Acronym Required

Twitter Changes Our Brains:

In "Cut This Story", Michael Kinsley writes that "newspaper articles are too long", whereas internet news stories "get to the point". In 1,809 words Kinsley calls out the vagaries and customs of print journalism, sniping at long articles filled with what he judges useless information. In one 1,456 word The New York Times story, the fluff surrounding the facts about the House Health Care Plan annoys him: "Fewer than half the words in this opening sentence are devoted to saying what happened", says Kinsley. He runs a tally of words he judges wasteful in various news articles: ^1,2

"The quote is 11 words, while identifying Miller takes 10"..."Quote: 18 words; identification: 21 words"..."Quote: 16 words; identification, 19 words"..."The first 13 words of the piece with tired rhetoric"..."56 words spent allowing Jesse M. Brill to restate the author's point."

Is it a Twitter induced compulsion, first editing down to 140 characters, then getting stingy about words? As you can see, Kinsley's especially peeved about the use of quotes from experts, which he calls "unnecessary verbiage". He cites a NYT reporter who quotes compensation expert "Jesse M. Brill" -- a "total stranger". Reporters should just state their opinions, he says, instead of running them through proxy "experts", noting we only trust Brill because we trust the reporter, the editor, and the paper. In fact, we should cut out Brill, the "middleman", and other experts.

So then we'd be talk radio for readers?

Journalists tend to disagree with Kinsley. One Columbia Journalism Review writer argues that quotes from experts show a reporter has done their homework. Like Kinsley I have issues with experts, though I disagree with CJR's idealistic interpretation of their implementation. But "experts" serve many purposes, even if papers often deploy them egregiously.

As Kinsley points out, the use of experts often fails to ensure any reporting standard. But experts provide journalists with a dependable structure for stories, that they can file under deadline. Expert quotes in stories also give readers of varying opinions something to latch on to, which guarantees papers more subscriptions. One negative outcome of dependence on experts is that we're left subject to manipulation, experts can be used as tools by papers, lobbyists and politicians. But with careful attention to experts' backgrounds, smart readers can quickly understand the particular slant of the story. All to say that the use of experts doesn't waste newspaper space and it would be simplistic to conclude readers move online because articles are too long.

Balance of Evidence vs. Journalistic Balance

In our area of science and technology, journalists report the science in public policy stories like global warming and bisphenol A safety, with necessary journalistic traditions of "balance", "both sides", and statements from "experts". But most often they fail to relay important keystones to understanding science, like the more important "balance of evidence". For example, the balance of evidence supports global warming, although scientists disagree about some details and likely outcomes.

Furthermore, papers routinely identify policy advocates or lobbyists as "scientists" with dependable expertise because they hold a Ph.D., M.D., or other credential, but pay no heed to experts' affiliations or politics, which often provide the only meaningful information. Lobbyists in the global warming arena appear often in newspaper stories, although an opinion from Exxon-Mobil often doesn't offer credible science, rather an opinion as an "expert" on a certain policy preference.

In any area of science there is always valid disagreement, even when the preponderance of evidence tips to one high-level conclusion. But smaller disagreements don't necessarily make a "side" or provide "balance", except in the world of journalism. Journalistic balance seen through scientists' eyes often fails because it abandons accuracy and amplifies trivial opinions, seemingly on account of an editor who lacks the time or guts to report the balance of evidence.

The Cut-throat Non-buyer's Market

Kinsley writes that attributing journalists' opinions to "experts" is as useless as "legacy code" in software programs. However true that expert opinions sometimes fail to hit the mark, sometimes it's critical to leave legacy code in the program, and if we're using analogies, some introns, "non-coding" or "junk" regions of DNA sequence, turn out to be important. Similarly, in more ways than one, the use of experts quotes is also important.

Like many papers that serve(d) as community anchors, New York Times serves as more than a source of "news" or a collection of facts. Rather, readers see it as a faithful morning companion, a little arts and entertainment, some sports maybe, business. Faithfully, whenever some meme floats around, the Times picks it up and ferrets out an expert somewhere to tell you that yes, what you suspected/heard/rumored/hoped/feared is true. The paper grounds stories with quotes and uses experts of opposing views to give readers choices and validate those choices with authority.

Global warming may wipe out your vacation home, but the NYT won't feed you that news with your morning coffee without some "balance". Can't stand the idea of your seaside resort washing away? Don't worry, the NYT has an expert just for you. The right expert, no matter how unreliable, can soften what would otherwise be scary news. Faux conflict that drives scientists nuts about media coverage, reassures readers and reinforces the status quo.

Also to maintain expectations and satisfy readers, papers sometimes add flourish to stories that say nothing. Kinsley rakes through Times and Post articles about healthcare reform, mocking the "sweeping" this and "hard-fought" that. He chastises one author for including what he judges unnecessary quotes from Republicans who unsurprisingly oppose reform. Funny enough, but what else would the paper tell readers? "Congress struggled for months and ended up with a meaningless bill that won't go anywhere? Wake up and smell the coffee?"

And of course if you're 50% of the population who counts yourself as a Republican, you don't want Kinsley's stripped down version, the "duly reported fact that all but one [Republican] voted against [healthcare reform]". You want the paragraph Kinsley would delete, the one with a Republican citing their talking points on healthcare: "more taxes", "more spending". You're glad to read that a Republican "relentless criticized" the "Democrats' plan", because later in the day, you'll do the same, listeners willing. The NYT can't cut out these bits because it needs to assure whatever conservatives it can cling on to, that it's a good morning in America.

Andrew Cohen, of The Atlantic Monthly also takes exception to Kinsley's assessment of experts. Brill's expertise is valuable, he writes, as is his own (Cohen frequently serves as a legal expert), and "straight news articles should include analysis from experts like Brill" (and him). Speaking as a legal expert he enjoys both being quoted and knowing the politics of other quoted legal experts, his peers. His seems like a defense of the Times as the Facebook for middle-aged lawyers, which reinforces my point. The NYT is a comfortable gathering place where you can feel good about yourself. Republicans may call it a liberal rag, but they still get representation.

Happy readers, even ones with unjostled minds are valuable. There are other sources if readers want to bang their heads against walls with harsh, uninsulated facts, but the NYT needs subscribers.

Years of Magical Thinking

Keeping readers and selling news doesn't necessarily bode well for informed civilian participation, don't get me wrong. Watered-down science, politics, and economics news can obscure or belie urgency and misrepresent the grinding difficulty of policy-making.³ Of course talk-radio and TV networks do far more to manipulate and polarize citizens, and dumb down difficulty, but newspapers contribute to the problem.

The use of experts hit a nadir when the New York Times ran stories detailing WMD evidence used by the US to justify declaring war on Iraq. George W. Bush convinced Congress and a good part of the US population that Iraq had WMDs. The president is an "expert" we trust. The Times and their reporter Judith Miller helped justify the urgency of invasion by quoting other "unanimous government experts and Iraqi sources. High level government authorities in turn quoted the New York Times to wider audiences watching weekend talk shows. Miller's sources turned out to be unreliable, vaporware, if you want to continue with software analogies.

The WMD deception worked because we're practically hard-wired to depend on "experts" who feed us the bottom line on what to watch, wear, think, espouse, etc. The White House manipulated us via the Times, a trusted Times reporter, and some experts. Kinsley is right. The "experts" were merely middleman. But their presence in the story was critical to its persuasive power.

On the other hand, the presence of experts gives us valuable insight, even though readers often ignore it. Like footnotes in research and links in blogs, we can look up experts backgrounds to help us judge the quality of the story. Unfortunately, too few people do.

Rising out of "Comas and Coal Mines"

When Kinsley criticizes newspaper stories "written to accommodate readers who have just emerged from a coma or a coal mine", he ignores scads of fooled readers in our midst.

Maybe readers aren't emerging from in a coma, maybe they're stuck in a media trance. TV feeds people constant advertising about how their clothes will sparkle by switching detergents and how the loves of their lives will materialize if they drive the right car or sip the right cocoa. When fairies flit out of TV's morning cereals, a little bit of the brain pays attention (or atrophies, I'm not sure which), and over time we all start to believe the magic.

We buy lots of stuff because someone tells us it will solve out problems -- we buy and we bolster economies. But also 50% of Americans buy that global warming is a hoax. 50% believe that God created the earth a few thousand years ago. In staid, sensible Massachusetts half of voters believe that a Cosmo centerfold with a head of hair worthy of a Rograine ad will deliver them from their problems. And over 50% of Americans voted for an articulate capable president from Illinois, but now want to fire him because he didn't magical action figure they imagined. "Experts" in church, on TV, and in newspapers, spawn and encourage these beliefs.

The constant onslaught of fairy dust diminishes our attention span (Twitter-mind) and analytical abilities. Newspapers are the least worrisome of culprits. We don't vote for charismatic puffballs who drive pick-ups because of newspapers. But newspaper editors to swath the facts of stories with hoopla and hand waving to snap us out of our media trance, and momentarily hold our attention when, it's true, many people would rather be watching a cat video on YouTube. Too many facts too fast, maybe even the who, what, where, when how, would wreck our mood, so newspapers need to be cautious, need to slip the truth in judiciously.

Readers will turn online for many reasons. But it's not because the news is more concise, as Kinsley suggests, rather, because in addition to being convenient, immediate, and interactive, there's unlimited escapist distraction, and far less news, per glance, than in the Washington Post or New York Times.

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(1) As of this week, Kinsley is not longer associated with the online business site to be launched by The Atlantic Monthly

(2) Not necessarily true. Some blog posts are very long, longer than ours. And why should they be short? It costs very little to extend a 2,000 word article into a 10,000 word article.

(3) A few years ago we wrote about the New York Times' weak coverage of former President Thabo Mbeki's policies on AIDS in South Africa. Despite unrelenting illness and death Mbeki denied science, and rejected medicines, while the Times served Americans softball platitudes about Mbeki's thought processes that reflected, rather than criticized, US foreign policy. We've also written extensively about mambypamby coverage of global warming" -- there are many other issues.

Does it seem like Democrats, time and again throwing themselves into a dither at the slightest G.O.P. provocation, suffer severe post-traumatic stress after eight years of Bush, and just need to calm down? Fresh off the Massachusetts upset, they seem distracted from their mission and insist of future-tripping that their worst nightmares will come true. To fuel the angst, the G.O.P. postures in Illinois. Then Air America just ups and goes off the air, which of course causes the right-wing talk show cabal to scream a death knell for liberal anything -- media, politics, commentators...

"Air America", Auspicious Name?

But in all fairness, "Air America" the network, did quite well given the odds. Consider first that some ballsy person dared name it "Air America". Look at the history of previous organizations with that name (actually at first they called it Air America Media, then shortened that). Longevity-wise, the network lasted far longer, six years, than "Air America" the charter airline, described by Wikipedia as "a short-lived charter airline founded in 1989, but discontinuing service in 1990".

Reputation-wise about the worse I ever heard was from Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitas, who expressed surprise when a reporter told him the network was doomed: Air America is "still really on the air?" Cheeky.

Personally, I never listened to the network, for no particular reason, but whatever Air America did or didn't do (and of course, just like Massachusetts, everyone has an opinion) Air America the network couldn't be more controversial than "Air America" the civilian airline "operated by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Vietnam War". The C.I.A. airline ran for sixteen years in Southeast Asia conducting logistics and recognizance missions, transporting civilians and refugees, and perhaps, according to Wikipedia, smuggling heroin, and opium for Asian despots.

Progressive Media's Place

Air America Media started during the Bush administration, when FOX seemed to have its hand around the throat of the public airwaves. Rachel Maddow got her start at Air America, and Senator Al Franken also played a central role for the network before launching his current career as campaigner, lawmaker in waiting, and Senator. The network previously went bankrupt in 2004, before being bought and revived, and filing for bankruptcy again. I'm not sure what really happened, but Air America proved to be a worthy effort, if not a viable business.

Liberal or progressive media is not "dead", as FOX would have it, just because Air America did not succeed as a business. Nor does one business going off the air signal that the country is "moving right", as some commentators would have it.

Democracy Now, for one, is stronger than ever, broadcasting to over 800 stations around the world. Here's Amy Goodman in an interview with KCTS TV talking about media's job to hold politicians accountable, the place of the media as sitting around a huge kitchen table and having an "open discourse", a "lively" discussion, a "robust debate" about the "critical issues of the day"; and the "mainstream media" in general -- "What do I think of the mainstream media? I think it would be a good idea";

The Los Angeles Times Science section is a-ok. Except, worryingly, the LA Times now puts Science in a subcategory under the category "US and World", in one of the top ten categories that editors use to divvy up the news: "US & World", "Local", "Business", "Sports", "Entertainment", "Health", "Living", "Travel"", "Opinion", and "More".

LA Insatiable for Hotlist, Brand X and The Envelope?

Let's look at how this works.

• Under the category "Entertainment", the LA Times has these subcategories: Movies, Television, Music, Celebrity, Arts & Culture, Company Town, Calendar, the Envelope, and Hotlist, in that order. Don't think they missed any "Entertainment" "news".

• Under the category "Living", the paper assigns these subcategories: Health, Home, Food, Image, Travel, Autos, Books, Hotlist, Brand X, Magazine and "Your Scene". Can't imagine they've missed much "Living" "news".

• Then, under the category "US and World", the paper puts these subcategories: Washington, Nation, Afghanistan, Middle East, Latin America, Asia, Science, Environment, and ominously, Obituaries -- again, in that order.

The LA Times has put "science" on the same level of "brand X", "the envelope", and "company town".

Bucket List

Get it? All the real news, all the stuff that really might impact us; like the whole rest of the world beside LA; two killer, budget decimating wars; 51 US states; global warming; stem cell research; microbiology research; astronomy and the universe; on and on -- all live in one convenient news bucket beside biographies of the dead.

Technology is in "Business". And where is "Europe"? I can't find it. Completely missing from the line-up? Perhaps so old world, that some editor shoved it into Obituaries? Does the Los Angeles Times have a grudge against all of Europe? Does that include Russia? Or is "Russia" in "Asia"?

I'm worried. Because if the LA Times can eighty-six all of "Europe", then it looks like the editors and managers have placed the two categores Science and Environment disconcertingly close to Obituaries. Say a little prayer for Science News, one banana peel away from the grave?

Carp, a Problem -- And The Government Solution

A couple of weeks ago we reported that scientists feared Asian carp had invaded the Great Lakes. Sure enough, scientists recently found carp DNA in Lake Michigan, an ecological problem considered so serious that the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue last week. (The Supreme Court said NO to Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Ontario, who together requested that the court allow the locks be closed to prevent the carp from impacting the $7 billion dollar fisheries industry).

Who could suggest a solution? Fortunately, the entrepreneurial government of the United States (but not SCOTUS) can tackle this kind of stuff. Now, some government go-getters suggest marketing the carp as "Silverfin" (not to be confused with the "silverfish", a revolting insect) to strengthen the filter-feeder's appeal to diners.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries hatched the carp plan, identifying eleven "activities" to help rebrand the invasive fish as a delicacy.

The Media Could Actually Be Helpful

Number one on the list is surprisingly obvious: "determine if silver and bighead carp are suitable for human consumption". Apparently Chef Phillipe Parola (famous for trying to push other distasteful creatures on diners, like alligator and nutria) already tested the fish with consumers, and found that the only barrier to epicurean success is "a series of floating bones that are not easily separated from the flesh". The US Geological Survey got right on it, promptly producing a video to teach chefs and sports fisherman how to clean the invasive fish.

The agency also planned various promotional activities, and here's where journalists play an important role. In a series of events, producers plan to: "present the fish products to the media...", who will be "given samples of fish and fish products to eat". Providing no journalist chokes on a bone and dies, apparently the US Geological Survey will move on to Stage II Clinical Trials.

The Geological Survey also suggests "large media events", where attendees will be habituated to the idea as carp as food, since "videos showing the fish and cleaning methods will be continuously playing".

And Scientist Could Help Too, Doing What They Usually Do -- Research

When the Supreme Court chooses to be unhelpful, maybe scientists can aid the cause. Salon Magazine interviewed "the energetic Parola", who's pushing hard to change the fish's name from "carp" to "silverfin".

Parola illustrates how some government agencies work at cross-purposes -; as he explains how the carp got its undelicious name:

Parola: "Some clown from the USDA classified it as a carp. Carps are a bottom feeders and this is a filter feeder. The shape of the fish, the way it grows, the color: Literally there is no similarity to the carp. There's no other species named the silverfin, so what's the problem?"

Salon: "Well, off the top of my head, shouldn't it be up to scientists to name the fish?"

Parola: "But what I'm saying to you -- very loudly - is that this fish doesn't have any similarity with the carp. I want somebody out there to redo that research and help us out."

There you go. Team effort. Scientists? Change the research. Do what you need to do, whatever it takes, call in the IPCC (no!! little joke)...what do ichthyologists think?

Many people who are now disappointed by the Obama administration didn't pay close enough attention during his campaign and election. It's the same with all presidents, really -- the promise of a new president brings at first a golden era of hope during which people seem to cavalierly shed their analytical abilities; then the denial phase as the president comes into his own; then the rude awakening when they're shocked, shocked, shocked at the scale of the deception.

Remember the Bush presidency? Mr. Compassionate Conservative? People barely twitched when he invaded Iraq, then slowly awoke to his mendacious governance -- the fact that there were no WMDs, there was global warming, arsenic levels weren't safe, Guantanamo prisoners were tortured to within an inch of their lives the end of their lives -- etc.

Warnings

But before presidents are elected there's time to profile their past, time for people to shake themselves out of wishful thinking into clarity. Usually at least one enterprising journalist digs into a candidate's history and accurately predicts their presidency. For instance, during the George W. Bush presidential campaign of 2000, Harper's author Joe Conason wrote an excellent, disturbing article about Bush's tenure in Texas politics called, "Notes on a Native Son: Part I. "The George W. Bush success story: A heartwarming tale about baseball, $1.7 billion, and a lot of swell friends." (Feb. 2000) The article disabused people of their ideas that George W. Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore were very similar. Conason nailed Bush's future leadership proclivities. Perhaps some of it was luck, and I'm sure Conason wasn't the only one who caught on early. But the Harper's article showed that some people really can get a bead on leaders, and that if we pay attention we could too. That, at least, is reassuring to know.

Forward to the Obama campaign, in July, 2008, when New Yorker magazine shocked the world with a cover cartoon of Barack and Michelle Obama pictured with radical accoutrements and dressed -- as Al Jazeera put it -- "in what many [Americans] see as 'Muslim clothing'". We think fewer people read the accompanying article, which we touched on back then in "We The Thin Skinned, The Public and The Media".

The New Yorker cleverly juxtaposed a detailed political biography of Obama by Ryan Lizza against their cartoon cover depiction. In Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama, Lizza portrayed Obama as a pragmatic politician alert to the vagaries of politics, who proved himself more than adept at maneuvering through the political quagmires of Chicago and Illinois to emerge unscathed, all the while governing blandly. We quoted this from Lizza's profile:

"Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions..."

Liberals now realize that Obama's "existing institutions", as Lizza put it, were in many cases set up by the George W. Bush administration. The public didn't seem to get the New Yorker's sly joke back then, the paradox of the cover story versus the true inside scoop. The public went apoplectic over the cover. And only now are people starting to catch on to the fact that the Obama they compiled in their head isn't the Obama who's leading the country.

Misconceptions

If liberals and independents are unhappy -- Bush at least went full tilt with his base-- so too are conservatives. Conservative columnist Ross Douthat sought to explain the Obama paradox recently. He wrote: "In hindsight, the most prescient sentence penned during the presidential campaign belongs to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker", then quoted Lizza's two sentences ("Perhaps the greatest misconception...institutions"). Douthat's "The Obama Way" explained that everyone vilified Obama differently but the president fit no particular mold. The most discontented people were the liberals -- as Douthat said:

"The left has been frustrated, again and again, by the gulf between Obama's professed principles and the compromises that he's willing to accept, and some liberals have become convinced that he isn't one of them at all. They're wrong. Absent political constraints, Obama would probably side with the liberal line on almost every issue."

There goes Douthat, first heartily agreeing with Lizza's New Yorker quote describing Obama as a political accommodator, next labeling Obama a flaming liberal who's only tenuously tethered to some middle way -- as if to warn conservatives not to relax. Well, which is it, young feller?

Does Douthat peg Obama as impossible to categorize but at his core very liberal? Or does he fall for the same fallacies of judgement he's just finished explaining to us?

Pragmatism

How liberal is Obama, deep down inside? Honestly, we don't know. But look, for instance at the politics of one of his long term advisors, the only person with a more quixotic image than Obama himself, whose intentions are even more difficult for observers to pin down -- Cass Sunstein. Sunstein leads the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). OIRA reviews regulations from all rule-making agencies in the Office of Management and Budget, regulations for banking, air and water quality, food, drugs, transportation...in other words, Sunstein's philosophy affects us all, and he's supposedly a close counsel of Obama's .

We've somewhat regularly followed Sunstein's progress in the Obama administration and his amazing ability to attract venomous critics as well as admiring followers from both the left and the right. There wasn't always such focus on OIRA administrators. Sunstein's very driven regulation-allergic conservative predecessors at OIRA, John Graham and Susan Dudley, attracted only the sparsest attention as they weakened regulation, ignored science, and developed symbiotic relationships with industry.

Sunstein often quotes John Graham and shares and builds on Graham's cost-benefit analysis legacy, yet people often label him, like Obama, as an out of bounds liberal. Sunstein's nomination was supported by conservative groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and by the Wall Street Journal. Yet wildly preposterous rumors about his views, for instance on animal rights, held up his OIRA nomination for months. Republican senators stymied his appointment, as hunters and factory farms hijacked meaningful deliberation about Sunstein's most controversial ideas -- on cost-benefit analysis, for instance -- by focusing on the false notions that he might ban hunting, something that he had actually convincingly argued against.

The other thing that's interesting given Sunstein's well-documented ideas, is how pundits from both sides seem to ignore history when they periodically burst out over one thing or another they unearth in his writing. Of course some people, like Rena Steinzor of the Center For Progressive Reform, have long focused on environmental law, cost-benefit analysis, and the likely impact of Cass Sunstein heading OIRA. But to my point, recently Glenn Greenwald popularized a flurry of concern about Sunstein with his Salon article, "Obama Confidant's Spine-chilling Proposal". Greenwald's focus is not on Sunstein's cost-benefit machinations or environmental stances, but on Sunstein's exploration of government control of "conspiracy theories".

The Mirror, A Gift or A Curse?

Greenwald takes Sunstein to task for advocating in a 2008 paper that the government ought to do things like anonymously infiltrate groups to dissipate conspiracy theories. The Sunstein paper is really interesting (and funny, to me), and Greenwald competently attacks the ideas Sunstein presents. But just like Bush and Obama, Sunstein's proposals in 2008 proved consistent with what he has publicly explored/advocated for years.

In his 2001 book Republic.com, for instance, Sunstein argued that the government (he later changed this to private companies) could fight internet "hate-sites" and polarization that 'threatened democracy' by enforcing things like cross-linking to politically opposing sites. What did Thaler/Sunstein's book Nudge urge but for the government to "architect" our "choices"? If you circle through his books and papers you'll find that one way or another, either by infiltration or nudging, Sunstein's quite pre-occupied with government control of "undesirable" information, voices and outcomes, as judged by the government. These aren't terribly liberal obsessions, and it would be hard for me to call Sunstein a liberal.

Back to Douthat's point, I would also be hard-pressed to call Obama a liberal, either by his associations or his Illinois and presidential records. I'm surely biased, but so far he's a pragmatist, (though not a "centrist" Douthat says), and we were adequately and accurately warned. How many years does someone need to act like a centrist/pragmatist before people stop labeling them a liberal?*

Obama gets everyone together, he does. And they're all suspicious. During his campaign, people would say that Obama's campaign gift was that he made everyone see a bit of themselves in him. Perhaps now he has the opposite effect. No one can see any bit of themselves in him. Is that a curse?

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*And btw, as an aside, what is a liberal? And does the country need a "liberal" president, anyway, liberals?

Bisphenol A, Trees on Mars, and Riveting Headlines

Headlines can be deceiving, as well all know. But we often fall for them anyway. "Are Those Trees on Mars?" asked FoxNews and 150 other news outlets last week. So I squinted at the photo, trying to imagine how those could possibly be trees...maybe if a small city like Le Mars, Iowa shipped all the old Christmas trees collected on January 8th to Le Other Mars, instead of chipping them?

A fool I was, but you can't imagine my disappointment when the article attached to the NASA photo explained that there were No Trees On Mars, only dark sand illuminated differently than the surrounding carbon dioxide ice(1) -- (Tricky editors! - 'HA, made you look'). I guess readers' attention was elsewhere last week because closer to home, more subtly, but equally misleading, news headlines announced: The FDA "reverses" its position on bisphenol A (BPA), the FDA "backtracks" on BPA, the FDA advises consumers to "limit exposure" to BPA.

These headlines seemed like real news, since the FDA has for years faiiled to come out with either actions or public statements reflecting the growing research evidence for BPA toxicity. During the Bush administration the glaring gap between the FDA's position and BPA research propelled scientists to publicly criticized the relationship between the FDA and the industries it was supposed to be regulating. Acronym Required wrote about the fraught regulatory environment in the FDA vis-à-vis BPA, in "Scientists Criticize FDA Methods on BPA", in "Conflict of Interest in the FDA?", in "FDA Panel Offers Corrections to BPA Draft", in "Bisphenol A, The FDA, Industry -- Whassup?", and others.

Given the FDA's lackluster BPA regulation history, plus the fact that BPA is almost a household word, the newest headlines on BPA and the FDA attracted everyone's attention. The New York Times listed its story "F.D.A. Concerned About Substance in Food Packaging", as one of the "most e-mailed" articles one day. But underneath the headlines, what did the stories really report?

FDA -- Aging Cheerleader?

Despite the headlines, the FDA announced no "guidelines", and no new news. The LA Times quoted a statement from FDA Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein under the title "FDA issues BPA guidelines". "For the present", Sharfstein said", the FDA does support the use of baby bottles with BPA.'" (emphasis ours)

So in essence, the FDA has offered the same counsel for years, ever since it started studying BPA. In 1995 for instance, FDA scientists found that BPA migrated from heated plastic containers. The agency remained unalarmed. In 1997 the FDA began pondering how to change regulation to reflect evidence that endocrine disruptors altered physiology at low doses -- but barely flinched.

In 1999 several consumer groups, environmental safety groups, and scientists, petitioned the FDA to ban BPA in plastic baby bottles, because research then showed without a doubt that the chemical could leach out of polycarbonate, and indicated that BPA caused sex organ problems for male babies of exposed pregnant mice. At the time, the FDA deployed Dr. George Pauli to quell rising consumer concerns and Pauli assured families that polycarbonate bottles didn't leach under 'everyday' conditions, only at high temperatures; infant formulas required only mild heating, he said. (Although, alarmingly, parents typically microwaved the bottles.)

Now, over a decade later, despite dozens more studies, the FDA is still equivocating on baby bottles, although bottles present one of the riskiest sources of BPA because of babies' vulnerability to endocrine disruptors during development.

The FDA's statement becomes all the more difficult to swallow when you know that all on their own, without any encouragement from the agency, manufacturers voluntarily pulled polycarbonate bottles for babies and adults off the shelves.

The FDA did manage to bring its assessment -- that there is "some concern" about BPA health risks -- in line with the National Toxicology Program's (NTP) assessment. Although this is no small feat given the FDA's history, the agency didn't do much else, despite delaying this announcement three times.

From the FDA website, here's what the FDA committed to:

• "supporting industry actions" to stop making BPA containing baby bottles
• "faciliting the development" of BPA alternatives for formula cans
• "supporting efforts" to replace BPA in food can linings

Such mealy-mouthed statements give the impression that the FDA has little more persuasive authority than Acronym Required. The agency also said it would work with other agencies like the National Toxicology Program (NTP) in the NIEHS/NIH, and with foreign governments (legislators have aggressively questioned the FDA why it hasn't taken action when the Canada has banned BPA).

What Should Consumers Think?

The FDA is also seeking "external input" on the "science surrounding BPA", and will solicit "further public comment". Acronym Required commented on public comment periods used by agencies before. We wouldn't want to appear cynical in saying you can never have too much "public comment" or assume that the FDA is using the comment period to stall regulatory action. But since the FDA is now working with the National Toxicology Program in the NIH (NTP), it could review the numerous public comments solicited by the NTP during its assessments of the chemical in February, 2006; April, 2007; November, 2007; and April, 2008. (2)

The FDA is also "supporting a shift to a more robust regulatory framework for oversight of BPA". The FDA explains that a 40 year rule limits the FDA's ability to regulate BPA (as a food additive). The FDA can regulate new substances under a 2000 rule, but that doesn't help with BPA. So the agency will "encourage manufacturers to voluntarily submit a food contact notification for their currently marketed uses of BPA-containing materials." This is interesting because for years the FDA has been researching BPA and has declined to regulate the chemical because the agency found the science unconvincing; for some reason it hasn't brought a lot attention to its legal inabilities to regulate.

Does the FDA's latest announcement clarify its previous confusing position? What should consumers do? As my favorite headline, by "Beforeitsnews.com" byline has it: "It's in Your Urine But Is It Safe?".

More to the point, what should citizens do that they haven't done already? They've stopped buying polycarbonate, so much so that manufacturers have pulled bottles off the shelves, they've sued, they've urged local and state ordinances. By all measures, consumers have made the most credible effort to regulate BPA.

The FDA -- Nudging Itself Out of a Job? Drowning Itself In the Bathtub?

Other non-governmental organizations have responded with none of the ambiguity of the FDA. For instance spokespeople from the Breast Cancer Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Consumers Union, Clean New York, Center for Health Environment & Justice, and others, all urge the FDA to ban the chemical.

Even the National Council of Churches offers a suggestion for the FDA, saying, "As we celebrate the Christmas season, we are reminded of Jesus' commitment to those in poverty. We hope that the FDA will take measures to ensure that canned food is BPA-free through the use of safe alternatives in the future."

The FDA has been researching the chemical for over a decade. Their most recent statement followed delays -- not just three delays, but years of delays. Naturally the FDA, along with the CDC and NIH will support further research, in addition to supporting a new regulatory framework. The research will add to the already substantial body of research showing BPA dangers. And I guess that's how it is. The FDA is obviously hesitant to impact a multi-billion dollar industry, so the research needs to be far more conclusive than, say, if you were putting a potentially profitable pharmaceutical drug on the market.

In the meantime, as the FDA maintains relevancy by "supporting", "facilitating", and "encouraging" -- cities, towns and states across the US will continue to be at the forefront of 'patchwork' BPA regulation, pushing manufacturers to use alternatives.

--------------------------------

¹ From NASA: "At that time, dark sand on the interior of Martian sand dunes became more and more visible as the spring Sun melted the lighter carbon dioxide ice. When occurring near the top of a dune, dark sand may cascade down the dune leaving dark surface streaks -- streaks that might appear at first to be trees standing in front of the lighter regions, but cast no shadows."

² As a side note, the progression of public comments is interesting because it also shows growing awareness of BPA. In 2006 the only public comment was from the American Plastics Council. By 2008 almost 50 individuals and agencies commented.

Checklists?

Atul Gawande's latest book, The Checklist Manifesto, advocates checklists to systemize the complexity of healthcare delivery and reduce medical mistakes. Making the media rounds, Gawande spoke for an hour recently on Democracy Now. He also testified before the President's Council on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Checklists, you ask? Certainly they're not new. Indeed, a few years ago, another physician, Dr. Peter Pronovost presented research showing the utility of checklists to tackle infectious disease in hospitals, and of course they've been used by airlines, oil change places, pizza delivery people, families going shopping, etc. Gawande's rendition appeared in this piece for The New Yorker in 2007. But his book is especially timely, given the current focus on healthcare reform.

The amount of information in medicine is vast -- 68,000 different patient diagnoses, 4,000 different surgeries, thousands of medicines. But despite our knowledge and exorbitant spending, healthcare outcomes in the US are lower than other industrialized countries -- 37th lowest, in fact, and sinking.

The fee for service incentives derail efficient healthcare, for instance by encouraging surgery. There are 230 million surgeries a year, 50 million in the US. Problematically, more surgeries means more surgical complications. The number of surgeries outstrips childbirths in the US, according to Gawande, but with 10-100 times the death rate. As he puts it, "150,000 people who die of complications of surgery, die within thirty days following surgery. And we know at least half are avoidable."

Gawande et al conclude that checklists help reduce mortality and morbidity from surgery and infections. Gawande also says they increase teamwork during procedures, for instance, by empowering nurses to point out missed checklist items. Better teamwork in turn increases success rates.

Checklists are not the complete solution to avoiding deaths, but when Gawande conducted research using checklists in eight hospital centers and 7,688 patients across the globe, the researchers found that deaths decreased by 46%, which, as a percentage looks quite dramatic, but according to their research surgical teams reduced deaths from surgery from 1.5% before the checklist to .8% afterwards. Serious complications fell from 11% to 7% according to the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) last year.

Checklists as Partial Solution

But if the improvements observed by the research teams aren't artifacts, checklist implementation is still not without other issues. Harold Varmus pointed out in the PCAST panel that checklists could impede creative solutions, and noted that investigations into best practices inevitably unveil multiple equally effective ways of solving medical challenges.

As well, according to Gawande, sometimes checklists impede profit. There are strong financial incentives encouraging doctors to do procedures like surgeries. Gawande wrote last summer about the high cost of healthcare in McAllen Texas, where Medicare spends $15,000 per enrollee because entrepreneurial doctors have found ways to profit mightily within the fee for service system. In Boston, although the checklists reduced emergency asthma admissions at Boston Children's Hospital by 80%, asthma admissions were the number one revenue source for the hospital admissions. The surgeon stressed that payment systems need to be adjusted when necessary, checklists won't work on their own. The problem of keeping costs down he told Democracy Now, has not been accomplished by insurance companies.

Checklists: Simple and Cheap, Dumped into a Technology Centric World?

One of Gawande's chief points is that checklists are simple and cheap to implement compared to proposed solutions for healthcare which involve ever more complicated technology that doesn't necessarily scale. As Gawande says: "There are technologies that we've tried to introduce. We've pursued very expensive solutions. But what we've not recognized is that we can pursue an idea like checklists...".

When Gawande presented these views to the President's panel, he ran into some interesting opinions from some in the IT sector who sit on the panel. His low tech solution elicited questions like: "Will physicians accept technology?"

Gawande observed that there "can be a sense of seeing the technology almost as a panacea". Problematically he says, although technology can be beneficial, "we have not really gathered evidence on what the components are that make it a successful implementation versus unsuccessful". Two systems in two different organizations can save lives and money in one institution and be a total failure in another, as was the case with a physicians' order entry system that Brigham Women's successfully implemented, which then failed to deliver cost savings and life saving benefits when implemented at Cedar's Sinai.

No sooner had he said this, when Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO who sits on PCAST, asked him why doctors didn't use technology more. Schmidt tried to get some insight for "the model of healthcare that we'll have five or ten years from now."

"It's pretty clear that we'll have personal health records and you'll have the equivalent of a USB stick or cloud based medical history. You'll show up at the doctor with some set of symptoms. And in my ideal world what would happen is that the doctoor would type the set of symptoms that they see as a doctor and they would be matched against this data that is a repository. And then a knowledge engine would use best practices and all the knowledge of the world to then give the physician some standardized guidance. This is a generalized form of your checklist mechanism. As a computer scientist, this is a platform database problem...And it's also knowledge engineering problem.

We do these very, very well, as a general rule in computer science. And it befuddles me why medicine has not organized itself around this platform opportunity. Do you have an opinion as to why not? Do you have an opinion as to how such a system would evolve so that the doctors would use it, it would standardize practices in the way you described and ultimately lead to presumably debates over healthcare and what the right outcomes are and all the kinds of incentives. If you don't have such a platform you'll never measure it to scale...

There are a lot of assumptions implicit in Schmidt's statements, we won't go through them all here, although some physician/commentators on the internet have already had a field day. Gawande started out responding that the people who make those systems "don't know how the clinical encounter works" -- six problems in 15 minutes per patient, for starters. He ended up more conciliatory towards the idea of computerized checklists. But he emphasized that his checklists involve understanding systems engineering issues involved with ensuring well-functioning teams. That checklists were not simply a challenge of listing as Schmidt put it "all the knowledge in the world".

Gawande also proposed to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology a new "science of health delivery" to study systems innovations, team organization and motivations, and coordinated deployment of healthcare. He even suggested a "National Institutes for Health Systems Innovation" to stand apart from the NIH (although such new agencies are fun to dream up but practically improbable).

Moving Forward on Platforms

For all the issues brought to the fore in "Checklist Manifesto", and for the all the issues at stake in healthcare, and to Gawande's warning about technology panacea's, it was interesting that the panel ended up quickly focusing on healthcare records. It's easy to imagine the temptation to look to health care records as that very panacea. A lot of the failures in medicine are also failures of communication, between the patient and doctor (15 minutes is often generous), between doctors, between facilities. Certainly technology already helps a lot of this, but for all the improvements in medical information technology to date, medical care is still fragmented, expensive, fraught with inconsistency and at times dangerous to the patient. Still, technology is necessarily part of the solution, and building the platform is critical.

So how would a new healthcare IT platform change the current medical system? There's a lot at stake for doctors and for patients. Any major change to the system could rearrange profits. Much of the routine patient care could be accomplished via a computer and a nurse or administrator. Why does a doctor need to charge $200 to tell you to take aspirin and drink fluids? Both Google and Microsoft are positioning themselves well -- it's hard to imagine either not grabbing the opportunity to root itself themselves into healthcare, they have a lot of mouths to feed back on their campuses.

It's troubling that the primary recipient, the patient, isn't very well represented in any of these discussions except by proxy of Google and various university doctors. 'We know what's good for you and we'll tell you what that is.' Everyone is advocating for "the patient", but Google is advocating for itself as well, as is Microsoft. And do university doctors in the upper echelons really experience the same problems with healthcare that your average patient does? That's what you get with 3rd party healthcare payers? The primary customer perhaps is not patients but insurance companies, who will no doubt benefit from the knowledge in more comprehensive databases of patient information.

The challenge perhaps is to improve healthcare (behind the patient's back), to not make it worse (no small feat), and to avoid simply adding another layer of expense and bureaucracy, to the gigantic Dagwood sandwich that is modern healthcare. It would be too easy to add more layers, to the layers and layers that comprise healthcare services, insurance, and companies that administer benefits, each one yielding profits from their slice, who in the end complicate healthcare and add costs for ambiguous ends.

Haiti!

Help, donate: Partners in Health, or Medecins Sans Frontiers, or the Clinton Foundation, or the International Red Cross or text-to-give.

• PLoS and Elsevier: On the Same Page?

  One of our favorite things, in the Obama era, is to see would be foes band together. So we look fondly upon the unlikely albeit fragile "alliance" that PLoS and Elsevier ended up in at a recent open access publishing roundtable. The occasion was a report issued by the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable, convened by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). There were 14 publishers, university leaders, librarians, and other experts at the round table, who drafted basic agreements about how public access to journal publications. They emphasized:

  "the need to preserve peer review, the necessity of adaptable publishing business models, the benefits of broader public access, the importance of archiving, and the interoperability of online content"

  However, the Elsevier and PLoS representatives refused to join the other 12 members in signing the consensus agreement, although both agreed that points of the agreement were "positive". PLoS and Elsevier apparently both have a lot a stake, since they each sent extra representatives to the panel. Elsevier sent their General Counsel/Senior Vice President, and PLoS sent their Managing Editor as well as their CEO.

  Predictably, YS Chi, speaking for Elsevier, stated that he couldn't sign the agreement because it "supports an overly expansive role of government and advocates approaches to the business of scholarly publishing that I believe are overly prescriptive." No question about where giant, monopolistic, Elsevier ever stands.

  PLoS representative Mark Patterson's statement was a little more difficult for me to unpack. He said that the agreement "stops far short of recognizing and endorsing the opportunities to unleash the full potential of online communication to transform access to and use of scholarly literature." His whole statement was a similar whirl of words. What does he mean? He didn't include "the need to preserve peer review" as one of his "positive" points of agreement....But does PLoS want a more players around it? Federal support for PLoS? Explicit endorsement of pay to publish? A more "expansive role for government"? Someone knows, not me.

  For more information on open access and this agreement in general, there's a great public access policy forum here at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the "ever-enthusiastic public access policy team" at OSTP has extended the comment period. So you can comment, and there's lots to read.

• H1N1

  The World Health Organization (WHO), hits back at accusers who say that the organization, along with pharma companies, created a "fake epidemic" in H1N1. The World Health Organization reiterated its role to balance urgency and expediency with uncertainty. In an editorial generally praising the response to the epidemic, Nature wrote this week:

  "The danger now is that last year's relatively mild pandemic will create a false sense of security and complacency. The reality is that next time we might not be so lucky -- especially given that this time most of the world's population, living as they do in developing countries, had no access to either vaccines or antiviral drugs."

  It's easy, it seems to us, for very smart people to be cynical about the H1N1 pandemic. It is truly a challenge to explain risks and uncertainty of pandemics and the fact that the scientists and public health organizations are actually doing a great job.

Judge Overrules FDA on Electronic Cigarettes, Whatever They Are

Some people believe that a president's most lasting legacy is in the judges he appoints; George W. Bush appointed judge Richard Leon of the Federal District Court in Washington. Leon recently moved to stop the FDA from regulating e-cigarettes, on grounds that they aren't tobacco. In fact, e-cigarettes are battery-powered tubes that vaporize nicotine with tobacco flavoring, that simulate cigarette smoking for the user. I can't make that sound good. Seems like the next best thing to sex robots. But anyway, these devices deliver addictive nicotine to the body, but the judge says the FDA can't regulate e-cigarettes as devices anymore.

In other tobacco regulation news, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) discusses opposition to the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act on First Amendment grounds. Even the ACLU objects to the Act, which prohibits the use of certain words by cigarette advertisers, saying that

"regulating commercial speech for lawful products only because those products are widely disliked -- even for cause -- sets us on the path of regulating such speech for other products that may only be disfavored by a select few in a position to impose their personal preferences."

Instead advised the ACLU, "the antidote to harmful speech can be found in the wisdom of countervailing speech -- not in the outright ban of the speech perceived as harmful." But as the NEJM authors wrote:

"How did we come to believe that the exchange of commercial appeals in the marketplace of goods and services should be equated with free exchange in the marketplace of ideas? Are our freedoms really secured by a constitutional doctrine that would limit our capacity to inhibit the promotion of toxic goods? This is an opportune moment to reflect on these questions and their implications for the relationship between public health goals and the rules that should be foundational in a democracy."

• EPA's Updated Smog, Ozone Standard

  The EPA proposed new standards for smog last week, which would update the Bush Administration standards. The agency will set the "primary" standard, which protects public health, at a level between 0.060 and 0.070 parts per million (ppm), measured over eight hours, and will also propose a new secondary standard. These standards were recommended by scientists years ago to decrease deaths and smog levels dangerous to children, the elderly, and those with asthma and respiratory disease. As we wrote earlier, the Bush's EPA pushed the weaker standard of .075 ppm. We also wrote about the Obama EPA's stated intention to change the standard last fall.

• Airport Screening to Double as Healthcare?

  "We are headed toward the moment when screeners will watch watch-listers sashay through while we have to come to the airport in hospital gowns, flapping open in the back", wrote Maureen Dowd recently, commenting on holes in airport security processes. But I think she's seeing a cup half empty. We may well be headed for a moment when airport screening, reviled as a breach of privacy to some, is the closest thing to healthcare people can get.

  The public option has fallen "off the table" again, by now "fallen off the table" so many times that even when it intermittently appears back "on the table", it's obviously shopworn, if not smashed to bits.

  But the glass could still be half full. Think of the savings, if airport screening could double as healthcare screening : "You're cleared for flight sir, and don't worry about that lump..."

• What to Call It? Science Terminology

  For various reasons, political, scientific, logical (or not) or historical, people refer to the same thing using different terms. Here are two examples.

  Canada does not call the tar sands "tar sands", anymore, they're "oil sands". Of course "tar sands" is more descriptive of the energy-intensive process, of extracting oil, but "oil sands" sounds like something that you would naturally siphon some oil out of, it sounds better.

  In 2005, physicist Lisa Randall urged that "global climate change" was the appropriate phrase to use, because "global warming" would lead people to argue that their winter was actually very cold. Others argued that "climate change" sounded less dangerous, so therefore would be used to manipulate people who would be fearful enough about "global warming" to urge policy changes, whereas "climate change" seemed benign. But it gets even more complicated for some agencies. NASA differentiates between "global warming", which is surface climate change, and "climate change", and "global change", and "global climate change", which deems the most accurate term. I think everyone pretty much knows what everyone's talking about now, though I dare not make conclusions about that.

• Oh, and Happy Not-So-New Year

  Did you travel over your break? Have fun?

  In the US, marketing aimed at tourists is off the rails. Perhaps marketers have learned that people who travel in a heightened state of orange level stress will sooth themselves by buying absurd products. You may argue that it's a global trend, and indeed, the badminton set peddled to me by a man on the muddy backroad of a major city in Asia seemed ridiculous, until I flipped through Sky Mall Magazine and spied the "King Tut Life Sized Sarcophagus Cabinet" that can be "delivered curbside" (to impress your neighbors). Personally, I would rather pay to bat around a little white badminton birdie in a mud puddle, while talking baksheesh with kids who speak, at will, touristica French, German, English or Japanese. By comparison, traveler oriented products in the US seem conceived by desperate marketing departments who've lost their wits. Case in point -- the sarcophagus cabinet. Or:

  • If you were assigned to seating group 2 or above recently, on my least favorite airline I still fly on, you heard this announcement: "Board now. Enter via aisle closest to the wall, NOT THE RED CARPET." Because "the red carpet", actually a two foot doormat, is reserved for first class customers.

    Some people bemoan the lot of the economy passenger, the so-called "poverty parade", and the herd animal like treatment. But as a first class customer you pay an extra few thousand dollars to traipse across a red mat with bars on each side to keep you in bounds. Sure the legroom's nice, I won't argue, but you have to walk "the red carpet" to get there, and once there in that bigger, comfier seat, you're subjected to complimentary cheesefood snacks. Supposedly smart people actually buy this privilege.

  • At your hotel, you will be sold the usual-- rooms, room service, laundry services, shoe shines and upgrades, not to mention the mini-bar. But what if the five dollar peanuts in the mini-bar are too devilish a temptation for you and your New Year's resolutions? No worries, there's a market-based solution. Pay $50 to have the mini-bar hauled away at one hotel I was recently at.

  • Want to use the hotel refrigerator for your water? $50 fine at another hotel. And the same people who stay at these hotels complain that the EPA's bureaucracy confines their business style.

  • Maybe you actually love business travel and want to bring home a bit of the experience, like the "pulsating" showerhead that your can actually buy from one hotel's glossy catalogue. The catalogue carried other mundane household hardware and dog cushions stamped with the hotel's logo. Pretty special.

  Couldn't we just travel unsolicited sometimes? Definitely not in 2010. Happy New Year.

Letter From Berkeley

In March, 1965, Calvin Trillin wrote "Letter From Berkeley" for the New Yorker (abstract), about the Free Speech Movement (F.S.M.) at the University of California, Berkeley. At that point, the end of the movement, F.S.M. was working on the trial of 800 students who had been arrested, out of 4000 who had occupied Sproul Hall. Police had carried students out "wearing blue jeans and singing hymms".

By Trillin's arrival, the students "conscientiously presented themselves, in quiet, well-dressed groups of fifty, in a make-shift courtroom", to enter their pleas. The now compliant group, having once "attacked the computer as the symbolic agent of its followers' alienation", was "borrowing the university's I.B.M. machine to keep track of all the people [including 20 lawyers] involved in its legal affairs".

Trillin's description of the protestors is pretty much how students at Berkeley are today -- organized, smart and generally compliant. Despite that, they're often depicted almost instinctively as carrying the torch of the 1960's era "rebels".

The C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the F.S.M.

The student protests in the 1960's were movements, they actually moved things and people, not only cars and police but ideas of powerful people. The federal and state governments looked at the F.S.M. as a force to be reckoned with -- a threat. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. attempted to associate Berkeley's free speech movement with an imaginary Bay Area hotbed of Communism in order to turn citizens against 'unruly' youth.

Reagan and conservatives ran election campaigns depicting the corrosive nature of the F.S.M. and student activities at the University of California, and in one speech Reagan declared that the F.S.M. leaders should be thrown out by "the scruff of their necks". He decried the shocking occasion of "a dance" held on campus featuring acts so reprehensible that he couldn't talk about it for fear of shocking his audience. He then read a list of the horrifying acts anyway: three "rock and roll bands playing simultaneously" and movies where "persons twisted and gyrated in provocative and sensual fashion".

The future governor and president presented himself as a complete square, but keep in mind that Reagan, Greenspan and other budding neoliberals had been poring over bodice rippers like Ayn Rand's, "The Fountainhead" for years. It was the threat to political economics that perhaps perturbed them -- the "free" next to "speech", instead of next to "markets". But the ascending neoliberal movement made it about sex and drugs and rock and roll -- they successfully painted it as a culture war.

Despite conservative outrage and Reagan's condemnation, the F.S.M. succeeded. Today students have the right to set up card tables in one area of campus and give passing students information about churches and student clubs they may join, as well as various petitions they can sign. It's radical.

But although in the end the F.S.M. prevailed, the movement seems altogether impotent compared to the power of neoliberal ideas that took root during Reagan's acts as governor and president. Regardless of the relatively weak power of Free Speech Movement, UC Berkeley, the university has never really shaken its reputation as the somewhat sinister, hippy-dippy, center of California left-wing ideas.

Today's Protests, and Those 40 years Ago

When people think of UC Berkeley they think of the 60's protests. But look closely at today's protests. On the occasion of, for instance, BP's massive energy collaboration with the university in 2007, there on the steps of California Hall, 40 students held signs, gave speeches, and then spilled a little bit of organic molasses ("oil") on the steps. Forty strong, the protestors proved they meant no harm by licking molasses off the steps of California Hall. Police in riot gear, wearing shields over their faces surrounded them. A biohazards team was called in to clean up the molasses, despite the students offers to clean it up themselves.

That's the nature of the nice, if limp spirit of today's student rebellions. But people still think Berkeley as radically "left wing". They tend not to associate "Berkeley" with its conservative influences, like John Yoo, who wrote the Bush torture memos and teaches constitutional law, or the law school that defends Yoo's position in the name of "academic freedom". They ignore the power differential that makes such protests anemic.

People think of UC Berkeley and think science and politically liberal values. They tend not to think of retired law school professor Phillip E. Johnson, conservative born-again Christian, who is the father of the intelligent design movement, and who, along with Berkeley science professor Peter Duesberg, denies that the HIV virus causes of AIDS. People ignore the existence of the vibrant libertarian and student Republicans groups (the student Republican group is the largest student organization on campus), and probably don't know about the Center for the Comparative Study of Right-Wing Movements, established last year. What prevails is the cliche of a subversive, pot-smoking, Birkenstock wearing, long-haired, provocatively liberal university.

Letter From California, The Reality

Last fall, the cliche was reinforced when students took over Wheeler Hall, protesting increases to student tuition. The erosion of state support for the University is a travesty, but the students protests were very personal. Their cries were not about wars (either of them), or free speech, in fact in many cases they were not even about higher education. Some negotiators had a hard time figuring out what the students demands even were -- something about janitors jobs being reinstated? But this 21st century student uprising concerned the increased costs of higher education that would be in part coming out of their (or their parents') pockets.

It was a protest not without irony. Tours of campus routinely compare Berkeley to Stanford University, and the sense of competition is so fierce, apparently, that some Berkeley denizens will not wear any article of clothing that is maroon (Stanford's color). Stanford, a private school, is more costly than Berkeley, so now, financially at least, the comparison will be more apt. So what did the protestors want? Like the rest of America, don't 21st century protestors basically want Bergdorf Goodman quality at Walmart prices?

Not to mention that even as they they protest now, some of the students' parents no doubt voted for California Proposition 13, which gutted the state's ability to raise taxes and support things like higher education.

There was mixed tolerance for the protests on campus. Certainly some students participated, as did some faculty, like negotiator Ananya Roy, who the New Yorker recently profiled in its column "Letter From California". Some faculty and students were very sympathetic to the students, some of whom were in fact savagely batoned by police. But most students and certainly most faculty didn't protest, they were too busy with their own affairs.

Other onlookers complained about the student's behavior in Wheeler Hall, because apparently they "partied"" and "ordered pizzas". I asked one critic: "What should they be doing?", thinking about how boring it must be to sit in an administrative office building for hours on end -- I mean, even back in 1964 they had music, such as it was -- Joan Baez singing "We Shall Overcome". They should be "writing manifestos", came the answer, rather sternly.

Indeed, today's protests somehow fall short of expectations and cliches -- no manifestoes, students marching against fee increases rather than for world peace or the weighty issues of the centuries, and in the November 2009 protests, a piddly sixty-six protestors arrested, not 800, like back in the day.

Not to say certain actions can't stir up memories of students behaving very badly. Once police cleared protestors from Wheeler Hall (and not by blaring Joan Baez into the building, but with some bone breaking), a fringe group got out of hand when they marched to the home of Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. Here's how the New Yorker wrote about this subsequent act of violence in the last paragraph of their "Letter From California":

"That night, more than forty people carrying torches marched on Birgeneau's residence. A handful of the protesters smashed the outdoor lights and threw cement planters and burning torches at the house, scattering only after the chancellor's wife, who was writing Christmas cards, woke her husband and he called the police."

Since Birgeneau is well-respected for his leadership and contributions to this and other campus problems, this action was universally reviled. The New Yorker paints a good picture, if inaccurate. A more accurate account than the New Yorker's would include the fact that only eight "protestors" were arrested at Birgeneau's house and only two of those were students, and subsequently none of them were charged. While the act was reprehensible, this wasn't quite the scary spectacle described. One professor who witnessed the event questioned the official accounts.

Concert Tickets and The Cost of a Credit

All and all, this wasn't thousands of students convening in 1964 to make speeches about free speech while standing on a police car, any more than the Wheeler protests in November at all resembled the Sproul Hall protests in the 1960's. December's protests, for the most part strictly shut down by police, culminated in a handful of misaligned adults (some in their 40's) committing random and spontaneous acts of violence against someone who is actually working very hard on behalf of higher education. It was pathetic.

But so was the New Yorker's coverage in the "Letter From California". Today's protests aren't a continuation of the Berkeley of the 60's. The facts reflect the ennui of the noughts. The 2009 protests weren't a movement, and it wouldn't impede the changes in public education or privatization. Politicians barely batted an eye. Most people favor privatization, students included, unlike in 1964 when Mario Savio spoke about "the operation of the machine -- so odious...".

The 1960's were the cusp of major social-economic change, but in 2009/2010 everything that was novel and threatening back then -- from computers, to privatization, to liquid colors moving across movie screens, is part of who we are. It's outdated to fight against privatization, whether your aged or youthful. Increased fees, increased tuition? How is that any different than higher housing costs, more expensive medical care, and $150 concert tickets?

Berkeley the University is clearly not the place it was in 60's, when the state provided over 50% of funding; today the state only provides 28% of UC Berkeley funding and that's still shrinking. Although the funding cuts have been damaging, overall, the change in Berkeley is good -- institutions need to keep up with the times. California is privatizing education system like other states such as Virginia and Michigan -- higher education is ripe to be privatized.

Of course the question remains, how will the changes alter the institution of higher education? And how will that benefit society? Moreover, can California remain an economic powerhouse, in the top ten in the world, without the commitment to education it had in the 1960's under the original Master Plan? The state is perennially burdened by a government that promises the quintessential American dream to naive citizens who demand the whole pie for nothing -- safety nets, education, comprehensive services, and low taxes. California state government is ahead of the federal government in assuring citizens that there's no conflict in citizens' wishes, how will this work out?

• Copenhagen: Despite walking past sculptures of skeletons and eerie melting ice polar bears and mermaids daily, the climate change delegates collectively refused to come up with anything substantial in Copenhagen. President Obama curtailed his much awaited visit, altogether minimizing his association with what was by most accounts a failure, but also known as an accord, in order to fly home early and beat a snowstorm. If we are one world we are also many countries with our own economic interests in mind.

  Is there a better way? The Economist suggested in an article last week that the talks may have gone better if different regions and pollutants were considered separately. While the idea is interesting, this sort of regime is also how fishing interests repeatedly fail to establish effective ecological safeguards and effective quotas.

  Although the talks weren't considered fruitful, an interesting sidenote is the inability of very tenacious climate change deniers to convince delegates or the thousands of protestors in Copenhagen that climate change is a hoax, that nothing's at stake.

• The Ice Floe Debate: Last month, in our Notes on Science Dust-Ups and Dirty Laundry, under "Curly-haired Science Populizers Spar" we wrote about what we'll call the IQ nurture:nature debate between two science popularizer giants, Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell. Pinker had criticized Gladwell for what he cuttingly labeled the "Igon Value Problem", defined as, "when a writer's education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong."

  In return, Gladwell wrote that Pinker might be "unhappy" with him for not joining him on the "lonely ice floe of IQ fundamentalism", and criticized him for quoting bloggers. (Although if not for bloggers there might not be people in science of lower regard in the research hierarchy than some of Gladwell's mashable social scientists -- just saying.)

  After we left off, Pinker responded to Gladwell that IQ was related to "many important educational, economic and social outcomes" according to "52 signatories" and "a unanimous blue-ribbon panel". Gladwell then raked over Pinkers' sources, detailing how 15 of those 52 signatories belonged to a group founded by a eugenicist -- whose members are racists, eugenicists and sexists. After substantiating his response at length, he concludes:

  "The fact that ideas are sometimes supported by people with unsavory connections does not make them invalid. An ice floe is not necessarily a bad place to be. It's just that if you are plainly floating on one, it doesn't make much sense to insist that you are standing on solid ground."

  Although both science popularizers are getting more popular via the dispute, there are important issues at stake here. (Acronym Required previously wrote "Watson Uncut: Surprising? Boring? Racist?)

• Racism Persists: Psychology researchers at Yale University found that racism persists, despite US society's more tolerant overt attitudes. The psychologists studied nonverbal interactions between white and black characters on television shows, then surveyed study participants for their responses to the actors attitudes. (complicated methodology) They conclude that nonverbal behavior towards minorities on television influence the attitudes of millions of viewers.(Dovidio et al Science(326) 1641 - 1642 DOI: 10.1126/science.1184231)

• Larry Summers Summons the Economy to Man-Up: Larry Summers is overly optimistic on jobs says a guest blogger on Naked Capitalism in the article titled: "Larry Summers Is Like a Guy Who Yells That the Sun Really DOES Revolve Around the Earth and that the Current Orbit is Just a Temporary Aberration . . . and That If We Just Wait a Little While, Everything Will Return to Normal". We last reviewed Summers's history of unfailing optimism in Mission Accomplished: Summers Ends Economy's Free Fall.

• Coaxing The GOP To Eat Arugula: Michael J. Petrilli questions the GOP vote getting strategy in Wall Street Journal. The Hoover Institute Fellow observes that "with the white working class shrinking and the educated 'creative class' growing", Republicans such as Sarah Palin, "whose entire brand is anti-intellectual", and GOPers who brand themselves for "working-class families", "Sam's Club Republicans", and "your co-worker not your boss", might be miscalculating. Petrilli's assessment of those who criticize "Eastern Elites"? "Playing the populism card looks like a strategy of subtraction rather than addition". Instead he suggests: "What is needed is a full-fledged effort to cultivate "Whole Foods Republicans" - independent minded voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics."

• South Africa's Ex-Health Minister Dies: South Africa's Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang died of complications from a liver transplant she had two years ago. As Health Minister during the Thabo Mbeki administration, she was known as "Dr. Beetroot" for her suggestions that lemon, beetroot and garlic would protect AIDS patients against the deadly effects of the disease in lieu of antiretrovirals. Mbeki's administration oversaw the fraught handling of the AIDS crisis in South Africa, and the former president went to great lengths to protect his comrade Tshabalala-Msimang, who attracted international attention for her positions.

  Even the Minister's liver transplant was controversial. The Times wrote in Manto: A Drunk and a Thief, of a Health Minister who was an alcoholic with liver cirrohsis -- a kleptomaniac on bad behavior while in hospital. One hospital employee told the paper that Tshabalala-Msimang's "antics were common knowledge among staff.'Everyone here thinks its hilarious that she is today a health minister in South Africa'". The story questioned whether favoritism and power enabled her to receive a liver transplant ahead of others.

• Sickle Cell Anemia Not the Only Genetic Mutation to Protect Against Malaria: We learned in our biology courses that the genetic mutation that causes sickle cell anemia is an adaptation to the malaria causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Recently, scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris have shown that a less common malaria causing strain, Plasmodium vivax, has also caused adaptive pressure on the genome. The scientists found a gene variant associated with an enzyme deficiency which seems to protect against infection by P. vivax in Southeast Asian populations. The variant causes a deficiency of the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD), associated with neonatal jaundice and hemolytic anemia after exposure to certain infections, foods, or medications. (Sakuntabhai et al Science 326, 1546-1549 (2009)DOI: 10.1126/science.1178849)

• Cookstove Technology: Indoor pollution causes 1.6 million deaths per year. Cookstoves contribute significantly to indoor pollution, especially in developing countries where morbidity and mortality from cookstoves disproportionately affects women and children. The New Yorker recently published an article about an Oregon company (one of many) working on cookstove technology for developing countries. An efficient cookstove will vent smoke out of the dwelling and will also burn fuel effectively, saving both lives and forests. But as the article shows, it's about more than technology -- there's many ways a cookstove can not work in developing countries.

The Chemical Lobby Finds Their Man:

Back when the momentum for banning bisphenol A (BPA) hadn't quite built up to its current fervor, BPA lobbyists used to denigrate everyone who questioned the safety of bisphenol A. Male, female, old, young, it didn't matter, they were 'internet moms' who'd worked themselves into a blind tizzy about bisphenol A, which was 'perfectly safe'.

But things were a little more tense last May for industry leaders who met to discuss a strategy for fighting back against the growing movement to limit consumer exposure to risky levels of BPA. As we quoted the Wall Street Journal in our post back then:

"industry executives huddled for hours Thursday trying to figure out how to tamp down public concerns over the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA. The notes said the executives are particularly concerned about the views of young mothers, who often make purchasing decisions for households and who are most likely to be focused on health concerns."

In addition to crafting clever lines to scare consumers, like "do you want to have access to baby food anymore?", the industry group discussed getting the right spokesman for their cause. A scientist might be difficult they acknowledged, they had reputations to preserve, but a pregnant woman would be "the Holy Grail".

Now it looks like they found their man in a public relations expert named "Joe Householder" -- his real name. This isn't the first challenging public relations assignment for Mr. Householder. He worked with, among others, Enron's law firm, baseball player Roger Clemons, Hillary Clinton, various other politicians, and Public Strategies Inc. Now he's with Purple Strategies Inc., apparently heading a group called "Coalition for Chemical Safety". The Coalition for Chemical Safety works with American Chemical Council (ACC) and other businesses. To date, those businesses are known more for not putting the safety and health of consumers before corporate profits.

So we look skeptically at "The Coalition for Chemical Safety". Indeed, it's described by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) as an BPA astroturfing organization. But it takes different tactics then previous BPA astroturfing campaigns. Mr. Householder and the Coalition for Chemical Safety take a warmer approach to BPA and chemicals, astroturfing-wise, then representatives in the past have.

In step with the times, the everyone_together_at_the_same_table age of Obama rhetoric, as opposed to the more acrimonious Bush era rhetoric, the Coalition is 'educating' consumers about chemicals. Instead of saying bluntly that BPA is safe, the mother in this Coalition sound clip talks about banning BPA in baby bottles, but encourages consumers and public health advocates to always work with the chemical companies (mp3 from EDF). This is the more subtle approach to controlling the public perception of chemicals. And who better to assure "young mothers" making "purchasing decisions for households", than a guy named Joe Householder?

In keeping with this new, more collegial approach to marketing/public relations, Householder has directly engaged Richard Denison, EDF's sometimes scathing Senior Scientist, in a mano-a-mano on Denison's blog. This is Householder's "purple" strategy, I think, not red, not blue, purple -- get it? That's where we all agree that chemicals are indeed wonderful (they are) and that we love regulation, just the "right" regulation, and "reasonable" regulation. Look out for that.

Mr. Household has invited Mr. Denison to join the Coalition for Chemical Safety, and although Mr. Denison hasn't posted a public response, I think with their combined gregariousness and magnetism, it's just a matter of time before they're hanging out together, Richard educating Householder on bisphenol A and Joe sharing public relations tactics and the use of his very apropos name. Isn't that how things get done these days?

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Acronym Required has written extensively on BPA science and regulation. We also wrote about individuals hired by industry, the acrimony they stir up, and the possibility of wonderful relationships blossoming between players on either side of the chemical divide in BPA Rhetoric and Reaction

Trick

Scientists sometimes confuse people with inscrutable acronyms -- BPA, NIEHS, NTP, EPA (bisphenol A, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Toxicology Program, Environmental Protection Agency), words that are difficult to pronounce -- "phthalates", or words that are difficult to get to the end of -- "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis". But lately, we've been stumping people with words everyone thought they knew, like "trick". People went wild over the idea that East Anglia scientists had used a "trick" to manipulate raw data.

"Trick", previously associated with annuals "treats" and six year olds in fairy costumes, was suddenly linked to nefarious acts. Yes, there is that "trick", but it's not often used¹. And did the media mayhem over "trick" top the media mayhem over the breast-baring wardrobe malfunction during Super Bowl half-time a couple of years ago? Hard to say -- but global warming is actually serious.

Scientists explained over and over that "trick" can be a good thing, like mathematics, logical thinking, transparency, pragmatism, maybe even dignity for life -- but their insistence only increased suspicion and talk. "Trick" dominated the news cycle longer than any five letter word should be allowed to and even wormed its way into events like the US legislature, where senators leveraged the word in committee meetings to veer away from very important topics like the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)².

Now we see the word all over the place. And like the original East Anglia "trick", it's often used to rationalize why climate change, the reality, isn't being translated into climate change policy. The Financial Times reported on the tension between China and the US in Copenhagen and quoted China's on its changing stance:

"'China will not be an obstacle [to a deal]. The obstacle now is from developed countries,' he said. 'I know people will say if there is no deal that China is to blame. This is a trick played by the developed countries. They have to look at their own position and can't use China as an excuse...'"

John Tierney recently used the word to propose a temperature based carbon-tax -- a joke perhaps, or to scoff at science?

"[U]se the temperature readings as the basis for a carbon tax instead of a cap-and-trade system...the carbon tax would be more effective at reducing emissions because it is simpler, more transparent, easier to enforce and less vulnerable to accounting tricks and political favoritism."

Up to his usual tricks, that Tierney.

Talking about the challenge the US Senate presents for Obama in Copenhagan, Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center described Obama's challenge as a "Goldilocks Problem":

''The trick is finding something just right in balancing the importance of demonstrating international leadership while not undermining the legislative dynamic here at home.''

Moving away from climate change, the word "trick" can morph from a bad thing or a challenge, to a good thing. An author recently mused in an essay in the New York Times about the "tricks" to maintaining a marriage.³

Hack

The confusion over "trick" is not entirely unjustified. Merriam Webster has seven possible uses of "trick". And another word that's ambiguous for some people, again, reasonably so, because it has nine uses in Merriam Webster, is "hack", as in, they hacked into the email server in East Anglia and stole a thousand emails.

During the December 2, 2009 hearing on the pressing imperative of revising the "Federal Toxic Substances Control Act" (TSCA), climate denier Senator Inhofe (R-OK) hijacked the meeting to windbag on about "tricks" in emails necessitating a halt to EPA emissions rulemaking.

Senator Boxer (D-CA) responded eloquently and forcefully, noting that although she was concerned about criminal acts of "hacking", she was more concerned about anthropogenic carbon emissions, about global warming, and about the repercussions for human health -- that's where her duty was, to the people effected by global warming. About the email break-in she said:

We're dealing with a criminal act of hacking into a computer...It seems to me they must have been hacking this for years. And just before Copenhagen they came out with it...That's what it seems to be...because, these emails, they go back...how many are there? Over a thousand emails? So I don't know how long a thousand emails...

This may be a silly example, but it shows how people with expertise in a particular area assume common understanding of simple words. Here it seems like "hacking" into a computer is visualized as George Washington trying to "hack" down a giant redwood tree in the Muir Woods National Park.

Hack can mean to chop at roughly. It can also mean to tolerate or bear something, for instance, I don't know how Senator Boxer can hack Senator Inofe's perennial global-warming-is-a-hoax B.S. so gracefully. Used as a noun, hack can also be a cough, a horse, a worker, or (derogatorily) someone who misconstrues or butchers something -- for example, Senator Inofe is a real hack when it comes to science and global warming.

But when someone hacks into a computer as they did in East Anglia, they exploit a vulnerability in order to access data owned by someone else. Different than hacking at a tree. It can take a computer hacker a while to find the vulnerability and locate the data, but then they most often swoop in, get it, in this case a bunch of emails, and go. Sometimes they lurk about, poised to commit further crimes, or leave an opening to come back, obviously there's no rules, but generally they're not hewing emails out of the server one at a time over many years 465 -- hack, hack hack, 466 -- chop, chop, 467 -- hack, hack -- that's a different use of the word.

The Trick for Scientists, If They Can Hack It

So "trick" can not so intuitively mean find a solution, as well as to deceive, and "hack" can mean deceptively break into a computer in order to plunder or pillage, as well as to chop at something. And confusingly, computer scientists, sometimes known as "hacks" but in a good way, will "hack" a solution to a very tricky programming problem, just as scientists use a "trick" to help analyze and make sense of data.

And that's the challenge for scientists -- a trivial one, but another one. In addition doing science, teaching, writing grants, motivating grad students, negotiating politics and budget cuts, actually physically looking out for hackers and those who would break into scientists offices and steal computers as part of a global effort to undermine climate science; in addition to assessing threats of bodily harm, scientists need to simplify concepts, avoid acronyms and watch their use of simple seeming words whose meaning they take for granted.

All that work because even people with the best intentions don't always have a grip on either science or its lexicon. And once scientists sort out "trick" and "hack" for everyone, they'll then face the greater challenge of explaining the risks of doing nothing about global warming, with the risks of doing something. After all, probability and risk are orders more challenging for people to grasp than "tricks" and "hacks".

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¹ See, "Do Names Portend Profession?", in AR's Science Dust-Ups and Dirty Laundry

²

We wrote about TSCA here. Of 80,000 chemicals produced, there's little information about which ones are on the market, and only 5 are regulated by the EPA.

³ In the NYT on marriage: "Recently one of my wife's college students kept pressing us, with baffled curiosity, for our secret, as if there had to be some trick to it..."

In his most recent column, Thomas Friedman marshals ideas from Ron Suskind, Dick Cheney and Cass Sunstein in calling for action on climate change. By the end of his column, Friedman has reminded readers of decades of research showing that greenhouse gases make the planet warmer, with the "potential to unleash 'catastrophic' warming." Which risk should we take, he asks? Should we increase our efficiency and mitigation efforts, then in the unlikely event that climate change weren't critical, "as a country we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent"? Or should we risk not preparing, then if climate change were a catastrophe, "life on this planet" would become "living hell"?

Before we get to these arguments in "Going Cheney on Climate", though, you must grapple with Friedman's interpretation of Dick Cheney, Rons Suskind and Cass Sunstein. It's unclear why Friedman chose them, perhaps to convince the GOP, or any deniers, or those who are swayed by deniers, to support climate change action? Anyhow, using their ideas makes his argument confusing.

The One Percent Solution and Climate Change

Friedman refers to Ron Suskind's book "The One Percent Doctrine", titled after a comment Dick Cheney made in 2001:

"If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response..."

That part Friedman gets right. But Suskind was actually extremely critical of Cheney and the "Cheney Doctrine". Why? Here's the rest of Cheney's comment:

"...It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence...It's about our response""

As Suskind wrote, Cheney's new world order demanded action despite evidence:

"Justified or not, fact-based or not, 'our response' is what matters. As to "evidence", the bar was set so low that the word itself almost didn't apply." If there was even a one percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction- and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time -- the United States must now act as if it were a certainty. This was a mandate of extraordinary breadth...

Cheney's new US policy direction meant commitments from citizens and libraries as well as all levels of government -- the the CIA, the Army, the NSA, the Treasury. The costs were stupendous. As Suskind wrote:

"all parties took a vow of sorts on Sept. 12...vowed to work each day and every night...They'd stop at nothing...Global accords on everything from greenhouse gases to international courts...now were seen as constraints...Such agreements were for lesser countries. They were to be shaken off...

Suskind criticized the Cheney Doctrine precisely because its framers willfully disregarded evidence about the negligible risks of Al Queda gaining nuclear capability. They charged into war despite the evidence.

The situation with climate change is the opposite, the evidence for climate change is substantial. A cartoon in the Atlantic Constitution this week summarizes the folly of the deniers. A woman, speaking sometime in the future, says: "The North Pole melted. Polar bears are extinct. Asia's under water. Africa's a desert." The guy next to her responds: "Hey I never said the global warming hoax wasn't elaborate."

Adding to the confusion of Friedman's line of persuasion, the Cheney Doctrine leaves no doubt about that administrations sentiments on climate change, since according to Suskind the US took greenhouse gases off the negotiating table under the Cheney Doctrine.

Friends or Foes? Friedman's Folly

In addition to Suskind and Cheney, Friedman pulls in Cass Sunstein to wrap it all up, saying

"Sunstein wrote in his blog: 'According to the Precautionary Principle, it is appropriate to respond aggressively to low-probability, high-impact events -- such as climate change. Indeed, another vice president -- Al Gore -- can be understood to be arguing for a precautionary principle for climate change (though he believes that the chance of disaster is well over 1 percent)."

Here, Sunstein was actually criticizing the Precautionary Principle, and by extension the Cheney Doctrine, and most likely Cheney and company would bristle at being compared to Gore. According to Sunstein the Precautionary Principle muddles and stalls appropriate action on climate change. ideas he spelled out in papers, articles and books like Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle", and "Risk and Reason: Safety, Law, and the Environment", his 2002 book.

Sunstein uses social science research to show that individuals are susceptible to faulty conclusions based on irrational fear and errors in judgement like "availability heuristics". Sunstein argues that instead of the Precautionary Principle, the risks and benefits of action on suspected perils should be evaluated empirically. On global warming, he suggests cap-and-trade agreements and incentives to motivate players to make choices to limit emissions, rather than regulation. In a 2008 Boston Globe essay, Throwing Precaution to the Wind, Sunstein specifically uses the example of Bush's Iraq War as a precautionary tale for dealing with global warming:

"the Bush administration justified the war on explicitly precautionary grounds - that even the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iraq was so threatening that it demanded action. Indeed, the idea of "preemptive war" articulated by President Bush is a kind of precautionary principle. The nation went to war on the chance that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But this precaution is imposing a heavy price and creating serious risks for the future."

Sunstein warns against regulation, saying that regulation can invoke unforseen risks or even death -- banning DDT he says caused deaths from malaria -- a spurious argument, but one he uses along with others to warn people off the Precautionary Principle.

The "Cheney-Thing" on Climate - Something to Get Behind?

In the end, Friedman says:

"When I see a problem that has even a 1 percent probability of occurring and is "irreversible" and potentially "catastrophic," I buy insurance. That is what taking climate change seriously is all about.""

Cheney might use the one-percent argument to go to war, but he did so to invoke fear in the American public in order to gain their support. Suskind did not support the Cheney Doctrine, because it wasn't based in evidence and fact. Sunstein also criticized the Cheney Doctrine, comparing it unfavorably to the Precautionary Principle. Now Friedman incongruously corrals the whole mix to support: "doing the Cheney-thing on climate -- preparing for 1 percent." I'm not sure quite what to make of this kind of endorsement.

Alberta Tar Sands

Last year we reported that the Alaskan gas pipeline, touted as necessary for American energy independence, would actually be transporting a lot of the gas to Canada's Alberta tar sands", where the gas would fuel oil extraction from bitumen, an energy intensive, elaborate process for getting oil. The oil will eventually help fuel US needs.

Extracting oil from the tar sands is difficult, expensive, and dirty.¹ But as oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, extraction from the tar sands becomes a more economical option. Bitumen production increased from 482,000 barrels in 1995, to 1.3 million barrels a day in 2008, and is expected to reach 2 to 2.9 million barrels a day by 2020.² Extraction operations increased in area to 530km² (205mi²) in 2007.

Now a study from University Alberta released in the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), finds that the tar sand extraction projects are dirtier than thought.² Previous surveys done by the industry found that the tar sand operations didn't increase downstream levels of polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) -- chemicals (some carcinogenic) released both naturally and through mining operations.

Schindler et al independently investigated water pollution from the tar sands. Testing water from the Athabasca River, Lake, Delta and tributaries, their findings contradict previous studies by showing increased PACs. The authors found that the levels of polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs) are higher downstream of mining activity, and greater in the summer than winter months. They also sampled snowpack, where they found significant particulate deposits.

Currently, the industry monitors itself, and the Alberta government somewhat audits the reports. Schindler observed to the journal Nature ³ what many recognize as problems with industry self-monitoring, it's "sort of like abolishing the police and asking people to pull over if they see they're speeding and report themselves." The PNAS authors recommend that the federal government take over monitoring pollution from the bitumen extraction operations.

Reports of like this are bad news to some Canadians who are worried about impressions and bad publicity around the tar sands, especially with the increased international attention due to Copenhagen. As University of Alberta energy economist Joseph Doucet put it: put it, "God help us if this becomes like baby seals."

-----------------------

¹ To get a sense of it, I recommend Elizabeth Kolbert's article in the New Yorker, "Unconventional Crude."

² Schindler DW et al "Oil sands development contributes polycyclic aromatic compounds to the Athabasca River and it tributaries" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0912050106

³ Jones, N. "Tar sands mining linked to stream pollution" Nature www.nature.com | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1127

When "Effective EPA" is No Longer an Oxymoron?

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the agency's finding last April that greenhouse gases "(GHGs) endanger public health and welfare. Jackson reminded viewers that the Bush administration EPA had found that greenhouse gases endangered health and welfare, action compelled by the 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, but had "regrettably" stalled on moving forward with the agency's recommendation offering only "excuses" and "delay". Said Jackson: "this administration will not ignore science or the law any longer, nor will we avoid the responsibility we owe to our children and grandchildren."

Having finalized the Endangerment Finding, Jackson announced some first steps:

"Next month, large emitters in the U.S. will begin working with EPA to monitor their emissions. Beginning in 2011, large emitters will - for the first time - submit publicly available information that will allow us to meaningfully track greenhouse gas emissions over time....And starting next spring, large emitting facilities will be required to incorporate the best available methods for controlling greenhouse gas emissions when they plan to construct or expand."

The agency noted that it had no intention of putting burdens on small businesses.

The Indefensible Status Quo and Republicans Think They're Deep Throat(?)

Last weekend we wrote about a group of GOP Republicans who asked the EPA to withdraw the Endangerment Finding because of the CRU emails. We noted their tone of desperation, for instance that they tried to make their case by quoting an infamous, non-sensical UK climate denier. Jackson addressed the skeptics, and noted that the EPA's action was based on decades of research.

"We know that skeptics have and will continue to try to sow doubts about the science. It's no wonder that many people are confused. But raising doubts - even in the face of overwhelming evidence - is a tactic that has been used by defenders of the status quo for years. Those tactics have only served to delay and distract from the real work ahead, namely, growing our clean energy economy and freeing ourselves from foreign oil that endangers our security and our economy."

True to form, last week Representative James Sensenbrenner(R-WI) had said that CRU emails were "evidence of scientific facism". Today, having worn out facism, communism and nazism and Hitler references, EPA letter writer Representative Richard Issa (R-CA) summoned fellow Republican the deceased Richard Nixon for his incoherent campaign. Responding to Jonathan Pershing's (U.S. deputy special envoy for climate change) observation that the emails were inconsequential and the science on climate change was "incredibly robust", Issa declared: "Richard Nixon said that about what Deep Throat had outed about the break-in."

Green Jobs, Pragmatism and Details

Jackson noted that today's action would also assure the American people, scientists, and the world that the EPA is serious, after eight years of inaction, about acting on the challenge of climate change. She hoped that recent EPA action would restore the "credibility and the trust of the American people" by taking an "enduring" and "pragmatic"

"step[s] towards innovation, investment and implementation of technologies that reduce harmful emissions...green jobs, reduced dependence on foreign oil, and a better future for our children."

These are great steps for the EPA, although we recognize the devil is in the details. Just as the work wasn't over once Obama won the election, the work isn't over now that the waiver is finalized.

"We can only marvel at the disarray." - Jeffrey Sachs on climate policy.

The CRU Emails - Fool's Gold:

Like glittering treasure, the emails hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU) beckon Republicans and climate change deniers who paw through the loot like pirates with fool's gold, pulling out one little nugget or another from the 1000+ email trove. I'm sure there's more than a lifetime's worth of out of context quotes to be mined.

(Graph: Instrumental Global Surface Temperature Measurements from >150 stations; image from Wikipedia Commons. More info)

It's a lesson some of us know and others are just learning, that given the slightest excuse, the deniers will get louder and louder by the day, despite 30 years of accumulated evidence showing anthropogenic climate change. And so post CRU email events and protagonists continue to gather momentum. This week the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and four members of Congress demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) halt all rule-making to reduce man-made carbon emissions on account of the CRU emails. In their letter, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) requested that the EPA-

"conduct a thorough and transparent investigation" into the "questions raised by the emails". "Additionally, the EPA "should withdraw the Proposed Endangerment Finding, as well as the Light Duty Vehicle Rule, and the Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule....."

It was an over-the-top response to the CRU emails, but Sensenbrenner et al have been bombarding the EPA with this kind of stuff long before the CRU emails. Sensenbrenner is the former Chairman of the House Science Committee and ranking Republican on the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, a committee that he vehemently opposed before its formation, at which point he saw that he couldn't stop it so he got on board to undermine it anyway he could.

The EPA's Endangerment Finding, gives the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gases affecting US citizens health and welfare. We wrote about endangerment in a number of posts ( here, here, here, here, here, and here), describing the protracted negotiations between the states, the Bush and Obama administrations, and the courts, including the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA.

The four legislators demand that the EPA withdraw the Endangerment Finding decision of last April and halt Light Duty Vehicle and the Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rules, just when the EPA, after eight years of Bush administration shenanigans, takes baby steps to try and slow down our human contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. The letter might as well request the agency drown itself in a bathtub. ¹

If A "Climate Change Bullshit" Prize Bears Your Name, It Makes Sense That Republicans Would Quote You In A Letter To The EPA...?

"The content of the emails raises serious questions that demand your attention", write the four congressmen. To emphasize the erroneous climate science potentially informing their request, they quote from three newspaper essays - an editorial from the Wall Street Journal, a column from the New York Times, and a column from the British newspaper the Telegraph.

It's the job of Representatives and Senators to get information for their constituents. But what's their line of reasoning and who does it benefit? To anchor their letter, they reference UK Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker, presumably to give EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson good reason to consider their demands. Booker wrote that the CRU emails' "importance cannot be overestimated". US readers may not be familiar with the conservative Telegraph papers and they may not know Christopher Booker, but here's a sampling of his ideas (HT Wikipedia):

• Asbestos "poses no risk to human health and is chemically identical to talcum powder" [2]
• "Scientific evidence to support the belief that inhaling other people's smoke causes cancer simply does not exist" [3]
• Intelligent Design is valid and evolutionary scientists "rest their case on nothing more than blind faith and unexamined a priori assumptions" [4]
• "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved" and more, in columns, and a book "The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is The Obsession With 'Climate Change' Turning Out To Be The Most Costly Scientific Blunder In History" [5]

The UK Health and Safety Executive has rebuked Booker multiple times for his "misinformed" statements on asbestos. His false assertions on climate change are so well recognized in the UK that before George Monbiot wobbled uncertainly about the wisdom of casting his lot with climate scientists, he established the "Christopher Booker Prize for Climate Change Bullshit" with The Guardian.

The Christopher Booker Prize for Climate Change Bullshit awards the person who serves up the most climate falsehoods in a single article. That bullshitter gets a trophy made from what looks to me like a tin can and paper/styrofoam cup decorated with a magic marker - have a look for yourself. The "trophy" is made in "mid-Wales".⁶ You get a feel for Christopher Booker's authority.

The winner also gets an invitation from Monbiot to take a "one-way solo kayak trip to the North Pole" to "see for him or herself the full extent of the Arctic ice melt." (The Arctic video showing global warming here is actually in our last post.) The Guardian generously offers excursion support in the form of a little bit of mint chocolate.

The Gall (and Fatal Flaw?) of the GOP

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) don't offer the most countable untruths, so technically they're not even eligible for Monbiot's prize as defined, although Sensenbrenner has made such career out of hassling the EPA that he might be considered for a lifetime achievement award. Two styrofoam cups.

On the other hand, maybe we could redefine the award, given that everything is in "disarray", and all topsy-turvy anyway. Think about it. The EPA, after being thrown out to pasture for eight years, is now being served up demands by a foursome who cite as evidence the most egregious of science deniers, capable of provoking George Monbiot's most venomous contempt. But Monbiot himself fears that no sooner did he stake his reputation on climate science then the scientists left him standing on an ice floe.

Actually, there's too much evidence for global warming, no cache of CRU emails can undermine that, therefore the Republicans are reduced to sending a letter full of nothing. So perhaps Monbiot could redefine the prize and the four intrepid lawmakers could capture the "trophy" simply for offering the most nothing? The four would look very sporty upgraded from a kayak to a little round rowboat. But will Monbiot stand by his prize offer? Or will he throw the whole styrofoam cup and little bit of mint chocolate thing overboard...and throw back a pint with Booker?

The Myth of the Republican Rhetoric Machine?

Marvel that the Republicans cite Booker's opinion in a letter to the EPA. They do offer longer quotes from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that would also be facile to refute; however, I was most impressed with the audacity of opening a letter to the EPA administrator with a quote from such a clown. Such is the sad state of Republican intellectual rigor in 2009. When scientists fret about their ability to counteract deniers, they sometimes overestimate the GOP as some well-oiled rhetorical wonderboat. It's not always so.

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1. Grover Norquist said said: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1381270/Christopher-Bookers-Notebook.html
3. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1556118/Christopher-Booker%27s-notebook.html
4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1495664/Christopher-Bookers-notebook.html
5.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html

6. I bet if these four won we could commission some Hackensack, NJ, USA made trophies, because I know that's important to some camps. Hackensack is nice now, like Brooklyn, they say.

Of Course Denial Is Not The River In Africa:

The upheaval over the climate e-mails is business as usual for the climate science deniers or denialists - not "skeptics", and just a word on that first. Scientists are by nature "skeptics" and consider skepticism a valid approach to analysis. Merriam Webster says "skeptic" derives from the Greek skeptikos thoughtful, or skeptesthai to look. However, unfortunately for all of us, the climate data needs to be denied to be disbelieved. There's too much of it over too many years from too many different fields -- too much evidence to be skeptical about. Meanwhile, while some deniers happily call themselves deniers, others deniers take extreme offense, saying calling them deniers is dismissive or denigrating. But that's not the goal here. I'm not saying deniers don't have feelings, they have valid feelings, and they may also have issues facing reality or other problems.

For instance, just as people who don't recycle may sincerely have difficulty separating cans from cardboard, climate deniers may be incapable of swimming. We can empathize. Swimming may become an even more vital skill in the future. Deniers may fear being seen driving an electric car, fear heatstroke, fear malaria, fear fire, fear tornadoes, fear heatstroke, or fear moving from Florida, which could be affected most by impending climate change with rising sea waters, temperatures and incidence of malaria. Fear may incapacitate deniers reasoning faculties or propel them to convince themselves and others that no change is necessary. We empathize some more.

But if we chance-it, do nothing because of deniers' fears, so we can talk about emails in the UK some more, then we're making a choice that has the potential for far scarier outcomes than facing the mounds of evidence and choosing to do something. And we can do something, we can change, we can support industries that solve climate problems. Or we can do business as usual, and suffer the economic consequences of that. There are all sorts of innocent reasons why deniers are in denial. Only some of them nefarious like fear of losing the vote. But denial for any reason thwarts problem solving.

Rearranging The Deck Chairs on The Titanic. Well..?

We don't necessarily understand their reasons, but we recognize the deniers' rhetoric. If decades of ice core data, Antarctica data, arctic data, temperatures, sea levels, temperatures and, corral bleaching, tree ring data, and more, all show global warming over decades, they'll say "but today is cold out - global warming? Hahaha". If there's noise in a 30 year graph showing an up or down trend, they focus on a one year time period that shows the opposite trend, and throw that out as "proof" that the graph is false.

Here's one video, just one piece of evidence in mountains of available data, showing the decrease in perennial sea ice (seconds ~25-50):

Deniers will ignore all the evidence, focus on a bunch of emails and call it ClimateGate, and get everyone to run over to the starboard side of the ship, when there's an iceberg forward (although, actually, eventually that won't be a problem anymore.) Or they'll say the problem is that the scientists weren't communicating and weren't being transparent with the data. Of course last year the Wall Street Journal was complaining about "too much" global warming evidence. We're not saying that scientists shouldn't have thought twice about pouring vents and frustration into emails, but this is the sideshow which keeps us all spinning, keeps us doing nothing.

Meanwhile, if the sea level of the Mediterranean Sea rose 1 meter, the Nile River Basin, home to millions and cultivated to feed more millions, would lose 6.1 million people to displacement. Where would they all go? 4,500 square kilometers of Nile River Basin cropland would be lost, and the World Bank estimates a 6% loss in GDP to Egypt, and direct GDP losses for about 10 other countries. 6% GDP impact would raise to 16% with a 5 meter rise of sea level. That's one area of the world and one river basin, there's many others. Louisiana and Florida will be lost to rising seas. California and Australia will have more forest fires.

And while many results of climate change are known, other possible changes could be even more catastrophic if they happened. This is the case with The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt or thermohaline circulation. Scientists don't know what the outcome of the collapse of the thermohaline circulation would be. They don't know how that would further change climate, which areas would be warmer, how it would effect ocean salinity. Would the ocean become a pond? Scientists can't predict, but there's a chance that it could be catastrophic. There's never absolute surety in science, but the outcomes can be different both ways, better, or a lot worse.

Deniers like Inhofe would be brandishing threats about emails if he were in hip-waders up to his waist in sea water, rather than accept the evidence. That's the way its always been and that's the way it will always be. Fighting against mult-million dollar "pro-industry" campaigns by oil companies and the people they corral with their ideas, like Inhofe, has occupied scientists as much as the science. So when some people, (including scientists) now turn around and say that scientists need to be more transparent, if doesn't ring true. The data has been there and still is. These 'scientists aren't talking right' distractions only derail scientists from looking for solutions.

Progress and Promises on AIDS:

Today, on World AIDS Day 2009, while looking for a statistic, I entered into Google the search: "HIV infections decrease". The sometimes precocious search engine offered an instantaneous correction: "did you mean HIV infections increase" [sic] No, I silently answered, frowning, before I caught myself attempting communication with a search engine. Then I flipped the search to Google News. Google insisted I must mean "increase". So I got the statistic I was looking for and relented to Google's know-it-all suggestion. Indeed although Google was wrong, I understand the reasoning, even if only algorithmic: The first search phrase, "decrease", yielded only 1,940,000 results in .22 seconds, whereas the second, "increase", gave 3,550,000 results in .18 seconds.

Just like the search engine, we brace ourselves for the worst with HIV/AIDS, we're habituated to hearing bad news. As the pandemic continues and effective methods for decreasing HIV infections, increasing treatment, and procuring funding seem at times as elusive as ten years ago, sometimes we need to look up once a year on AIDS day with some real intention just to see the inches gained in the sand we've been trying to get traction in.

Otherwise, even though the number of number of infections has decreased by 17% since 2001, all the World AIDS Days blur together and we're tempted to ask questions. Questions like -- has anything actually changed since the 20th World AIDS Day of 2007, when 61% of HIV infected population were women? Or from 2008 World AIDS Day? Or the first World AIDS Day 22 years ago?

Last year, on the the 21st World AIDS Day, we noted milestones like Bush's PEPFAR funding effort, and Barbara Hogan's appointment as South Africa's Health Minister. However, things change quickly in this area of public health, and this year brought both positive and negative news for PEPFAR and South Africa, two of our areas of interest.

The year started out promisingly, with Obama's inauguration and his pledge to pay even more attention to AIDS, especially for the recently increased national infections. He noted that his strategy would-

"...be based on the best available science and built on the foundation of a strong health care system"....however, he warned, "in the end, this epidemic can't be stopped by government alone, and money alone is not the answer either."

After being sworn in, Obama immediately got rid of the ban on international funding for groups that provided counseling on abortion. Condoms, an essential part of prevention, lost the evil connotation they had during the Bush administration. (The church took up the campaign when Pope Benedict XVI announced falsely in March that condoms would worsen the AIDS crisis). Obama was true to his campaigning words here. Science studies show that condoms are effective, and abstinence programs are not. Studies also show that attention to public health is central to preventing and treating infectious disease. Indeed, healthcare has been a theme of Obama's administration -- albeit to what end, we don't know. The president also recently lifted the HIV/AIDS travel ban, which has ostracized AIDS patients, something that's also been proven to undermine prevention and treatment programs.

Unfortunately, but again true to his word, Obama hasn't provided the leadership people hoped he would, even though government leadership has proven central to any successful HIV prevention and AIDS treatment program. Worse, although Obama the president-elect promised $1 billion per year in PEPFAR funding, the 2010 budget proposal contains only $366 million. The funding shortfalls have effected HIV and AIDS treatment programs, for instance eligible patients in Uganda are being turned away for lack of funds. The president's funding choices earned Obama a scathing D+ from AIDS NGOs.

Change in South Africa

In good news, South Africa's President Zuma has made several promises that show he's wised up from the time in court not long ago, when he defended himself on rape charges and said that a shower would prevent infection by HIV. Last month, Zuma promised that South Africa would vigorously address the national AIDS crisis.

Last May, when Zuma announced the reassignment of Barbara Hogan, whom he replaced with Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi, there was some concern from South Africa's public health community about the assignment, concern the Dr. Motsoaledi was inexperienced, while Hogan's work was widely praised. However public health groups have since welcomed the new minister's straightforward acknowledgments of past mistakes.

We hope South Africa's new realizations -- like that the nation's deaths from AIDS increased more than 100 percent in 11 years -- are not just a rhetorical distancing of the ANC party from former President Thabo Mbeki's and his denialism, but a real commitment to an AIDS program. Optimistically, today Zuma announced the government's intention to treat all babies and pregnant women infected with AIDS.

In other major HIV/AIDS news this year, initial reports of a successful vaccine clinical trial in Thailand brought increased public attention and then consternation to later news of the same trial. The second news release informed the world that when researchers did further analysis of the results they doubted that the benefit was statistically significant. That's the way it goes though, steps forward, and steps back. The work continues tomorrow, and for the next 364 days we'll all work towards a more upbeat World AIDS Day 2010.

What should we do when the world is in overshoot? An article in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books looks at depletion of natural resources in a world of ever increasing demand.

John Terborgh reviews "Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery", by Steve Nicholls. Nicholls is an entomologist and wildlife film producer who became alarmed at the progressive devastation of nature he saw in his perennial travels across America. "The World Is in Overshoot" communicates its message

"...on two levels, emotional and philosophical. The emotion is a restrained outrage at the wanton and often savage slaughter of wildlife -- cod, salmon, seabirds, curlew, beaver, bison, passenger pigeons, sea turtles, oysters, seals, walrus, and on and on. One feels it viscerally. And that drives home the philosophical point that all the excess and destruction were ensured by the cast of mind of the European colonists, the conviction that God created the wealth of nature expressly for man's benefit."

The plight of Grand Banks cod fisheries illustrates the problem that many species face. John Calbot discovered the Grand Banks in 1497, and today the adult cod population of the Grand Banks is 3% of what it was then, an outcome that Thomas Huxley certainly didn't predict. In 1883 Huxley wrote about the fish he called "Darwin's bulldog":

"I still believe the cod fishery...and probably all the great fisheries are inexhaustible; that is to say nothing we do seriously affects the number of fish"

Garrett Hardin popularized the "Tragedy of the Commons" concept in 1968, but the Grand Banks pillage started long before that, and would not be stopped by increased awareness of the issue. For over five hundred years the Grand Banks were fished by Europeans and Americans. Technology improved over the centuries and catches increased with each improvement, hand lines to long lines to gill nets to larger nets; wind to steam to factory ships; the "inexhaustible" bounty grew more precarious. Although the Canadian government imposed a moratorium on cod at tremendous cost to the fishing economy, for many reasons 17 years later, even the moratorium hasn't allowed the cod to recover.

The NY Review of books author talks about the alterations in Grand Bank's species like snow crabs, shrimp, lobster, skate and dogfish, and the damaged ecosystem affecting cod populations. Another damaged ecosystem exists in the "political tragedy of the 'commons'", says Terborgh. The fisherman of course maximize profit today we know that, but the politicians are also guilty of failing to pass effective regulations:

"The reluctance of official bodies to protect natural resources manifests a failure of political systems, particularly of modern democracy."

The article is accompanied by an Albert Bierstadt painting, "Among the Sierra Nevada". The painting is an interesting choice for the article. Bierstadt made trips to Western United States in the latter 19th century, then composed over 500 paintings, many of them depicting idealized western landscapes dominated by lush forests, plentiful wildlife, and majestic mountains, all bathed in surreal golden light. This particular painting was painted while Bierstadt was in Europe, nine years after the artist visited the Sierra Nevada in California, Critics say the mountains look more like the Alps than the Sierra Nevada, as Bierstadt

"painted the West as Americans hoped it would be, which made his paintings vastly popular and reinforced the perception of the West as either Europe or sublime Eden."¹

Other critics say his paintings resemble not Europe, but Arcadia. Either way, Bierstadt paints a seductive west, free of unwelcoming animals and indians, free of hostile mountain passes, and labeled blatant propaganda by some critics. His paintings encouraged people to go West, according to the more extreme view, which inevitably contributed to the destruction of the wilderness.

Terborgh, however, writes:

"The diminution of nature is a price to be paid by a society obsessively dedicated to unending economic growth. To lay the blame on the past obscures the lesson for our own time."

Terborgh rightly points out the weakness in pinning resource depletion on past actions. Past actions can't absolve us of the pressing need to act today. The pairing of the painting with the essay - perhaps inadvertently - also points out that sometimes we give in to temptations to paint the past more idyllically then it really was. Other artists depict the west much more harshly then Bierstadt's commercial aims ever allowed him to. Terborgh writes that Nicholls-

"turned to writing to lay out a sweeping panorama of what North America has lost in the centuries since the first explorers wrote back to their European sponsors of an exuberant nature so bountiful we can no longer imagine it."

Nature was bountiful, but some depictions like Bierstadt's were over-imagined to begin with. And as sometimes we overestimate nature back then, what environmental tradeoffs do we make for economic security that we may be overvaluing today? In relentlessly choosing short term economic security, are we also suffering from a bias, where the value of the most technically accessible solution which provides any modicum of economic security obscures the value of the environment, to our long term detriment?

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¹ Gordon Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West (New York, 1974), 51058, 149-50; Anderson and Ferber, Albert Bierstadt, 74-77, in Hyde, A., Cultural Filters: The Significance of Perception in the History of the American West, The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol 24, No. 3 (Aug., 1993), pp 351-374.

Photo courtesy of WikiCommons: here.

Acronym Required sometimes writes about the environment, and we critiqued a proposal that applied the Tragedy of the Commons parable to antibiotics here.

The past couple of weeks have been filled with stories about scientists' public dust-ups, intriguing to all, especially non-scientists. Why are they so interesting? Maybe such sordid tales offer something beyond dry research results sexed-up by editors desperate to grab readers weaned on YouTube? Maybe the stories make scientists seem not quite so pocket-protector laden and boring? (We're not boring, really!) But since we all know people who slow down to gawk at accidents, others who link lavishly to tales of disease, distress, death, and dismal demises, perhaps those people are just as enamored, in the same schadenfreude way, to science bickering and wave-making?

• Ice Floes and Climate Woes: Antarctica is losing ice from the eastern side as well as the west, according to a study in Nature Geoscience, an event that could significantly increase sea levels. But that's not the news everyone's focusing on these days. What interests them are the emails exchanged between a few scientists, stolen from a server at East Anglia University in England and broadcast on the internet.

  Fox News and the usual suspects are gleeful of course, oiling up for a long campaign of undermining science and swaying wishy-washy people. Everyone else spectates, eagerly leaning into the ropes. The Financial Times avidly quoted 'both sides', first the "free-market think tank" CEI spokesperson who called the emails "global warming house of cards", then the scientist whose email revealed that he wanted to "beat the crap out of" a certain scientist, a phrase that one person sincerely explained as "a common pleasantry" among high-calibre scientists. Optimistic climate deniers are talking "smoking guns" and ClimateGate. But as Real Climate: put it in one of their posts:

  "if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn't much to it."

  "Probably" is understatement. Somehow the media constantly gets away with quoting 'both sides' without signaling to readers the truer story: One side has hundreds of studies - the scientists; whereas the other side is lobbying for some corporation, or out of desperate laziness. The science is depressingly convincing on climate change. But obviously people don't all embrace change, and to that end, the deniers have proven time and time again that hammering away with their fraudulent message will keep people consuming petroleum products.

  My take is that if you unearthed the email trove of any group - government, academic or corporate - you'd find some nasty, flaming emails, but not everyone sees it the way I do of course. Some scientists are calling for increased transparency.

• Personal Genomics, What Risk? Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute and Scripps Translational Science Institute compared the results of two personal genomics companies for five individuals and found discrepancies in the disease risk predictions. The two companies, 23andMe and Navigenics DTC, responded to the paper in a recent issue of Nature. The two companies agreed with the criticism on some points and offered explanation on other points -- for instance about the differences between population risk and individual risks, and the importance of doctors' communication about genetic risks to patients.

  In other personal genomics news, Iceland's deCode Genetics went out of business, leaving it ambiguous, although we're assured that the genetic information will be protected, where their vast genetic data bank will end up.

• Curly-haired Science Populizers Spar: Steven Pinker popularizes cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. Malcolm Gladwell popularizes sociology and social psychology. They both have Canadian roots and very curly hair. Now they're sparring. Pinker critiqued Gladwell's, "What the Dog Saw" in a recent issue of "New York Times. Like any good manager or professor, Pinker offers four paragraphs of compliments before he breaks out the sharp red pen. Gladwell is a "minor genius", Pinker writes, but "unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning and who occasionally blunders into spectacular failures", and "frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring."

  Pinker says that Gladwell provides "misleading definitions", and furthermore, he mistakenly calls an eigenvalue an "igon value." The criticism may seem idiosyncratic to the lay person, but subject area experts see things differently. They're more likely to believe that imprecise definitions and simplification lead to public confusion. What's interesting is that such criticism comes from Pinker, who, being a popularizer like Gladwell, must certainly recognize the necessity of selectively choosing what to include in rhetorical writing for huge non-science audiences.

  Gladwell responds that Pinker "is unhappy with my spelling (rightly!) and with the fact that I have not joined him on the lonely ice floe of IQ fundamentalism." Clever defense and countercharge - in other words, "Igon value" was a typo not a misunderstanding, intimates Gladwell; and Pinker is more or less an intellectual pariah. Gladwell also denigrates Pinkers' sources for being bloggers or online denizens: "our differences owe less to what can be found in the scientific literature than they do to what can be found on Google." Ouch, ouch and ouch.

• Fantastic FOXP2 - The Speech Gene? David Shenk provides his blog at The Atlantic as a forum for a scientist and a New York Times journalist to spar about the journalist's presentation of science. Shenk posts a letter from University of Iowa neuroscientist and Behavioral Neuroscience Editor-in-Chief Mark Blumberg, to Nicholas Wade's about his New York Times story, "Speech gene shows its bossy nature." Blumberg takes Wade to task for calling FOXP2 the "speech gene".

  "the distinct possibility that the mutation influenced a myriad of other brain and body functions that, in turn, affected speech. Indeed, given all that we know about how genes work - as well as our sad history with grandiose claims about single-gene effects on behavior - wouldn't it be wise for all of us to be more cautious when communicating these findings to the public?

  In turn, Wade writes:

  "The role of this article was to update readers on a new finding, not to review the history of ideas about FOXP2. So there's no space to go into the argument about the gene's precise involvement with speech and language, much of which we have covered in earlier articles."

  Of all our notes, and all the other dust-ups in play in the news recently, I really enjoyed this presentation by Shenk because it gets to the heart of challenges with science communication and the work that scientists and writers must do to get science across to non-scientist audiences without generalizing or leading readers astray. Definitely worth reading.

• Do Names Portend Profession? Yes, we're joking. But if you're into astrology and anti-vaccination, if you think global warming is a giant hoax, you may steer clear of certain girls' given names. "Isabella", for instance, is a pretty name, second in popularity for girls in 2008, but, like Arabelle, Anabelle, Belinda, Elizabeth, Isabel, Isabella, Mirabel, Rosabel, Sybil or Mabel, it comes with troublesome nicknames, like "Bella"" or "Belle", which can also stand alone. Bella is the wan female protagonist of new popular movie, "The Twilight Saga: New Moon". Bella loses her mind (according to reviews) when her vampire boyfriend goes missing. OK there may be worse things then your daughter mooning around for months over her missing vampire boyfriend...but what are they again?

  "Belle" of course, was the nom de plume of the anonymous British scientist, named after the movie, not the name "Isabelle", who blogged about her second life as a prostitute. News of the scientist blogger outed as "Belle de Jour" elicited delighted and scurrilous musings online and in real life. Online, BoingBoing posed a "takeaway debate", asking: "Is this good or bad for scientists/science bloggers?" In real life one scientist acquaintance told me that he'd read that women with Asperger's syndrome were often "loose" because they could compartmentalize (we didn't check his source). He then continued, thinking aloud, that "of course they might be scientists too", and his eyes lit up at his connection and all the potential relationships he would have previously discounted. So in that case, to BoingBoing's question, it might be good for scientists.

  But "good or bad" is not necessarily the only takeaway, as British columnists tell us. Rowan Pelling wrote: "Interviewers have been asking me breathily what I thought of Belle when I met her, as if my eyes must have been out on stalks at the idea of a PhD student turning tricks." Actually, it wasn't her "trade", but the excellent "quality of her writing", that "shocked" Pelling.

  To be honest, the parts of Belle de Jour that I read I found about as captivating as reading a Martha Stewart description on how to stuff pillows with barley husks, so clearly I'm not the best judge of this sort of thing. But columnists babbled on and there seemed to be no debate about her "writing" prowess. Clive James of the BBC gushed:

  "And what a female...she was Ernest Hemingway...a woman of outstanding beauty and brilliance...student of informatics, epidemiology and forensic science...a student of military strategy...the thinking man's dream girl...There is nothing this woman can't do, and you can tell by the history of her blogging...She knows everything. She even knows what informatics is. I looked it up, and basically it means information theory.

  Yikes. Chill, pal. Perhaps they edited my Scribner Classics Hemingway edition, but I don't recall Hemingway writing such doozies (albeit rare) as Belle's 'my pussy makes men cry'. So now then, (and speaking of names, we won't even go into the name "Brook[e]), back to BoingBoing, what's the takeaway for scientists? Actually, I would debate, not much with this flash in the pan story.

  But here's my takeaway from Brooke Magnanti. Magnanti works for the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health and studies toxicology, most recently on organophosphate chloropyrifos (CPF) used in pesticides. An abstract in Toxicology Letters by Magnanti et al, (Volume 189, Supplement 1, 13 September 2009, Pages S268-S269) suggests the EU policies on CPFs be changed to the more restrictive one of the US which limits indoor use. I find this interesting. Many people, myself included, tend to think of US policies for environmental hazards as laxer than EU policies -- but be careful about generalizations. Acronym Required wrote about US and EU policies, and the EU's REACH protocol here and here and here, and here. I know, science, far less interesting, sigh.

The turkey is no phoenix, but nevertheless we've dug through the archives for Thanksgiving posts. From 2007 in "Thanksgiving - All Things Ottoman:

"...As most people know, the domesticated turkey that Americans eat for Thanksgiving descends from the wild turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, native to America. The Spaniards fancied the turkey when they invaded Mexico where turkey was indigenous, and then introduced the bird to Europe when they returned in the early 1500's. However, during the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, turkeys were thought by northern Europeans to be a product of Turkey.

Europeans also for a time called turkeys "India fowl", then confused the turkey with "Guinea fowl" and gave turkeys the same Latin genus name: "Maleagris". The species name that they settled on, "gallopavo" combines the Latin for rooster and for peacock. From these confusing origins turkeys have long struggled with their identity. First they were put in their own family, Meleagrididae; but now scientists consider turkeys to be part of the pheasant family, Phasianidae, in the subfamily Mealeagidinae...."

And 2005:

"The history of Thanksgiving is somewhat murky, but the first harvest festival in North America was probably in Newfoundland. The American colonists most likely had a somewhat more modest festival than our cranberry laden myths would have it. Tryptophan in turkey doesn't cause post meal sleepiness..."

Thanksgiving is one of our favorite holidays. Hope all our readers who celebrate Thanksgiving enjoyed it, and those who didn't didn't go hungry, had work, and took a moment to enjoy something...

For most of history, people were bent on dominating and conquering nature, clearing land, killing predators, and domesticating the wild. Now humans are determined to prevent some species from going extinct, from trees to frogs to large cats. These campaigns sometimes seem fetishized and bizarre -- wildlife foundations who implore us to mourn the death of one fuzzy, photogenic animal -- who beg us to send money so that the death of any individual animal was not "in vain". We send our heartfelt support and then fight to keep other species out, those that heedlessly invade our ecosystem as we currently know it. Humans devise management systems and models, and write up elaborate plans that look organized to any audience. As much as I heartily approve and endorse all this work -- oh, dare I say this?-- from afar, in certain fleeting moments, the efforts can look excessively anthropomorphic, sporadic, desperate, pathetic, or even futile. Who do we (yes, the odious, collective we) think we are? If we conquered nature before do we think we can undo the damage? Or do we just instinctively try to mold our ecosystem to evolving ideas or fantasies we have about nature? Why do we undermine our best efforts? What ecosphere, exactly, are we aiming for, we humans?

• Headlining, With Great Fanfare, Some Crocodile Fossils: "Darwin's finches have nothing on these crocodiles", says Science. The open-access journal ZooKeys published a monograph describing crocodile fossil finds from the Cretaceous period, including what the scientists describe as three new species. "My African crocs appeared to have had both upright, agile legs for bounding overland and a versatile tail for paddling in water", said Paul Serono, the National Geographic explorer in residence (emphasis added). (via Science in "Slideshow: Ancient Crocs With a Dog-Like Walk")

• Darwin's Mockingbirds: Scientists are analyzing DNA they've extracted from the footpads of mockingbirds brought back by Darwin. They hope to use the information to select species of mockingbirds most like the original ones, and reintroduce these species to the island of Floreana.

• Amazon Deforestation Slows? Brazil reported a record low for Amazon deforestation, the lowest it has been in 21 years. Only 7,000 sq km was destroyed between July 2008 and August 2009. However some organizations tempered any enthusiasm over Brazil's claims. Greenpeace said in a press release that its would be happy when " in 11 years time, the Amazon was being destroyed at a rate of a little less than three cities the size of Sao Paulo a year". Some people suggest the recent reduction is related to the economic recession. We previously wrote about deforestation here, here, and here.

• Modeling Deforestation and Degradation -- REDD: The journal Nature describes a deforestation modeling project aimed at "reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation" (REDD). Emissions from deforestation and degradation account for about one-fifth of the world's total emissions, however deforestation goals weren't included in the Kyoto Protocol because there was no reliable system for estimating CO2 emissions reduction. Scientists think that REDD is one of the cheapest ways of reducing overall emissions. If models were robust, richer countries could use the forecasts to reduce CO2 emissions, and to compensate poorer countries for minimizing biomass loss, more economical than reducing industrial emissions.

  A REDD project by Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) uses three existing land-use models to predict future losses. Project scientists say this model is a better predictor of deforestation than estimates based on historical analysis. The model predicts higher rates of deforestation in Central African countries of the Congo Basin than historical based predictions do, because economic activity in Africa is accelerating. Therefore compensation would be relatively greater in Africa using REDD, whereas Brazil, where deforestation has been going on for years, would fare better using a historical model. However as with any model, REDD is naturally only as good as the data going in, and doesn't factor in illegal logging.

• Geo-Wiki: In order to improve deforestation models, another tool, Geo-wiki asks volunteers to help refine land cover maps by filling in knowledge about their local areas (via Nature).

• 17,000 Species, Leagues Under The Sea As the rainforests disappear, scientists involved with the Census of Marine Life released a preliminary report on a bounty of life in the sea below the reach of sunlight, including this copedpod, which I'm most enamored with.

• Scientists Make Mistakes about Skates: Species of skate may be fished to extinction because of species identification mistakes, according to research reported in Aquatic Conservation. Since the 1920's scientists thought two species of skates -- which are cartiligenous fish like rays and sharks -- were only one species. The two distinct species, the flapper skate, Dipturus intermedia and the blue skate, Dipturus flossada were grouped together and known as the common skate: Dipturus batis. The French researchers say that both species may be more endangered then previously assumed because of the taxonomic labeling mistake.

  The researchers also point out that official fisheries statistics done by French ports grouped five distinct species under only two species names. The ports survey used the counts to calculare skate decline, but more precipitous declines of some of the five species were masked in the survey. The scientists warn that similar fishing surveys may gloss over species loss in "Taxonomic Confusion and Market Mislabelling of Threatened Skates: Important Consequences for Their Conservation Status". Igle et al, Aquatic Conserv: Mar. Freshw. Ecosyst. (2009). DOI: 10.1002/aqc.1083

• Carp Invade Great Lakes: Some carp are endangered. Jullien's Golden Carp Probarbus jullieni, found in South East Asia, especially in the Mekong, is considered a threatened species. The so called naked, or scale-less carp, Gymnocypris przewalskii, is found between freshwater rivers and the saltwater Lake Qinghai in China and is also endangered. Others species of carp are not endangered, rather they endanger.

  Scientists now think that two species of "Asian Carp" have invaded the Great Lakes. The bighead carp Hypophthalmichthys nobilis and silver carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix threaten the $7 billion dollar fishing business of the Great Lakes. These fish grow up to up to 100 pounds and eat 20% of their body weight in plankton and will wipe out native fish. The silver carp not only endangers fish, it can apparently can endanger boaters who sometimes protect themselves from injury by wearing hockey helmets on carp infested waters.

  The bighead and silver carp were imported by catfish farmer's in the 1970's to remove algae. When the fish began to take over the ecosystem, federal and state governments spent ~$10 million on electrical barriers to keep the carp out of the lakes. Based on DNA samples recently collected by scientists in the water on the lake side of the fence, the carp have crossed the fence. The Army Corps of Engineers told the New York Times that "all options are on the table" to control the fish.

• Pelican Decimated by DDT Off the Endangered Species List: The brown pelican is one of four species to be removed from the endangered species list. The US Department of Fish and Wildlife has removed bird, Pelecanus occidentalis since populations have increased. DDT decimated the species in the 1970's, but since the chemical has been less in use, the bird has had the opportunity to breed and thrive. (Hat tip to Nature News and its alliteration addled "Big Billed Bird Bounces Back".)

• Climate Change Negotiations - Like Watching Clothes Dry? In last weekend's Financial Times, Matthew Engel compared the US reluctance to combat climate change with Americans' civic battles over punitive hanging and hanging clothes on clotheslines. Turns out that when Engel moved to the US from Australia he brought his Hills Hoist with him, which provided him unique cultural insight. (The internet explains that a Hills Hoist is a rotary clothesline developed in Australia which can be mechanically raised, lowered and spun. In addition to these features, the Australian government lists the contraption as a National Treasure, prized "because it could hold four nappies on each of the four outer wires.")

  Anyway, when Engel put up his Hills Hoist he realized that the US generally disparages clothes hanging. Although his neighbors were accommodating of his family's aired laundry, Engel tells the story of one Pennsylvania woman who's battling her community in defense of her right to hang clothes -- "if my husband has a right to have guns in the house, I have a right to hang laundry", she says. Engels observes the irony of US communities forbidding homeowners from hanging their clothes outside, given that clothes dryers account for six per cent of US consumer end-use electricity consumption.

  With similar cognitive dissonance, he says, the US claims that climate change action is an important priority but stodgily backs away from any Copenhagen commitment (of course now, while keeping hopes alive). Attempting to explain the apparent clash of values, he thinks (and I'm just reporting) that although Americans define themselves with property rights and piousness, these values clashe with puritan ethics and an "unshakeable faith in technology, lingering from the 1950s."

  Acronym Required previously wrote about cognitive dissonance in "Cars, Selling Cognitive Dissonance", "Sea Change or Littoral Disaster" and many others.

Maher Still Loco on Vaccinations:

As he has for years, Bill Maher continues to spread disinformation about vaccines. Over countless news cycles Maher has infuriated doctors, public health officials, and responsible citizens with bizarre warnings about letting governments "stick a disease into your arm".

Challenged to get a word in edgewise between his fusillades about "mercury" and "diet" and natural "immunity", doctors and scientists nevertheless patiently correct his errors. They explain that a vaccine is not "a disease" but a disabled virus that looks to the immune system like a live virus or bacteria and therefore prevents infection by the actual deadly virus or bacteria¹ like polio, measles, diphtheria, or influenza.

But the talk show host persists, as is his habit. Last month, Bill "I'm also not f-king my interns" Maher baffled panelists Alec Baldwin, Chris Matthews and Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley by rehashing his concerns with vaccines. Yesterday, Maher continued with a rambling column at The Huffington Post titled "A Conversation Worth Having", saying he aimed to

"clear up a few things about my beliefs concerning the flu shot, vaccines, and health in general...I will admit, I have gone off half cocked on this issue sometimes, and often only had time on my show to explain a fraction of what needed to be explained, and for that I am sorry...I agree with my critics who say there are far more qualified people than me"

Mea culpa? Unfortunately, and spoiler alert for the 2800 word article: no. I didn't say "anyone who gets a flu shot is an idiot", Maher said, "it was twittered...my bad". Then, "vaccination is a nuanced subject, and I've never said all vaccines in all situations are bad..." Nuanced? "All vaccines"? Cagey creepy crapola -- bring it on, Maher.

Discerning Maher's Health Prescription -- When "Sometimes It's OK to Fuck with Nature"

Maher writes "I'm not a germ theory denier" and he claims "I do understand the theory of inoculation", exuding all the candor of a intelligent design proselytizer putting quotes around "the theory" of evolution. To the helpful doctor who corrects him, Maher retorts snidely "Thanks, Doc, I thought there might be a little man inside the needle. Yes, I read Microbe Hunters when I was eight." (Doesn't think the conversation is worth having?)

Cocksure and funny, Maher acts as though he's arguing about some scrutable line that any eight year old can see - you don't need to be a doctor or scientist. To the left of the line there are the OK vaccines, except, he hedges, vaccines are unproven. To the right, there are the not-OK vaccines that we should be debating, like flu vaccine. But actually, if you can't already tell, there is no line or margin, because Maher is arguing the same old run-of-the-mill anti-vaccine/medicine/science schtick you've (yawwwwnn) already heard. He allows that "sometimes it's OK to fuck with nature" and prescribe medicine, but listen to enough Maher and you realize he maligns all medicine, all vaccines.

Casting Aside Science

Sure, at first you may be confused because he mixes recognizable words into gobbledygook. Do doctors ever ask patients what they eat, he asks rhetorically? No, he answers, "and a lot can be cured with diet and a healthier lifestyle" -- then Maher adds in parentheses -- "And a lot can't [be cured]. I also understand the role of genetics and generations of artificial selection".

Despite his unassailable understanding, lets review. The risk of some diseases, like diabetes Type II, can be reduced with healthier lifestyle. Some conditions, like obesity can be prevented with diet, and losing weight concurrently reduces the risks of morbidity and mortality associated with conditions like heart disease. This isn't just semantics. Diet won't prevent crippling polio, or a flu pandemic or death of a pregnant woman, or stop a kid from succumbing to weeks of illness and a 105 degree influenza fever. And typical of Maher's machinations on science, medicine and disease, he jumps down the rabbit hole with "genetics and "generations of artificial selection". Scientists use artificial selection to breed products like corn by selecting for certain traits. Humans are not hothouse flowers, subjected to "generations of artificial selection".

How Does Maher Distinguish Himself From Dr. Beetroot?

In cajoling his audience to exercise skepticism and caution and arguing for "debate", a word that should tip anyone off to incoming falsehoods; Maher says:

"Someone needs to be representing the point of view that says the preferred way to handle flus is to have a strong immune system to begin with..."

Actually, we can think we recognize this "point of view". Take, for instance South Africa's former health minister, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, (known derisively as Dr. Beetroot), who spent years telling South Africans to boost their immune systems against the AIDS virus with diet, beetroot and lemon.

In a familiar refrain, the South African Mbeki government insisted that Western drugs were too profit oriented and dangerous. As a result of this decision, hundreds of thousands of South Africans died from AIDS, and the dying isn't over, since infectious disease pandemics gather momentum over time. Newly elected President Zuma recently warned that the death rate from AIDS may overtake the birthrate in that country.

How is Maher's argument different than that of Tshabalala-Msimang's? Where does he draw his invisible line de-marking greedy Western medicine from essential life-saving medicine? How does this board member of the "Reason Project" (Wikipedia) dedicated to scientific and secular knowledge, identify good medicine?

How is Maher's Position Different Than A Mennonite's?

Instead of agreeing with scientists and doctors, Maher chooses to listen to Barbara Loe Fisher who he finds "extremely credible", because

"after devoting her life to studying this, she says that flu vaccines aren't proven and...points out that what we need, but do not yet have, are studies of vaccinated vs unvaccinated children."

Fisher is not a scientist or a doctor, and that's ok, anyone can educate themselves about vaccinations, eight or older. Based on her experience parenting and in public relations Fisher can certainly start a vaccination information center, appear on talk shows, testify at events like the "Vaccine Policy Analysis Collaborative: A U.S. Government Experiment in Public Engagement", and give lectures to naturopaths, chiropractors, and groups like "Body by God". Who's to say she can't?

But given that Maher says she's devoted her life to studying vaccinations, you'd think she'd understand that vaccinating some children against polio, but not others, would be medically unethical. You'd think that Maher would also see the moral quagmire.

Furthermore, unfortunately, there's lots of evidence to prove that what Fisher and Maher say is the untested theory of vaccination is flat out false. As the NYT reported in 2003:

"The last two American polio outbreaks were in Amish and Mennonite communities in 1979 and in a Christian Science school in Connecticut in 1972. Measles killed 3 students of 125 infected in a Christian Science school in 1985, and a similar-size outbreak among the Amish in 1987 and 1988 killed 2 people. In 1991, 890 cases of rubella, leading to more than a dozen deformed children, hit Amish areas."

Since then, Africans who believed rumors that vaccinations are an attempt by Westerners to spread the HIV virus or sterilize Nigerians, started a polio epidemic. The Amish also suffered polio outbreaks. Mennonites, who don't believe in vaccination but do believe in travel caused outbreaks of measles in Minnesota, then South America. Like the Amish, Mennonites don't believe in vaccinations or insurance, but do believe that hospitals should cure them for a discount, once they get sick.

How is Maher's position different then that of a Mennonite? Can we have this conversation? How does Maher square his position on vaccines with his libertarian views when people end up demanding hospital bailouts because they didn't take it upon themselves to prevent illness?

The Dredged Up "Under-reported Point of View" is Often Wrong, Concludes A Bright Person

The consequences of not vaccinating become graver and more frequent as more people refuse vaccinations. The value of vaccinations is not "debatable". Vaccinations have saved millions of lives, saved millions of dollars by keeping people out of hospitals, and boosted productivity of nations. But Maher ignores all this and calls for some cost benefit analysis, more familiar anti-science denialism.

Maher appeals to all of those who eschew facts and take solace in unpopular views.

"I'm just trying to represent an under-reported medical point of view in this country, I'm not telling a specific pregnant lady what to do...[I]t's just that mainstream media rarely interviews doctors and scientists who present an alternative point of view..."

Pregnant women and kids are most susceptible to dying from H1N1 virus. Pregnant women have decreased lung capacity that increases the threat of pneumonia, and they have decreased immunity due to their pregnancy. The reason the media doesn't interview doctors and scientists with "alternative points of view" on the subject, is because doctors and scientists agree that vaccines save lives, and that pregnant woman and parents of children shouldn't die because they've been convinced by talk show hosts to doubt the CDC, the doctors, and the scientists.

Maher's is not selling an "under-reported medical point of view", rather he's latched onto a non-medical, non-science point of view. Hmmm....why does he persist?

Bill Maher's Mainstream Media Profit Motives

Unbelievably, after flogging his point of view for years, Maher says he has no motive and expects no outcome: "[M]y audience is bright, they wouldn't refuse a flu shot because they heard me talk about it...." But his audience claps when he talks non-scientific hokum -- perhaps only because they're prompted? Either they're not thinking at all, or they're confused about science, or they're easily swayed by paranoid views, or they think they're at a gladiator show - in which case they will eventually be disappointed by the "debate." Can such folks be considered "bright" in the 21st century?

To the point, though, if Maher's especially non-bright, non-medical, non-scientific point of view weren't selling, weren't rewarded with clapping and viewers and advertising dollars, would he still be ranting on? Maher's anti-vaccination position has populist appeal that draws viewers and boosts ratings. His refutation of "mainstream media's profit motives" sells well. But lets be clear. HBO's Real Time, with millions of viewers each night, is mainstream media. What's not? Acronym Required, for instance, is not "mainstream media".

And why pick on science? Scientists are a remarkably easy target, as we noted before when John McCain chronically made fun of science research. When Maher chose to accost religion, at least 50% of Americans are quite religious, and that's a lot of potential audience members to insult. Plus, religious people can get dangerous. Other Maher campaigns have also backfired, like when Maher's remarks about military recruiting spurred one Congressman to demand that Real Time be canceled.

Considering his options then, and the groups he's already alienated, scientists make a good target. They're pretty tame, therefore easy to pick on safely, and a select target for a large potential audience, since everyone's thinking of getting the flu vaccine. Maher can perhaps equivocate about good vs. bad vaccines and fool a lot of people. So Bill Maher and his mainstream media show try to expand his audience by maligning science to become more mainstream? So they forsake scientists, but also pregnant moms and kids in the process? Is this the conversation? More or less? Bravo, talk show host!

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Photo from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license.

¹ 11/19 Added "bacteria"

Acronym Required wrote on vaccinations previously, for instance in Vaccinations, Why the Worry? we wrote about the long history of rebellion against vaccinations. We also wrote about vaccinations here and in various posts and vaccines for specific illnesses.

Bill Maher's shenanigans have been will covered by scientists like Respectful Insolence here and here, by Pharyngula; by Aetiology here and here here and by many others.

• Progress on South Africa's New Stance on AIDS? Ten years ago, former South African president Thabo Mbeki told the National Council of Provinces that it would be "irresponsible" for the state to endorse antiretroviral drugs, noting a "large volume of scientific literature" attesting to the toxicity of ARV medicines. We've written about South Africa's HIV/AIDS denialism and obfuscation over years, when, despite international and national pressure on behalf of millions dying from AIDS, Mbeki's health policies never budged and the African National Congress (ANC) leadership failed.

  Now, President Jacob Zuma has eased concerns about his intentions for controlling the pandemic by articulating a new path for the country. He recently told the National Council of Provinces that he would fight the AIDS crisis, and warned that the "real danger that the number of deaths will soon overtake the number of births." Treatment Action Committee (TAC), hailed the new administration's stance.

  Acronym Required previously wrote about South Africa's new health minister and her stance on AIDS treatment in "New Minister of Health For South Africa. Change Afoot?"; and AIDS in South Africa in "Mbeki's AIDS Legacy and Ours", Public Health, AIDS, Mbeki, and the Media, "South Africa: Peddling Beetroot, Courting AIDS", ""Not in Paradise Anymore - AIDS in Africa - Reason for Optimism?", Zuma Dodges Corruption Charges", and others.

• When Opposition is de Rigeur: In 2004, after the publication of "Mountains Upon Mountains", Partners in Health founder Jim Yong Kim moved to the World Health Organization to lead the HIV-AIDS program, where he initiated the 3 by 5 HIV/AIDS treatment plan with a goal to treat 3 million people by 2005.

  From the time that antiretrovirals became available in the 1990's, people in Western countries like the US and countries like Brazil, that endorsed universal public health, increasingly had access to retrovirals, which made an AIDS diagnosis for those people more manageable and less often lethal.

  But there was huge opposition to treating large scale AIDS pandemics in places like sub-Saharan Africa. The various reasons people gave for not treating ranged from logistical (transport over inhospitable terrain), to patient non-compliance, to high rates of fraud, to fear of Western drugs. South Africa's example was publicized and shocking but not isolated. However, by 2004 drug prices had dropped and the tone of objectors had softened, if only slightly. Here's Kim in 2004, urging the world respond to the AIDS epidemic quickly "at its own pace", that is, at a pace comparable to the rapidly advancing viral pandemic. The 3 by 5 plan allowed 1 million people to be on treatment by 2005, and today, more than 4 million are being treated.

  "For the activists, you must hold all of our collective feet to the hottest possible fire because large organizations and the powerful have a way of finding reasons to not take action. If you don't continue to push us, we will falter."

  A good message. Jim Yong Kim is now the president of Dartmouth College.

• Problems in National Health: 17,000 kids in the U.S. Die each Year Because They Lack Insurance: John Hopkins Children's Center researchers studied data from more than 23 million children's hospitalizations in 37 states from 1988 to 2005. Compared with insured children, uninsured children faced a 60 percent increased risk of dying, the researchers found. The analysis attributed 16,787 of some 38,649 children's deaths nationwide during the period analyzed to lack of insurance.

• Polls, Spin, Memos, and the Public Option: We previously wrote about Frank Luntz, whose healthcare memo urged defeat of the public option via specific spin doctoring and tested rhetoric last July. Well, of course with Congress chewing over healthcare, Luntz has been at it again. Luntz purports to have talked to some Americans who told him they want still worse healthcare with no public option -- the "massively expensive" option he opines with false, if resonant authority. The new memo reiterates much of the old one and it contains all the same language aimed at preserving the healthcare status quo. When invited to talk shows, he says that his polling shows that Americans are "mad as hell". And Luntz isn't the only one lobbying against healthcare reform.

• Evidence Based Policy - Abstinence Funding Halted Decades After Proving Ineffective (Sometimes Time Wins): The Obama administration cut abstinence-only funding, after multiple studies showed that it doesn't work -- abstinence doesn't change sexual behavior, pregnancy, STD rates, or age of first sexual activity. Furthermore, studies showed that abstinence programs routinely dole out incorrect or incomplete information about condoms and contraception, causing confusion and misperceptions among the very vulnerable populations the programs claim to protect. (Abstinence-only doesn't work in HIV/AIDS programs either.)

  A recent Newsweek article focuses on the sudden funding decrease affecting those organizations which burgeoned during the last couple of decades because of the federal money. According to Newsweek's article, some U.S. programs like Kids Eagerly Endorsing Purity (K.E.E.P), in the South still manage to get lots of private funding, whereas other programs are at "in a race against time to keep these people in business."

Update January 24, 2010: In this post about the Tracy Kidder's book "Mountains Upon Mountains" and the MDR-TB story, we didn't talk about Haiti, where Paul Farmer began treating patients while in medical school at Harvard. There, Farmer met Ophelia Dahl, and together they started PIH with Jim Yong Kim. "Mountains Upon Mountains" tells the story of how they built the treatment facility in Haiti. The recent earthquake in Haiti is devastating and the work is not done for Haitians when the tragedy disappears from the headline news. There are many excellent agencies working in Haiti, but here's a link to the Partner's In Health page on Haiti. Remember Haiti -- even after the earthquake.

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I read Tracy Kidder's "Mountains Upon Mountains" last fall, as did many freshman college classes in the U.S. I'm not a college freshman, but I still found it a hopeful book, worth reading as antidote to ennui about the politics of healthcare or the environment, as a salve for cynicism about human nature or the media (perhaps by the end you won't need a goofy picture some fluffy, web-ubiquitous kitten), to remember where international public health was decades ago, or just because.

In Chapter 18, Kidder describes Partners in Health's (PIH) program in Peru to manage multi-drug resistance (MDR)tuberculosis (TB). By the late 1990's PIH's program, originally a trial, had decreased MDR-TB by 85%, curing the sickest patients.

The story is familiar now, perhaps legend, but still worth retelling. MDR-TB had been considered not worth treating in that patient population until PIH's persistence in Peru. Then (and now), the most successful treatment strategy was Directly Observed Treatment Short-Course (DOTS), which makes patients take first-line TB medicines under the eyes of doctor or healthcare worker, thus reducing non-compliance and risks of antibiotic resistance. While highly successful, DOTS didn't cure the MDR cases cropping up in Peru, where patients were dying regardless of medications they had or hadn't taken.

Paul Farmer and PIH's goal had always been to work towards health equity, to assure that people in poor parts of the world got comparable care to people in Boston. With MDR-TB, the PIH challenge became to convince global public health agencies, the TB community, and funders that these patients should be treated, at a time when the dominant public health paradigm dictated treating the greatest number of people with a limited pie of dollars. The PIH success in Peru helped their argument. But the expensive MDR program that PIH employed to cure patients still didn't make sense in public health circles because the cost of treating MDR-TB - to put it bluntly: didn't justify the lives saved.

PIH worked on the TB community, convincing them that the MDR protocol --"DOTS-plus"-- was technically feasible. Concurrently they worked on pharmaceutical companies and allied with NGOs to bring the drug prices down by as much as 90% on some drugs. They also worked with private funders to raise money, and by successfully coordinating these efforts, challenged the paradigm that precluded the poor from viable healthcare. As Jim Yong Kim put it, "The only time that I hear talk of shrinking resources among people like us, among academics, is when we talk about things that have to do with poor people."

It was a longer, tougher, more complicated and convoluted fight than my few sentences illustrate, or even that Kidder's skillful multi-chapter coverage details, but PIH's plan to treat MDR-TB patients more widely than in Peru worked. DOTS-plus was endorsed by public health, recognized as effective, and funded. Now people throughout the world increasingly get treated instead of being allowed to die. Their treatment decreases the spread of TB.

The challenges never end, of course, now there's the more lethal extensively drug resistant tuberculosis, XDR-TB. But, as the story shows, insistence and the persistence saves many lives.

Our Hypocritical Oaths:

When people complain about healthcare problems they tend to zero in on an isolated part of the system, like insurance. When they try to solve healthcare problems then focus on another part, like technology. They dredge up scapegoats to blame by accusing the poor or immigrants of driving up costs by depending on emergency rooms as primary care. The truth is, we all play a role in the gargantuan capitalist collective that is healthcare, and no matter how hard we try to be diligent consumers or responsible patients, we each enable a very unhealthy healthcare system.

On some level you may understand this. As you dangle your legs from the examining table clutching the corners of that little paper towel, you may recognize that you're sitting in a "care" facility that spends millions marketing to you about meeting your medical needs while unfailingly accommodating the needs of many other players -- the insurance company's stockholders, the investors in the shiny new medical complex, the medical fellow's future success, the administrators of various insurances, and the doctor's kids' educations.

Regardless of how smart and realistic and educated you may be, you aren't clever enough to avoid unnecessarily driving up health care costs, a fact you may well choose to ignore. Usually you can rationalize that the problems are not your fault. And since we all agree that it's not our fault, the dysfunctional system thrives and perpetuates itself.

But once and a while, a twinge of regret or guilt may creep over you. Perhaps it will happen after you wait five months to visit a certain specialist that everyone said is the best, only to realize that the ten words he deemed worthwhile his time to impart were less informative than what you read on Wikipedia -- except uttered by him they cost the insurance company and you $400 -- with the insurance discount. Maybe you should have known better.

Or perhaps someday you will look at what "you pay" on the bill compared to the five thousand dollars that insurance payed and momentarily feel as though you've scored a bargain at Ross Dress For Less -- even if you recognize that the insurance companies extraordinary profits came directly out of your pocket. Someday you'll be too busy to insist that the insurance company honor the preventative procedure contract; someday you'll acquiesce to doing some unnecessary high-cost procedure; someday you'll agree to do five more blood tests because you don't feel like getting your old records.

What the Teabaggers Deny

There's the everyday differences of opinion about how to diagnose and treat certain diseases and other issues, these drive up healthcare costs. Then there are the recognizable and seemingly avoidable mistakes that you participate in and recognize. Regardless of, or because of your expertise in economics or medicine or finance or business, someday you'll be slapped by undeniable buyers' remorse or the chagrin of being duped or overtreated. Someday you'll sit down on the examining table fully aware of the trade-offs and controversies of health economics, of third-party payers, of diagnostic options, and treatment controversies, only to recognize sometime after your "care", in an exasperating burst of awareness, that your time or money (if not your health) got wasted.

Before then, you may choose to be too overwhelmed with life's business to consider your participation in the sorry healthcare system. Or you may hear other people talk about some useless procedures they endured and think 'poor sap - wouldn't be me'. Such was the case with Dr. Jack Coulehan, who relayed in last month's "Health Affairs, that he "lost the smugness and condescension I often felt when listening to others' stories about being trapped by the system and manipulated into excessively complex and specialized medical situations", and ended up as "a poster boy for excessive medicine."

Coulehan, a primary care doctor, professor emeritus and public health fellow at NYU, described his exasperating experience in the emergency room one Easter Sunday. The doctor knew he had shingles, having diagnosed at least one hundred patients with the disease:

"but I decided to visit our hospital emergency room to confirm the diagnosis and get my prescriptions. My wife drove. I sat in the car with my eyes closed, wondering how it was possible for me to have turned into one of those elderly people who suffer from shingles."

The attending physician confirmed his self-diagnosis, but Coulehan relented to see two more specialists. He relays his confused thinking during an exchange with the attending physician:

Attending: "Maybe we should have an ophthalmologist and a neurologist take a look at you. What about it, just in case?"

Coulehan: "I don't know...I don't think so...well, OK...maybe it's a good idea." A tiny doubt crept into my mind. Could we be missing something? Might it be a tumor behind my eye? Or a weird form of glaucoma? I wondered whether she was being extra careful because I was a fellow physician. But, if so, why?

After one MRI, Coulehan observes:

"When the attending neurologist returned from his lunch he seemed absolutely delighted that I might have a blood clot in the sinus -- a finding, he said, consistent with the redness around my eye. "Did you have any recent dental work?" he asked, searching for an infection as a possible cause of venous blockage. (I hadn't.) I was gripped by molasses-like passivity. The reasonable part of my mind cried, "This is crazy! Get me out of here!" But a twiggy little nugget deep in my brain asked, "What if there is something serious wrong?"

Coulehan went through hours and hours of waiting and testing, testing and waiting, into the evening, noting that "Easter Sunday appeared to be a dead day in the ER, except for me and my shingles". By the end of the day, Coulehan finally got the medical prescriptions he had decided he needed at six in the morning while sitting on the beach with his wife. After two MRIs, a CT scan, and a $9000 bill, the doctor concluded: "I understand now how all those people could have been so gullible, so easily manipulated by the system. Now that I'm one of them, that is."

If you've already been chagrined after relenting to some test or procedure that's totally useless if not harmful, Coulehan's article will assure you that you're in good company. Which of course is comforting but also ironic. Since we're all making the same choices, more than a few of which are undeniably bad or unnecessary, many people feel no particular personal responsibility. In fact some people, like the teabaggers lining up in Washington DC like it's 3AM the day after Thanksgiving at Best Buy, fear that any change in the system will deny them their rights to those bargains advertised on their insurance receipts.

Coulehan's whole article is available at Health Affairs September/October 2009; 28(5): 1509-1514 (subscription).