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.

A minority of people continued to say that we didn’t need this or want it and most Americans weren’t for spending more money, but we know the fear tactic worked.  President Obama signed on February 17th a $787 billion dollar appropriation bill to further stimulate the economy.

Since it’s signing, we also been told it’s worked well.  According to the WH it will create or save 3.5 million jobs between now & 2010 (here):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus plan will meet previous estimates to save 3.5 million U.S. jobs by the end of 2010, but the unemployment rate at that time may be higher due to further deterioration in the economy, a senior administration official said on Monday.

Vice President Biden also got into the discussion very recently (here):

He touted the administration’s accomplishments with regards to the stimulus packages. Biden said 500,000 to one million jobs have been created from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He noted that when the Obama administration took over in January, the country was losing 700,000 jobs a month thanks to the worst “bagel” in decades (yes, I’m newly addicted to the West Wing). That has slowed to 274,000 jobs.

Mr. Obama as well (here):

July 11 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended” as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy.

& of course, we couldn’t have this debate without a Nobel Prize winning Economist weighing in.  Proving the Nobel Prize isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Paul Krugam weighs in (here):

Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. economy is stabilizing and may have bottomed out, as the government’s stimulus plan probably saved a million jobs, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman said today.

Mr. Krugman wasn’t satisfied with just praising of the administration.  Lone ago giving up up using true economic theory as it refutes his political agenda, he went further:

A second stimulus package for the economy is still needed, and should be directed at state and local governments as well as infrastructure spending, he said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur. The world economy may face several years of weak growth without falling into a “double-dip” recession, he said.

What’s the issue with all these pronouncements?  Simply said, they have no proof in reality.

Currently only 15% of the money has been spent.  That deserves repeating, only 15% of the stimulus has been spent.  According to everything we’re hearing though, this prevented a depression by creating/saving jobs (here):

The $787 billion economic stimulus bill signed into law by President Obama nearly six months ago contained $288 billion in tax cuts and $499 billion in new spending. So far, the administration has spent $76.3 billion — 15% of the total available.

However, even taking the 15% amount isn’t necessarily a true reflection of the spending.  One must then ask, what was the money spent on and can those expenditures be tied to jobs?

Even the answer to that is a resounding no.  Almost all of that $76.3 billion wasn’t spent on anything one would typically associate with creating wealth.  $57.3 billion being was spent on safety net, food stamps, medicare, unemployment benefits and other social programs.

Please note, this is not a refutation on social spending, that would be a completely different discussion.  Having said that, it seems obvious that paying people to stay at home is not going to create or save jobs.

The analysis can’t stop here though.  With a very small percentage of the stimulus itself being spent, the total spent also represents a very tiny fraction of the economic activity in the United States.  According to current estimates, we expect the US economy this year to produce about 14 trillion dollars in GDP.  This is lower than previous years of course, but still a staggering amount of money.

Using all the numbers we have, we can inject some very simple math.

If we assume that the in the last 6 months, economic activity is around 7 trillion dollars, 76.3 billion dollars a only a little over 1% of total economic activity.  Which means it will be about 1/2% of the economy at the end of the year, unless of course the government actually starts spending the money.

Even as small as that is, if you remove the  $57.3 billion spent on social spending, then you have a total of $19 billion, which is less than 1/2 or 1% of the economic activity generated over the past 6 months.   & that is being very nice, by assuming that all $19 billion actually went to job creation.

Luckily, most Americans already know this (here):

A USAToday/Gallup poll released Monday found that 41 percent of Americans think the spending has made the US economy better, but 57 percent believe it has either made no difference or worsened the recession that began in 2007.

But the idea is still worth repeating since administration officials continue pushing the economic changes as a success for their policies.

Simply stated, the idea that by adding 1% to the current level of economic activity to the US economy would effect it in such a way as to prevent a Great Depression is a fallacy.  A fallacy which needs to be defeated.

First, I haven’t really commented on this because it’s stupid.  This party just a few short years ago told the American people that dissent was the highest form of American civil duty and calling people “un-American” for disagreeing with you was far, far below the belt.

Of course there was actually no concerted campaign to call dissenters un-American at that time, just a straw man they burnt fairly easily, but that’s really a different story.

For now – it should be obvious that the WH & Congressional Democrat leaders are working on a strategy to marginalize the opposition and doing so pretty effectively with the use of the media and the bully pulpit the President naturally has at his disposal.

What’s more than a little amusing is at the same time the Obama administration and leading Democrat figures are calling all dissenters paid operatives, they are currently seeking paid operatives right now through Craig’s list and what’s amusing is that if the insurance industry or GOP were using the same vehicle, searching for Obama would bring up their results as well.  For the Sacramento area:

Aug 11 – *Help CURE the Health Care Crisis & MAKE MONEY* $9-$13/hr, FT* - (East Sacramento) img <<nonprofit

Aug 7 – Make social change – Help Pass Obama’s Health Care Reform!!! - (Sacramento) img <<et cetera

Aug 4 – Help pass Obama’s Health Care Reform!!! Earn $9-14 an hour!!! - (Sacramento) img <<et cetera

Aug 3 – ***Help Pass Obama’s Health Care Plan and Earn $325-$500/Week - (Sacramento, CA) img <<nonprofit

Jul 31 – Help Pass Obama’s Health Care Reform! Earn $325-550 per week! - (Sacramento) img <<et cetera

Jul 29 – Work to Pass Obama’s Plans this Summer! Earn $9-14/hr! - (Sacramento) img <<et cetera

Jul 28 – Build Support for Obama’s Plans!!! Earn $325-550 a Week! - (Sacramento) img <<nonprofit

Jul 27 – HELP PASS OBAMA’S PLANS AND EARN $325-550 A WEEK!!! - (Berkeley) img <<nonprofit

Jul 27 – HELP PASS OBAMA’S PLANS AND EARN $325-550 A WEEK!!! - (Sacramento) img <<et cetera

Jul 23 – HELP PASS OBAMA’S PLAN TO FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING! EARN $9-14/HOUR!!! - (Sacramento) img <<et cetera

Jul 21 – BUILD PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR OBAMA’S PLAN & EARN $9-14 AN HOUR!!! - (Sacramento) img <<nonprofit

Jul 15 – Make $350-550 per Week Working for OBAMA’s PROGRESSIVE AGENDA!!! - (Sacramento) img <<nonprofit

Jul 14 – SUMMER CAMPAIGN STAFF POSITIONS AVAILABLE!!! EARN $350-550 A WEEK! - (Sacramento) img <<et cetera

Of course the Republicans are now much more pro-dissent then they were 4 years ago, but in this particular case, the hypocrisy is easier to see on the Democrat’s side.

What a difference a few short years makes…

———- 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.