to one particular party.  In 2008, Democratic candidates received 5 times more money than their Republican counterparts from Google.  Their employees, including top executives, gave 10 times more money to Democrats the Republicans.

Additionally, their search site has self-imposed constraints for arbitrary reasons.  For instance, Google refuses to allow gun dealers to advertise.   As a little experiment, slip over there real quick and run a quick search on swords or strippers.  Take note of the small advertisements to the right side of your search results.  Now do the same for guns and see what ads show up… I’ll wait.

They state their policy is to not allow advertising of weapons, but I think swords should qualify.

That could be an outlier, so let’s move forward assuming their ban on gun adverts is a true policy against weapons in general.

Then why did they also restrict advertising by Pro-life groups until forced by a judge to change their policy:

After a legal conflict between Google and The Christian Institute, filed when one the of religious foundation’s ads were rejected from the Google Adwords system, Google has changed their religious advertising policy to allow pro-life advertising to appear along with their secular and pro-choice advertising…

They did change their policy, but only after being sued.  Even giving them some credit for reversing their decision, their originally stated policy reeks of political and personal opinions:

The decision changes the former Google policy which excluded any ad containing a combination of “abortion and religion-related content“…. [emphasis added mine]

Putting all of this together, it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that Google is using its outstanding press relations due to their history as a vibrant and smart company to help those with which they agree.

Which is completely and totally their right.  It’s their right to put their money where they wish, to make internal policies as they see fit, and to accept contracts for advertising from those they want for any reason they want.  None of this freedom for me, but not for thee crap.  Let them do as they will I say.

Just make sure your informed and know who you’re doing business with as well.

PS:  If you’re not doing anything on a Saturday night and there’s positively nothing on TV including uninteresting infomercials about idiots unable to use blankets, then you can check out some pretty heavy economic think tanks.  First and foremost, the recognized economic powerhouse, generally recognized as the institution who makes the call on things like, when is it a recession?  When did it start?  When did it end?

NBER, or the National Bureau of Economic Research, has long been the a standard bearer in economic research in all kinds of aspects of life ranging from health care to labor studies.  They are the largest non-profit economic research organization in the US and boasts about the great minds working there.  In fact, 16 of the 31 American winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, have been associates NBER, including one of my heroes: Milton Friedman.

PSS:  They could turn out to be right.  The luck of life sometimes means you can do the wrong thing and end with the correct result and vice versa – you can do the right thing and end with the wrong result.  Therefore, to correctly analyze thought patterns over time, any one result isn’t necessarily a deterministic factor.

This has been written about all over the place and discussed ad infinitum, most of it conjecture based on prior opinions or potential political gain/loss.

& of course, since most humans seem to have this weird thing where our focus can move from the important to the seemingly mundane, we’re not discussing the SCOTUS nominee committee vote,  the pending health care bill, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russian’s & Germany’s resurgence in Europe, or any of the other things that should weigh on our thoughts.

Nope – the number one story seems to be about President Obama and the Gates situation.

Nothing can tell us more about race relations in the US than our own President injecting race along side a Harvard professor, Jesse Jackson, and others.

As most have figured out, it was a mistake for Mr. Obama to disucss a situation with which he was obviously unfamiliar.  The only exceptions of course, from those who believe Mr. Obama can do no wrong (here, here, etc, etc)  & those who use race to judge most other things (see confirmation bias).

What do we know?

Gates has said he returned from an overseas trip, found the door jammed, and that he and his driver attempted to force it open. Gates went through the back door and was inside the house on the phone with the property’s management company when police arrived.

Police said he flew into a verbal rage after Sgt. James Crowley, who is white, asked him to show identification to prove he should be in the home. Police say Gates accused Crowley of racial bias, refused to calm down and was arrested. The charge was dropped Tuesday, but Gates has demanded an apology, calling his arrest a case of racial profiling.

Gates, 58, maintains he turned over identification when asked to do so by the police. He said Crowley arrested him after the professor followed him to the porch, repeatedly demanding the sergeant’s name and badge number because he was unhappy over his treatment.

Crowley has refused to apologize, saying he followed protocol.

As is clear through the discrepancy of stories, either the police are colluding to lie, or Mr. Gates is lying.

Depending upon several factors in your personal life, most people will likely lean towards a “belief” decision on who’s lying (not a rational one). This decision will be based on our experiences with both race and police, as well as our current world view.

If one expects cops to act in racist ways because they believe in institutional racism, they will see this as further proof they are correct.

If one has had direct negative type contact with police, they will likely be more than willing to believe the cops are lying.

The question we must ask ourselves if what is the most likely answer (Occam’s Razor)?

Is it more likely that officer Crowley, a decorated officer who trains others in racial profiling:

Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley, the cop at the center of a firestorm over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., has taught a racial profiling class at the Lowell Police Academy for five years….

Who enjoys the benefit of having an eye witness, a fellow cop to be sure, but since race apparently matters:

A black police officer who was at Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s home when the black Harvard scholar was arrested says he fully supports how his white fellow officer handled the situation.

Sgt. Leon Lashley says Gates was probably tired and surprised when Sgt. James Crowley demanded identification from him as officers investigated a report of a burglary. Lashley says Gates’ reaction to Crowley was “a little bit stranger than it should have been.”

Asked if Gates should have been arrested, Lashley said supported Crowley “100 percent.”…

Or, one other person, the Harvard professor Mr. Gates.

It seems logical to give two people’s story more weight than that of one person without additional evidence to prove otherwise, but most people will decide based upon miscellaneous factors described above.

Another non-event blow-up due to our irrational racial biases.

Over at Statistical Modeling, Casual Interference, and Social Science blog, there’s a blog post discussing the VP’s marketing techniques sent via email to help pass the administration’s health care reform (here):

———- Forwarded message ———- Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:06:43 -0400 From: Vice President Joe Biden Subject: You’ve got to read these

A few weeks ago, President Obama asked you to share your personal story about how the health care crisis has affected you and the ones you love. Hundreds of thousands of stories poured in from every corner of the country. The President and I have read through many of them ourselves — and now I’m encouraging you to do so as well.

Read these powerful, personal stories from people in your area and around the country:

http://healthcare.barackobama.com/stories

And after you do, please forward this note on to as many people as you can.

For folks who don’t yet understand why health care reform is such an urgent priority, these stories make the case far better than any statistics ever could.

What’s interesting to note, is that this kind of thinking, pushing anecdotes instead of solid science, should rightfully seem irrational to most people.  However, the truth is the more people to follow Mr. Biden’s advice, the more adherents to his beliefs on health care reform he is likely to have.

He is basically exploiting a known human weakness in critical thinking.  A consistent issue all humans have to deal with is an inability to compare any one thing to all things possible.  That is, we have a poor ability to see things in a rational statistical manor.  For instance, we are scared of things that are statistically improbable, while at the same time we can have heightened sensitivities about things that are highly improbable.

We do this by making any comparisons against what we know or have seen, instead of comparing things against what’s possible.  This was demonstrated in the book Freakamonics, wherein the authors discuss the difference in the fear of parents possibly sending their children to other homes where guns might exist (1 in 1 million chance of death), juxtaposed against the indifference most parents have with sending their children to homes with pools (1 in 11,000).

When’s the last time you saw a news item on recent pool deaths?  When’s the last time you saw a news item about gun violence?

This is also demonstrated when polling people with questions about how many deaths they think are caused by various possibilities.  The consistently overestimate the number of deaths on causes which are very infrequent, but on TV more often (swine flu), and underestimate the number of deaths on causes which are much more frequent, yet never on TV (asthma).

This helps explain why polls currently show things such as; 45% of respondents are somewhat or very satisfied with the current health care system, yet 80% of respondents are somewhat or very satisfied with their personal health care.

This thinking also helps explain why all sort of new, completely unproven vitamins, homeopathic remedies, special healing diets, detoxes, and the rest continue to have solid adherents, but absolutely no proven track record or even any attempt to come up with a testable hypothesis.

The truly awful thing is that this thinking has not only invaded seriously complex debates such as health care, but also scientific thinking, such as grant funding from the National Institutes of Health:

I was on an NIH panel a couple of years ago with about 25 other scientists…

The highlight–or, I should say, lowlight–was when we were reviewing a proposal involving the study of the carcinogenic effects of hookah (water pipe) smoking. I asked if this was really such a big deal, and one of the panel members told me that smoking tobacco through a hookah is something like 10 times worse than smoking a cigarette. If so, the public health consequences could be pretty serious, even if not so many people did it. I said this sounded like a reasonable point to me. Then this guy across the table from me spoke up and said that he knew somebody who was 80 years old, had been smoking with a hookah all his life and was none the worse from it. At this point, I blew up. I couldn’t believe that the “my elderly aunt smokes and she didn’t get cancer” argument could be brought up at an NIH panel!

So in a real sense, if you could get people to read hundreds of anecdotes, you can effectively change someone’s comparative model if they aren’t deliberate in their thinking.

I think we need to be reminded or one of my favorite speeches by the esteemed physicist Richard Feynman, titled Cargo Cult Science In it, he addresses science majors that while ethics classes aren’t an express part of a normal science education, they should all learn that the cumulative effect of their science education should be the ability and responsibility to ignore pseudoscience.  They should see through their many classes that utilize the scientific principles of analysis, that science should always be a vehicle in which we strive to find the truth.

You combine the fact that humans use internal anecdotal evidence when making most of their comparisons, with pressure from cognitive dissonance helping people to fall for confirmation biases; it seems intuitive that serious and well meaning people can end up believing all sorts of things that simply aren’t provable in any real sense.

Of course understanding this is only the first step – admitting the problem.  We should next expect better out of our government and our elected representatives.  We should expect more from news organizations and TV personalities who wish to push an agenda.  We should expect more out of researchers and any organization that publishes things labeled as “science”.

In the end though, we should really expect more out of ourselves.  We should always be vigilant in seeking the truth through the obfuscation of effective propaganda which plays on our weaknesses.