Standard unit of risk

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has determined that Amherst is at "High" risk of mosquito-borne illnesses, and recommends that we all stay inside at dusk.

Yeah... but I like going outside at dusk.

The incentives for the Health Department are to exaggerate the risks, because when somebody gets Eastern Equine Encephalitis and dies they can (correctly) point to their High Risk Warning and say "not our fault, we told you so."

But maybe the risk really is high, and we ought to slather ourselves with DEET before walking downtown for dessert.

I wish there was a standard, easy-to-understand unit of risk, so the Heath Department could say something like "We estimate spending an evening in downtown Amherst with no mosquito repellant is 4-10 RUs (risk units)."

Where 1 risk unit is something we can all understand-- maybe "the risk associated with driving 100 miles on the highway."

Or "1 risk unit is the overall risk of dying in an accident in any given year."

I don't know what the right baseline would be; it doesn't really matter what is chosen, what matters is making it easy to compare the risks of things relative to each other.  The Health Department says we're at High risk... but High compared to what?

S.A.F.E. statistics

So I get this letter sent home in Robin's backpack:

TO: Parents and/or Custodians of Fourth Grade STudents

The Amherst Fire Department, ... blah blah blah... will be presenting a fire safety awareness program to your child. This program is funded through a state grant knows as S.A.F.E. (Student Awareness of Fire Education).

OK... cool, I suppose. I don't like the cutesy government acronym, but that's just me being cynical. I would kind of like to know how much school time was going to be spent (hours? days?) on Fire Education and the letter doesn't tell me that, but OK.

Then they push several of my pet peeve buttons:

Please consider the following tragic statistics:

1. Nearly 10% of the 52 fire deaths in Massachusetts in 2005 were children unde r the age of 18.
2. 75% of fire victims died in the so-called safety of their own homes.
3. Nearly one-quarter of these deaths occurred in homes with no working smoke detectors.
4. Unsafe disposal of smoking materials was the leading cause of residential fire fatalities in 2005, just as it is every year

"Nearly 10% of 52?" Why not just say "5 kids were killed in fires in 2005"? Even better, how about telling me how many kids were killed last year, or maybe the average number of kids killed over the last 5 years? Was 2005 a really bad year for fires?

I guess these statistics are supposed to make me appreciate the importance of Fire Awareness Education, but I'd summarize them as: A handful of kids die in fires in Massachusetts every year, mostly because some parents are careless with their cigarettes.

We don't smoke and our house has working, hard-wired smoke detectors on every floor. Phew, looks like there's approximately a 0% chance we'll have a house fire.

Fewer people are killed in fires these days than ever before-- maybe because of programs like S.A.F.E. But I doubt it; I bet if I dug out the long-term trends of number-of-kids-killed-in-fires in states with programs like S.A.F.E. versus states without student fire education programs I'd see exactly the same trends.

But what's the harm? S.A.F.E. only costs about a million dollars a year, if it saves just one life every few years it is worth it.

Then again, if it distracts parents from the real risks to their kids maybe it is doing more harm than good.

Global warming is NOT killing turtles in Costa Rica

I was browsing around the web looking into some of the Climategate accusations and responses, and I ran into this chart on the Wikipedia sea level rise page:
This isn't a Global-Warming-Denier chart: "This image, created with sea surface height data from the Topex/Poseidon and Jason-1 satellites, shows exactly where sea level has changed from 1993 to 2008 and how quickly these changes have occurred."

Costa Rica is down near the Panama Canal, at the skinniest bit between North and South America. The turtles that the New York Times claims are being threatened due to rising sea levels are on the West coast of Costa Rica. And, at least in the last 15 years (the Topex/Poseidon satellite was launched at the end of 1992, so 1993 is the first full year of data), sea levels there have NOT been rising.

Is Global Warming Killing Turtles?

Image by Paul Mannix

"Turtles Are Casualties of Warming in Costa Rica" is the title of a recent New York Times article.

Reporters and environmentalists and climate-change-deniers all like to cherry-pick evidence to support their article or point of view. Hotter than average summer? Must be global warming! Cooler than average summer? Global warming must be bunk! Leatherback turtles dying? Global Warming! Atlantic turtles thriving? See! Not Global Warming!

They're all wrong, of course. Nature is usually complicated and messy.

Anyway, back to the turtles: as usual, the headline is more sensationalistic than the article. The article says:

...haphazard development, in tandem with warmer temperatures and rising seas that many scientists link to global warming, have vastly diminished the Pacific turtle population.

I agree that the headline "Turtles Are Casualties of Development and Maybe Warming" isn't as catchy. The article goes on to talk about how turtle nesting habitat is being destroyed by hotels and increasing population and how people used to freely dig up the nests and eat the eggs (and still do, illegally).

Maybe my contrarian-bias is shining through, but a little research into how global warming will affect leatherback turtle habitat made me more optimistic about the turtles' chances:

We used long-term satellite telemetry to define the habitat utilization of this species. We show that the northerly distribution limit of this species can essentially be encapsulated by the position of the 15°C isotherm and that the summer position of this isotherm has moved north by 330 km in the North Atlantic in the last 17 years. Consequently, conservation measures will need to operate over ever-widening areas to accommodate this range extension.
-- Thermal niche, large-scale movements and implications of climate change for a critically endangered marine vertebrate

It seems like the authors of this paper are taking a very positive piece of news (that global warming is expanding the range of an endangered sea turtle) and putting a negative spin on it (conservation efforts will have to be spread out over a larger area).

They probably didn't want the Wall Street Journal to run an article with the headline "Turtles Benefit from Global Warming."

Flu vaccine costs and benefits

I was surprised to find out that getting a seasonal flu shot isn't the slam-dunk, you're-dumb-if-you-don't-do-it decision that I assumed it was.

I think I was confounding what I know about childhood vaccines (which are a don't-be-an-idiot-and-just-get-them kinda thing) with the flu vaccine. There are good discussions on the Overcoming Bias and Science-Based Medicine blogs, prompted by an article in Atlantic Magazine.

I'm not really concerned with the big public-policy debate over whether or not the H1N1 and/or seasonal flu vaccines save lives (or whether they save enough lives to justify the cost of a public vaccination program). For me, this was the key sentence in the Atlantic article:

Studies show that young, healthy people mount a glorious immune response to seasonal flu vaccine, and their response reduces their chances of getting the flu and may lessen the severity of symptoms if they do get it.

I HATE having the flu; I'd much rather spend 2 hours waiting in line than 2 hours of having the flu. In fact, I'd give it about a 3-to-1 ratio; I'd spend 3 hours waiting to get the flu shot to avoid 1 hour of being sick and miserable.

Now the flu vaccine isn't 100% effective. And I'm not 100% guaranteed to get it. So the cost/benefit calculations get a tiny bit tricky; here's what I figure, before factoring in my preference for waiting in the doctor's office to lying feverish in bed:

Cost of getting H1N1 : ~5 days (120 hours) of misery
Cost of getting vaccinated : 2 hours of my time
Chance of catching H1N1 : 20%
Effectiveness of vaccine: 50%
Cost/benefit ratio is : 2*(1/.5)*(1/.2) / 120 = 1 / 15

So the H1N1 vaccine is a clear winner from a cost/benefit point of view. The numbers for the normal seasonal flu are different:

Cost of getting season flu: 120 hours of misery
Cost of getting vaccinated: 1 hour
Chance of getting the seasonal flu: 2%
Effectiveness of vaccine: 20%
Cost/benefit: 1*(1/.02)*(1/.2) / 120 = 250 / 120 or about 2 / 1

Most years it is quicker to get a flu shot, and most years only about 1% of the population gets the flu (I doubled my chances because the kids pick up pretty much anything going around). But most years they have to guess about which strain of flu will be going around, and they often guess wrong.

The 2/1 cost/benefit result surprises me. If I valued an hour spent sick in bed the same as an hour waiting in a doctor's office then the seasonal flu shot probably doesn't pass the cost/benefit test. I'm going to keep getting seasonal flu shots because I'm a big baby and really don't like being sick.

I haven't factored in the fact that even if the flu shot doesn't prevent me from getting the flu, it might help me recover faster. Then again, I haven't factored in the fact that I might catch a cold or another virus from somebody waiting in line with me to get a flu shot...

My CongressCritter Supports Quackery

Health care costs are rising. A Medicare funding crisis is just around the corner. So I was dismayed to find out that John Olver is a co-sponser of the Federal Acupuncture Coverage Act of 2009:

Amends part B (Supplementary Medical Insurance) of title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act and federal civil service law relating to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program to cover qualified acupuncturist services.

(from the excellent OpenCongress web site)

It looked for a while like acupuncture actually worked, and, unlike homeopathy (which is a 100%-pure placebo), it seems plausible that sticking needles into your body could work.

But then some researchers started testing "sham acupuncture" -- they just pretended to stick needles into people. And in study after study, they found that sham acupuncture is just as effective as real acupuncture. Acupuncture is a placebo; it makes you feel better because you think it should.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not specifically anti-acupuncture: researchers who have tested surgery for certain types of back and knee pain against "sham surgery" got the same results; you can't tell who got the "real" surgery and who got the fake surgery. "Mainstream" medicine can be just as screwy as "alternative" medicine, and we should hold both to the same standards.

All of which leads me back to the Federal Acupuncture Act. We've got a system where the Government pays for about half of all medical care (mostly through Medicare and Medicaid). I think our medical system would work a lot better if patients were given the money and allowed to spend it on whatever treatment they thought worked best, whether that was acupuncture or aspirin.

Instead, we get Congress-Critters deciding what gets covered and what doesn't. So greedy drug companies, arthroscopic surgeons, and acupuncturists all spend lots of time and money lobbying Congress to get their share of the Medicare pie. Consumers don't care what the various treatment options cost, they just care whether or not a treatment is covered or not, and they trust that the Government wouldn't cover dangerous or bogus treatments. So health care costs rise (because the incentive is more lobbying for more expensive treatments), and dubious practices survive.

Maybe acupuncture is the most effective-for-the-money treatment for (say) lower back pain for people who really, truly believe that thousands of years of traditional Chinese medicine can't possibly be wrong. I think they should be free to spend money on whatever treatment works best (or whatever treatment they think works best) for them, but we need a health care system that exposes them to the costs of their decisions; when faced with a decision between paying $100 for a visit to an acupuncturist or spending $10 for a bottle of pain pills, they might decide that the needles aren't such a good idea after all.

Drugs! In our Water!

I ran across this AP News story, about millions of pounds of drugs being released into our water, yesterday on Digg. And then again this morning, on the front page of the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

I think it's an excellent example of out-of-context fear-mongering. We're living longer, healthier lives and we're safer than we've ever been before, and yet we're constantly bombarded by new things we're supposed to worry about. Last years it was agricultural Armageddon because of Colony Collapse Disorder.

This morning, it's "at least" 271 million pounds of drugs released into our water supplies. Wow, 271 million pounds. That sounds like a lot!

Is it?

If I'm reading the article correctly, that's 271 million pounds over a period of 20 years. We're an awfully big country; 300 million people here, so that's less than a pound per person over 20 years. Or less than an ounce per person per year.

Given the amount of water an average person uses in a year (about 1,400 gallons per person per day), that's the proverbial drop in the bucket.

The article also mentions that:

Two common industrial chemicals that are also pharmaceuticals — the antiseptics phenol and hydrogen peroxide — account for 92 percent of the 271 million pounds identified as coming from drugmakers and other manufacturers. Both can be toxic and both are considered to be ubiquitous in the environment.

Both can be toxic? WATER can be toxic if you drink too much of it!

Sheesh, what next, a hard-hitting AP report on the dangers of DiHydrogen Monoxide?

GREAT source of inexpensive homeopathic medicine!

For some odd reason, Amazon.com's recommendation system thought I'd be interested in Boiron Camilia homeopathic teething medicine. Only $11 for 40 doses (on sale).

Ooh, but I see in the related products list Humphreys Teething Tablets, which are even cheaper-- $4.34 for 135 pills.

Hmm, but you're supposed to take three of the Humphreys at a time. Still, the Humphreys is cheaper per dose (10 cents versus 27 cents).

But maybe it's not as good. They both get five-star Amazon.com reviews, but what about the active ingredients? The Camilia's main active ingredient is a 5C dilution of pokeweed plant-- that 1 part pokeweed to 10,000,000,000 (ten billion) parts water. Pokeweed is poisonous, but that's good because the whole idea behind homeopathic remedies is that a little bit of poison is good for you.

Humphreys is a 3X dilution of pokeweed (1 part pokeweed to a thousand parts water). In the homeopathic world, less active ingredient is better, so that's not good (a 5C dilution-- diluted 1-to-100 five times-- is better than a 3X dilution-- diluted 1-to-10 three times). But, you also get a 3X dilution of Belladonna (aka Deadly Nightshade) for your money.

How's a concerned parent supposed to decide? Should you give your baby the more expensive remedy that only has one poison in it, or the cheaper one that has two?

Personally, I'd opt for the least expensive option. I found these fantastic homeopathic pills online, and they cost less than 2 cents per dose! They contain a 60C dilution of BOTH pokeweed AND belladonna, and they even come in three kid-friendly flavors!

I'm pretty sure I saw the same product being sold at Big Y; I'll have to pick some up next time I'm buying groceries.

Natural, but more deadly

Robin is going to the Hitchcock Center's nature camp this week. They spend a lot of time outside looking at plants and critters, so the camp registration materials suggest applying sunscreen and bug repellent to campers every morning.

They further recommend the use of non-DEET ("natural") products, "so we don't hurt the creatures we might pick up."

That got my skeptical hackles up. "Natural" doesn't mean "safe," or "good," or "effective," despite what many people seem to think. It's what drives the whole faith-based (oops, I mean "Complementary and Alternative") medicine industry.

So could DEET residue left on your hand hurt a froggie that you pick up?

I dunno. And that's not really the relevant question; the real question is "might DEET hurt the froggie any more than any of the other things that are likely to be found on a six-year-old's hands?"

Like, oh, maybe the citronella oil that is the active ingredient in a lot of "natural" bug repellents. Mr. Google knows everything, and it turns out both DEET and citronella oil have been tested for toxicity on wildlife:

DEET is slightly toxic to trout, with a Mean Toxic dose of about 70,000 parts per billion.
Citronella oil is also slightly toxic to trout, with a Mean Toxic dose of about 17,000 parts per billion.

I'm citing the figures for trout not because I like the word "trout" (mmm... trout...) but because that's the only species I could find that had been studied for toxicity to citronella oil.

So-- the "natural" products are four times as toxic. And they're less effective, so you have to use more.

They do smell a little bit better than DEET, and by using a 100% organic, all-natural, fair-trade-certified bug spray you're telling your eco-friendly friends that you really care about the environment and your kids' health. Which is why I spray the kids with DEET as they leave the house, but put "naturapel" in their backpacks to reapply at camp. I don't want the camp counselors to think I'm trying to kill their frogs.

The Radiation Monster

I've just finished reading "Power to Save the World," which is all about why using uranium to generate power is a really good idea.

The author is a lefty environmentalist and writer who became convinced (after talking with a bunch of nuclear scientists) that nuclear power is cleaner, cheaper, and safer than any of the current alternatives. I think she's right.

Perhaps the most surprising factoid I learned reading the book is that there's no evidence that exposure to small amounts of radiation causes cancer. The evidence that does exist seems to indicate that it doesn't-- below a certain dose, it looks like radiation exposure doesn't hurt us at all.

That makes sense, and the paranoia about radiation fits in with the more general paranoia surrounding very small doses of toxic substances. Like the current paranoia about prescription drugs showing up in our water supply; people just can't seem to grasp the idea that our bodies have evolved the ability to heal themselves and are pretty good at dealing with all sorts of nasty stuff, as long as there's not too much of it.

All of the estimates of "future cancer deaths" from the radiation released from Chernobyl and Three Mile Island assume that, if 100% of people die from a radiation dose of 1000, then 0.1% of people will die if they're exposed to a dose of 1.

That makes about as much sense as saying "if 100% of people die when hit in the head by a 10 pound block of concrete dropped from a height of 15 feet, then 1% will die if hit in the head by a two-ounce rock dropped from a height of 15 feet." Dosage matters. Just ask the good folks at the Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division.

Seeing is believing. Except when it isn't.

There's an amazing website, run by aliens using advanced technologies, with some really amazing graphics. I like this one, which has a spooky green "UFO dot" that disappears as soon as you look directly at it.

As my 7-year-old daughter told me when I asked her to explain the UFO dot, "You look with your eyes, you see with your brain."

Herd immunity... to the Truth!

I was sick last week with one of the flu or cold viruses that's been going around. I didn't feel like doing much of anything besides sleep, so I found myself watching a news conference on CNN about vaccines and autism. The parents of a little girl with a rare genetic disorder had been awarded money from a fund the government set up to compensate victims of diseases caused by vaccinations.

Watching them describe how their little girl was normal and healthy until she got several vaccinations on one day, I waited for somebody to step in and provide a voice of reason.

After 20 or so minutes of parent vaccine-bashing, CNN did put on their science correspondent for 15 seconds, and he did point out that there's absolutely no evidence that vaccines cause autism. But I bet most people watching took away the message "vaccines ruined a little girl's life; vaccines are bad."

I didn't find out the child has a rare genetic disorder (her mitochondria are messed up) until I did a little research online.

I'm skeptical about a lot of things, but vaccines are not something that I'm skeptical about. Vaccines work. They work best when given to the majority of a population, so the population develops what's known as "herd immunity."

The anti-vaccination crowd are a bunch of non-scientific Luddites. They managed to get thimerosal banned from vaccines (because they claimed it caused autism) back in 2002. Did banning thimerosal (the mercury-based preservative) have any effect on the autism rate among children? No: none, zero, zilch, nada. The rate (and the increase in the rate) of autism is the same before and after the ban.

Do they give up and say "gee, sorry, I guess we were wrong about vaccines causing autism-- I guess all those scientific studies that said there is no link were right" ? Ummm, no. Like fuzzy-thinkers everywhere, they stick to their bad ideas because "it happened to my sister," or "science doesn't know everything," or "it's all a Grand Conspiracy!"

I'm generally a very tolerant person. I think the world would be a better place if everybody was rational and clear-thinking and open-minded. But if you want to believe in astrology or UFOs or ghosts, then that's OK with me; it doesn't do me any harm.

But all those people who decide not to vaccinate their children do harm me a tiny little bit-- they make it a tiny bit more likely that my kids will get sick. It's the herd immunity thing; not everybody who gets vaccinated is immune, but vaccinate a large enough percentage of the population and epidemics can't happen. I don't want your kids in school with my kids unless they're vaccinated.

Superpower Skeptic

Here's a thought experiment: would it be so terrible if the United States stopped being the world's military superpower?

What would happen if we reduced defense spending down to the level of, say, Australia (the 13'th largest defense budget in the world)? The US spends over half a trillion dollars a year on the military, Australia spends 14 billion dollars a year-- or roughly half a trillion dollars less than the US.

I was born in Australia-- it's a very nice country. As far as I can tell, Australia isn't suffering because it's not the World's Number One SuperPower. Like the US, it doesn't share any borders with unfriendly neighbors (but my mum tells me that a big worry down under in the sixties was the "Yellow Peril"-- that Chinese overpopulation would force them to invade).

Run the thought experiment in reverse-- what benefits would Australia get if it spent an extra half a trillion dollars a year and became the Worlds Greatest Fighting Force?

I know next to nothing about defense or foreign policy, so enlighten me-- besides bragging rights, what am I getting for that half a trillion dollars that I wouldn't get if we spent 20 billion dollars instead?

What they WANT people to want...

One section of the 1973 Select Committee on Goals' report is the results of questionnaires sent to Amherst residents and Amherst Town Meeting members. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it seems like some of the failures of the SCOG plan could have been predicted by the results of the questionnaire. For example, here's the results for one of the questions about housing:

What type of housing would you prefer?

78% single-family house

9% apartment

5% 2-4 family unit

2% mobile home

And here's another:

If you are dissatisfied with your present housing, indicate the four most important reasons.

14% too little space

9% noise

9% traffic

8% inadequate facilities

8% too close to neighbors

8% garage lacking or too small

7% physical condition of unit

6% too few bedrooms

6% too small yard

3% dislike neighbors/lack similar interests

3% too far from shopping facilities

3% too far from bus stop

2% lack of activity in neighborhood

2% too far from recreation facilities

1% too much space

1% too distant from public facilities

1% too far from place of employment

.25% too far from neighbors

So, people back then wanted bigger single-family houses on quiet streets, on a bigger lot, with a bigger garage. That's basically the opposite of the "higher density Village Centers surrounded by open space" vision laid out in the SCOG plan.

We're about to make the same mistake again. I bet most people in Amherst still want bigger, new houses on bigger lots on quiet streets, but Town Meeting will continue trying, and failing, to get people to want smaller houses on smaller lots close to Village Centers...

Killer Cell Phones?

So these four Swedish guys (and one guy from Berkeley) are saying that using cell phones a lot for a long time increases your risk of getting brain cancer by 20-30% (here's the link to the paper).

They're probably wrong, but let's assume they're right. Does that mean your iPhone is gonna kill you in ten years?

Probably not. Imagine 100,000 people-- say two pro football stadiums chock-full of people, or three towns the size of Amherst. About 8 of them will get brain cancer per year.

So the study says that if all those 100,000 people use cell phones for an hour or more a day for, like, a decade, then two or three more will get brain cancer. Or, to think about it another way-- if you use your cell phone a lot, the Swedish guys think it has a 1 in 50,000 chance per year of giving you cancer.

But according to some British guy, using a cell phone when you're driving makes you four times (400% !) more likely to crash. Assuming those heavy cell phone users are on their phones half the time they're driving:

100,000 non-cell-phone folks: 15 will die in car accidents. 8 will die from brain cancer.
100,000 cell-phone maniacs: 30 will die in car accidents. 10 will die from brain cancer.

I don't use my cell phone much, but if I did, I wouldn't worry about getting brain cancer-- the risk is pretty darn small. You should be a lot more worried about talking on your cell phone while driving and killing yourself or an innocent bystander...

Organic Food Versus Homeopathy

One of the main arguments for buying and eating "organic" food is that it has less pesticide residue than non-organic food.

The main claim for homeopathy is, basically, "that which does not kill us makes us stronger." It looks like that might be true, in some cases (see this Scientific American article for examples, and see the Wikipedia article on homeopathy for why that doesn't actually apply to homeopathic remedies).

So I find it odd that so many people who take homeopathic remedies also religiously shop for organic food. If you believe that taking a teeny-tiny bit of something bad is good for you... then shouldn't you be eating non-organic foods?

Confession: I don't buy organic, but I do always wash my produce. Not because I'm worried about pesticides, but because I'm worried about E.coli.

Fair Trade sounds nice...

Article 9 on the Fall Town Meeting Warrant is all about Fair Trade.

I'm flip-flopping between feeling indifferent and feeling slightly annoyed by it.

If it mandated that the Town Manager buy only Fair Trade Certified coffee and chocolate, or that stores in Amherst sell only Fair Trade Certified coffee and chocolate then I'd be Very Upset Indeed. But it doesn't, it just suggests that the Select Board promote Fair Trade and that the Town Manager ensure that Fair Trade goods get proper consideration in the normal Town Chocolate Procurement Process (for the humor-impaired-- just kidding, I'm sure the Town does NOT have a separate process just for buying chocolate).

I get slightly annoyed when I imagine how this will play out at Town Meeting. There will be pretty pictures of coffee plantations and happy, smiling Fair Trade plantation workers. And then the Grumpy Curmudgeons will stand up and say that it's dumb for the Town Manager to spend Precious Taxpayer Money thinking about Fair Trade, and what is Town Hall doing buying coffee and chocolate anyway when the employees could just bring their own from home or buy some from Amherst Coffee and save the Town some money?

Overall, I'm very skeptical of the whole Fair Trade movement. If you want to really help people overseas or help the environment, then switch from drinking $3 cups of coffee to taking a 10-cent caffeine pill every morning with some water.

Then send the $2.90 you saved to your favorite organization trying to make other countries as nice as this one (I like the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity) or your favorite environmental non-profit (I like The Nature Conservancy).

New York Times: Skeptical!

The New York Times magazine has an article today entitled "Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy? (read it here)"

I'm impressed. Lots of great information on why we should be skeptical of epidemiological studies (you know, the ones that result in headlines like "Trans Fats Linked To Higher Risk of Irritable Bowel Syndrome"). I'll have to add to my list of statistics to beware of:

7. Be very skeptical of epidemiological studies that show a correlation between a certain behavior and a certain disease. Until there are an overwhelming number of them all showing a strong correlation, or until a double-blind, placebo controlled clinical study is done, they should be treated as an interesting hypothesis that needs more research.

The Skeptical Approach to Statistics

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

Sometimes when I use statistical arguments the person I'm talking with will say something along the lines of "you can prove anything by choosing the right statistics." Yeah, but...

My rules of thumb for which statistics to believe are:

1. Never believe statistics you read in a newspaper or popular magazines or blogs. 87.5% of reporters have liberal arts backgrounds, and they're just not particularly good at math/science/statistics. Track down the original source, and see what the researchers actually say. If you can, run the paper through Google Scholar then find later papers that cite the study/paper, and see if all the citations support the same conclusions.

2. Never believe statistics that come from non-peer-reviewed sources. A statistic from the Quarterly Journal of Economics is 99.98% more trustworthy than a statistic from me.

3. Look closely at how close the statistic is to being "signficant." If the statistic is given without any measure of statistical significance, then it's almost certainly bogus.

4. Be very wary of statistics generated from "meta analyses" of a bunch of other studies. I'm told it's much harder (2.6 times harder) to get the math right for a meta-analysis.

5. Beware of statistics that give you differences in risk-- e.g. "doing XYZ decreases your risk of dying by 10%." These kinds of statistics sound impressive until you look at the absolute risk of doing XYZ-- very often, the risk is insanely tiny to begin with. Who cares if you decrease your risk of dying by a shark attack by 99% if you only swim in fresh water, if your chances of dying from a shark attack are essentially zero to begin with?

6. Beware of data mining effects. If you generate enough statistics about ANYTHING, some of them (1 in 20) will be outside the "95% confidence level." Pick and choose the ones that support your point of view and you can pretend that the randomness in the data is ironclad proof that you're right.

In an ideal world of infinite time and resources, I'd sit down with somebody I disagree with and together we'd decide on a statistic that we both agreed would be an unbiased way of measuring whatever we're arguing about (does the minimum wage cause unemployment, is more immigration good or bad for the economy, does capital punishment prevent crime...).

Then we'd go look up the relevant data and generate the statistic, and see who's right. With the astounding quantity of data and research available on the Internet we're getting closer to this ideal.

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DISCLAIMER: All of the statistics in this blog post are 100% made up.

Does the Scientific Method apply to Politics?

I'm a Skeptic. If you want to convince me of something, show me logic, or numbers, or a double-blind, placebo-controlled scientific study. Anecdotes or arguments that appeal to emotion are entertaining, but, to me, never convincing.

I've been reading and listening to a lot of progressive media lately, and the skeptic in me has been wondering if it's even possible to apply the scientific method to political questions. I think it is possible. Take Venezuela and Hugo Chávez, for example:

1. Develop a hypothesis: "modern socialism" works-- it makes the ordinary citizen healthier and wealthier.

2. Design an experiment to test the hypothesis: measure economic growth in Venezuela, factoring out external forces (like the price of oil). This is the tough part...

3. Run the experiment, and see if the results confirm the hypothesis or not.

I'd like to see more discussion between lefties and righties on what their fundamental political hypotheses are, and see if they can agree on ways of measuring whether or not those hypotheses are correct.

Of course, even if lefties and righties agree on steps 1 and 2, they can always endlessly argues about (3), arguing that real-world factors make the experiment invalid. Most people agree that Communism is a failed economic ideology, but die-hard Communists will argue that it failed in Russia and China only because the governments there did not apply the principles properly, or were corrupt, or....

I predict that Venezuela's economy will be a shambles when Pres. Chávez leaves office. I believe that it's extraordinary growth over the last few years is due entirely to the rise in the price of oil, and has very little to do with the socialist policies of the government¹. Resource-rich countries tend to be cursed with rampant corruption in huge State bureaucracies, and I predict that Venezuela will be no different.

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¹ Spending oil money on education for everybody is a great idea, and a good long-term investment in a country's future. But I don't think it will be enough to overcome the negative effects of Chávez' other socialist economic policies.