Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • Personalities, honor, and such

    Let me start by saying that there is no “right” as such to anything on the internet. There is no blog law that allows for anonymity, etc. All we have are our evolving ethics, about which I recently wrote.

    As the ongoing dispute over anonymity continues (and continues to make me uncomfortable, but not in a good way), there is one ethical aspect I must address.

    There are three authors on this blog, and our writings largely compliment each other. When I decided to get HONcode certification for this blog, as I had on my old one, it was with the knowledge that with three separate writers, things could get tricky. I made it clear to my blogmates that HONcode certification is strictly voluntary.

    Given that there seems to be some legitimate dispute as to whether this blog is holding to the HONcode prinicples, I have decided to remove the banner for now. This is not to say that I have abandoned the principles; I fully intend to keep them, but I do not wish to pretend that we are completely in compliance when in fact we may not be.

    I do not think anyone on this site has violated the HONcode principles, but there is a sense developing that others think it could happen. For the code to mean anything, people must be willing to voluntarily give it up, and that is what I will do, temporarily, while this little imbroglio plays itself out.

    That is all.

  • Is Anonymity Even Possible?

    Sciblings are discussing the ethics of anonymity all over Scienceblogs.

    I want to pose a different question: practically speaking, is anonymity even possible?

    Consider:

    1) There is no standard definition for what is anonymous or anonymized. For instance, AOL released a putatively anonymous database of search queries a few years ago, but it was soon discovered that individuals could be identified in it. Google “anonymizes” some user records but the method they use is pretty pathetic.

    2) The field of reidentification is growing in sophistication. Professor Latanya Sweeney at Carnegie Mellon has shown that even census records can be reidentified in Uniqueness of Simple Demographics in the U.S. Population:

    …87% (216 million of 248 million) of the population in the United States had reported characteristics that likely made them unique based only on {5-digit ZIP, gender, date of birth}. About half of the U.S. population (132 million of 248 million or 53%) are likely to be uniquely identified by only {place, gender, date of birth}, where place is basically the city, town, or municipality in which the person resides. And even at the county level, {county, gender, date of birth} are likely to uniquely identify 18% of the U.S. population. In general, few characteristics are needed to uniquely identify a person.

    And look what Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov did to the putatively anonymous Netflix database.

    3) The more you blog/comment/etc, the more fragile anonymity becomes. You may incidentally reveal identifying information, directly or indirectly. The shifting context of information may cause you to inadvertently identify yourself from previous posts. And metadata often is available, such as your IP address, which helps individuals hone in on your location, ISP, etc.

    4) One little mistake, and you’re anonymity is gone! For instance, this blog requests email addresses for commenters. People frequently enter a pseudonym or “anon” and yet leave what appears to be a real email address! Sometimes users employ a pseudonym in a context where they want to hide their identity, but then use the same pseudonym on another website where their identity is easy to determine. So, anonymity is contingent upon technical sophistication (use of technologies such as TOR), discipline, and attention to detail.

    I am not arguing that anonymity is a bad thing. I think anonymity is key for fostering non-instrumental values, such as personhood, exploration of controversial ideas, autonomy, free expression, etc. But, are we being naive in our assertion of this protection? Can we, as bloggers who are frequently posting about our experiences, enjoy a strong level of anonymity (whatever that is)?

  • A Problem with Using the Plastic

    I have a love-hate relationship with credit and charge cards. They’re incredibly convenient, but my few puritan instincts tell me that they’re the spawn of satan.

    And the fees! The fees! No, not the ones for paying your bill late, or for paying your bill on time over the phone, balance transfer fees, application fees, balance transfer fees, overlimit fees, or even annual fees. (Did you know that banks make more money from fees now than from investments?) I’m talking about the fees that the card networks charge to merchants. Jane Birnbaum explains in Thursday’s Times:

    A typical merchant card payment has two parts: an “interchange fee,” which includes an average 1.7 percent of the sale price and a flat per-transaction fee, and a separate fee that goes to the merchant’s bank. Take, for example, a driver who pays for a $1,000 car repair with a credit card. The bank that issued the consumer’s card receives an interchange fee of $17.10 (including a 10-cent flat fee), while the repair shop’s bank gets $4, or four-tenths of 1 percent of the total sale. The repair shop pockets $978.90.

    On a large, $1,000 sale, one could just consider this a cost of doing business. Who is going to walk around with $1,000 in cash in their pocket anyway? Checks are dowdy and raise unmanageable fraud risks (a subject for another post). So, the card is most excellent in that situation.

    On small transactions, these fees can have a large impact; they cause merchants to lose money on a sale. Because credit cards are used more than cash now in the US, the fees add up to an enormous tax on consumers. Birnbaum continues:

    In 2007, merchants paid $61.56 billion in electronic payment fees, up from $48.58 billion in 2005, according to the Nilson Report, a payment systems industry newsletter…

    Obviously, this is passed onto the consumer. But instead of passing it onto just the plastics, merchants spread the costs among all customers, even those who use cash or checks. This is because under the guise of consumer protection, California and other states have laws that prohibit businesses from charging customers more when they use plastic (however, merchants can advertise “cash discounts”). Agreements between credit card networks and merchants prohibit policies setting a minimum amount for credit transactions.

    Straight outta Locash!

    So, next time you’re in line at the 7-11 behind the 18 year old using plastic for a $2.32 purchase, remember that you are paying for it with both your wasted time and money!

  • Palin as Populist Chic

    I am enjoying the news post election, because what was once news media “liberal bias” about Sarah Palin is now simply common sense.

    Even more fun is the frank conversation about the conservative movement. Today’s Journal has a must read by Mark Lilla on how the very conservatives who valued intellectualism and elites were corrupted by “populist chic.” Lilla recalls Jane Mayer’s recent article on Palin, noting how conservative intellectuals chose Palin as a candidate that was appealing to the masses. But in so doing, conservative intellectuals mirrored their liberal rivals. Lilla explains:

    Back in the ’70s, conservative intellectuals loved to talk about “radical chic,” the well-known tendency of educated, often wealthy liberals to project their political fantasies onto brutal revolutionaries and street thugs, and romanticize their “struggles.” But “populist chic” is just the inversion of “radical chic,” and is no less absurd, comical or ominous. Traditional conservatives were always suspicious of populism, and they were right to be. They saw elites as a fact of political life, even of democratic life. What matters in democracy is that those elites acquire their positions through talent and experience, and that they be educated to serve the public good. But it also matters that they own up to their elite status and defend the need for elites. They must be friends of democracy while protecting it, and themselves, from the leveling and vulgarization all democracy tends toward.

    He concludes:

    …As for political judgment, the promotion of Sarah Palin as a possible world leader speaks for itself. The Republican Party and the political right will survive, but the conservative intellectual tradition is already dead. And all of us, even liberals like myself, are poorer for it.

  • Back into the storm—the pseudonymity lab

    When we get to ScienceOnline09 in January, Abel and I will be leading a session on blogging and anonymity. I agreed to get involved because it sounded interesting, but I had no idea it would become such a big deal. There have been active discussions at many of the Sb blogs on this issue, particularly here, at Abel’s TerraSig, and at DrugMonkey. As part of the discussion, I put out a piece on the ethics of blog anonymity. Now here’s a related question (which I would prefer to treat in a general sense, without referring to any ongoing RL disputes).

    Let’s take a quote from an anonymous writer:

    We shouldn’t have anonymity or pseudonyms in place to protect people from the consequences of expressing bigotry, we have it so they can tell the truth.

    It is true that we can always be held responsible for what we write, and anonymity is not guaranteed. I’ve written earlier that I don’t think anonymity is a right, as such, but more of a clause in a contract. If I, as the writer, break the contract by launching nasty attacks on others, does that abrogate the responsibility of my readers to guard my identity?

    Another anonymous writer brings up a glitch here:

    What you are saying here is that if you, personally, think someone should be outed for whatever arbitrary personal reasons you would do so.

    Since there is no agreed-upon set of rules in the blogosphere (remember, it’s dangerous—bring a helmet), there can be no single answer here.

    If a blogger is spewing hate-filled white-supremecist rhetoric, I won’t feel so bad about outing him. But that’s just my (ultimately) arbitrary judgment. Is there a decision-making tool in our ethics kit that measures when an outing or threatened outing is fair? Part of the decision-making process has to involve the good or bad that accrues with either outing or not outing someone.

    I’d like to see a real discussion of this, without over the top hostility, and without reference to any ongoing disputes. Thanks.

  • Stop the RFK Jr. appointment NOW

    I would beg everyone who reads the scienceblogs and cares about science to contact the transition team in the Obama administration as Orac has requested.

    It should be clear by now to readers of this blog that pseudoscience is not a problem of just the right. The left wing areas of pseudoscience are just as cranky, just as wrong-headed about science, just as likely to use the tactics of denialism to advance a non-scientific agenda. We have been dealing with the denialism of the right more because they’ve been in control. Now is the time to nip the denialism of the left in the bud so it doesn’t take root in this new administration.

    RFK Jr. is a crank (Orac for more), and one of the problems with cranks is Crank Magnetism. When people have one type of pseudoscientific belief it tends not to be isolated. Instead it reflects a general incompetence in understanding science, evaluating the quality of evidence, and what constitutes good science. RFK Jr.’s crankery will not be limited to vaccines and autism. He will undoubtably become the poster boy for all sorts of left wing crankery – be it environmental extremism, toxin/radiation paranoia (we’ll never get public wifi), or his already well known anti-vax crankery.

    My letter to the transition team is below the fold. Please join me in trying to prevent this terrible error on the part of the Obama campaign.

    (more…)

  • Migraines prevent breast cancer!!!!!!!

    ResearchBlogging.orgWhen reporting on science, reporters and editors like sexy stories. Since most science isn’t particularly sexy, there’s usually a hook. If you can squeeze “risk” and “cancer” into a headline, an editor sees good headline. What I usually see is a sensationalist article that is going to get it very wrong.

    One of the questions most often asked in the medical literature is “what is the risk of x?” It’s a pretty important question. I’d like to be able to tell my patient with high blood pressure what their risk of heart attack is, both with and without treatment. And risk is a sexy topic—the press loves it. Whether it’s cell phones and the “risk” of brain cancer, or vaccines and the “risk” of autism, risk makes for cool headlines. Take this one for example:

    Migraines cut breast cancer risk 30 percent: study

    What does this mean? Should I tell my wife to go out and find some migraines? What the hell is risk, anyway?

    Risk, in the most basic sense, is a causal association. If, for example, I find that members of the “Thunderstorm-lovers Golf Association” have a higher incidence of being struck by lightning than golfers who don’t belong to this odd club, I may have stumbled upon a measurable risk. There is both a measurable association, and a plausible reason to causally link the associated variables. If I find that members of the National Association of Philatelists have a higher incidence of heart disease than other folks, I may or may not have stumbled on a risk. Is there a reason that philatelists should have more heart disease? Is it a coincidence? Is it worth investigating further? Is there a confounding variable, e.g. are philatelists in general older, and did I fail to control for this?

    Then there is the question of the degree of risk. How strong is the risk observed?

    Statisticians have ways of measuring risk, but many of these terms—such as relative risk, absolute risk reduction, odds ratio—are not intuitive concepts.

    Let’s take the study in question. The premise is interesting. Migraines and breast cancer are both associated with estrogen. Many breast cancers are estrogen-dependent, and the risk of developing breast cancer correlates with exposure to estrogen.

    Migraines appear to be associated with estrogen as well, but negatively. This is a much more tenuous connection. It has been observed that migraines tend to wax during estrogen-poor times, and wane during estrogen-rich times—high estrogen, fewer migraines; low estrogen, more migraines. Or so it’s been observed.

    The authors of this study invoked migraine as a negative risk factor for breast cancer. The English meaning of “risk” is a bit lost here—what they are saying is that women who have migraines are less likely to develop breast cancer than women who don’t have migraines. This shouldn’t be all that surprising, as migraines and breast cancer are both associated with, well, womanhood.

    But all this aside, it’s the “30%” headline annoys me. That a big number! Get me a migraine, stat! But thirty percent is an “odds ratio“, which is a mathematical way of describing an association in a case-control study such as this one. Odds ratios are not intuitive, and as a measure of risk, they tend to break down when looking at common occurrences, such as migraines.

    If we look directly at the data from the study, the data used to calculate the odds ratio, we see something else. In this study, the control group was post-menopausal women without breast cancer. The case group was women with breast cancer. Among women without breast cancer, 19% had ever had a migraine. Among women with breast cancers, 14-15% had ever had a migraine. So, there was about a 4-5% difference in migraine rates between women with and without breast cancer. Does that still sound like a big number?

    Statistics are non-intuitive. I have to work pretty hard to try to dig out the clinical meaning from stats, and I still get it wrong sometimes. The press gets it wrong much more often. Be very wary of banner headlines about risk. Besides the difficulty of understanding the difference between risk reduction and odds ratios, what does it mean in the real world?

    To be perfectly frank, I think the authors have studied a question that no one is asking. We already know that estrogen is positively associated with breast cancer, and we suspect that estrogen reduces migraine frequency (maybe). What is the point of looking at the relationship between two secondary outcomes? In other words, if a and b are both dependent on c, does it even mean anything to say that a and b vary inversely? I don’t think so. Do you?

    References

    R. W. Mathes, K. E. Malone, J. R. Daling, S. Davis, S. M. Lucas, P. L. Porter, C. I. Li (2008). Migraine in Postmenopausal Women and the Risk of Invasive Breast Cancer Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, 17 (11), 3116-3122 DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-08-0527

  • Choosing a medical specialty

    It’s that time of year, 4th year medical students (like me – kind of) are choosing their future careers and starting to interview all over the country in their residency programs of choice. I’ve been notably quiet – subsumed in work, study and applications – but I am catching up on writing about the clerkships I’ve done in the meantime (Pediatrics, Psych, OB/Gyn and Family Medicine). But since I’m applying for residency now (MD/PhDs have an abbreviated 4th year) I figured now would be a good time to tell people about what this is like, and in the coming months what cities I’m going to be in from time to time.

    Choosing a medical specialty is a big decision. I’ve necessarily made up my mind, am very confident I’ve made the right choice and encourage you to take bets on my choice – it will be fun to see what people think. But the decision making process is famously difficult and many different strategies have been devised to help the indecisive (not me). Perhaps most famous is this chart first published in the BMJ by then-resident Boris Veysman:
    i-edbcd560d6996b5e5b969f2deb9aeb99-Medicalspecialty.gif

    If you’re very patient you can answer 130 redundant questions at this site offered by UVA to help you make up your mind, or read one of the books on the subject.

    Then there is the famous Goo index, which I think may be quite useful. Basically, chose your specialty based on which types of bodily fluid you can stand being in contact with every day for the rest of your life. If you have a low tolerance for any goo, psychiatry or neurology might be up your alley. If you can take any fluid being sprayed at you at high velocity, surgery may be an excellent specialty for you.

    Then there is the general opinion among the goo-heavy specialties that you should avoid the goo you dislike the most. For instance, if snot is bothersome, avoid pulmonary specialties and pediatrics. If it’s urine, maybe you shouldn’t go into urology (or if you don’t want to stare at genitalia all day). If you don’t mind blood but don’t like any of the stinky stuff, maybe neurosurgery is the right match. It’s all about balancing your goo exposure.

    If you don’t want to get divorced during residency, maybe read this paper. The surprising result? Psychiatry is the worst at a 50% cumulative divorce rate followed by surgery at 33%, and most other medical specialties between 22-30%. I guess psychiatrists drive their spouses nuts when they bring their work home.

    There is the Myers-Briggs guide to specialties which is only useful if you’re the type of person that likes astrology or other advice based on vague, general descriptions of people coached in psuedoscientific drivel. There is a lot of study of personality traits specific to different specialties, a review of the subject concludes that for the most part medical students tend to be too homogeneous for the blunt-instrument personality tests to distinguish something so specific as an ideal career choice and there is more variation of personalities within a given field than between fields.

    So, using these highly-scientific and time-tested methodologies, which kind of medicine would you like to practice? Which do you think I chose?

  • "Kennedy" is a name, not a qualification

    I can’t cover this topic better than Orac; he’s the expert. I would like to suggest that you go read his post.

    This is important. I voted for Obama. I believe that he is one of the brightest people we’ve every had the chance to vote for, and I think that after 8 years of open hostility to science, we have a chance to remove some of the politics from the issues that affect all of us.

    But Obama has floated a lead balloon for the head of EPA. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is an anti-science wacko. He has drunk the Kool Aid (I know, Flav-R-Ade, stop correcting me!) of the anti-vaccine movement, and crankery is never isolated—it always carries over from one area to the next, as it indicates a flawed way of thinking. Read Orac’s post for specifics.

    Building an administration is probably hard. Please, Mr. Obama, don’t get off on the wrong foot with science. Please?

  • Double Plus Good: No George Bush Waste Station in SF

    A group in San Francisco managed to get a measure on the city ballot that would rename our Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the “George W. Bush Sewage Plant.”

    I thought this a supremely bad idea. Such a move (like protesting the Marine Core in Berkeley) would invite a conservative reaction, possibly stripping the city of federal funds.

    And as a local public utilities supervisor pointed out, our waste station is progressive, like much of the city: “The potential irony here is that this is a modern facility that protects the ocean and the environment every day,” [Tony] Winnicker said, “and I’m not sure that’s the right legacy for President Bush.”

    Well, Measure R failed by 69-30 percent! There is some good sense in San Francisco, sometimes. We also rejected a measure that would have legalized prostitution. More on that later.