I started this blog to occasionally critique technical reporting in newspapers, which really is abysmal and almost always pushing an agenda. I thought, as I have some credentials and experience in things science-related, I could do my part to improve the general public's understanding of the usually complex technical issues that are being reported by total morons. However, in doing so, I have discovered that I have turned a blind eye to some critically important, no, Mortally Important issues that are not being addressed at all by the mainstream media and even the so-called blogosphere, which prides itself on being on top of everything, continues to ignore.
I am, of course, referring to the crisis of near galactic importance that has been brewing at Starbucks ("brewing" "Starbucks"...get it?). The coffee juggernaut has apparently changed its frappacinno recipe (OH! SWEET MOTHER OF GOD! NO! NO! NO!). I am indebted to Sheri Gilmour for bringing this to my attention, because although I am a regular Starbucks customer, I usually just go in, wade through the sea of small children, cranked up on sugar and caffeine, who are wilding in the store, stand in line behind a bunch of douches who are demanding a soy mocha-frappa-skinny-latte with whipped cream and an extra pump of some syrupy bullshit, and order - call me "old school" - coffee. Consequently, I was blissfully unaware to the mind-boggling crisis that is shaking the very roots of our way of life! A few minutes on MyStarbucksIdea.com will convince you of the enormity of the disaster in the making. Long time Starbucks customers have actually threatened to NOT BUY THE NEW FRAPPACINNO! Other customers are experiencing symptoms of stress. Still others have complained that their dear sweet children have pitched a booger and refused to drink the new frappacinno...and it goes without saying that grave concerns have been voiced over the impact that this new recipe will have on the environment.
Of course, predictably, there are those drawing parallels between this fiasco and the New Coke disaster of the 1980's and others pointing out that this is only a harbinger of the end of the world in 2012. There are even hints that the new recipe is the work of Dark Corporate Starbucks Overlords who have changed the recipe to advance their Evil Agenda. There does seem to be some disagreement as to what this agenda actually is, but rumors of increased profits, sterilization of the undesirable, and take-over by the Republican Party abound.
I don't know...I'm just a simple rustic living in the distant provinces. I go into a store and buy a whatever, taste it and think, "This tastes like crap."...I just walk down the street and buy something at Peet's that I might like better, but that's just me. But I also realize that my simple world view is sometimes too simple. It would seem that there are many people in this world convinced that Armageddon is here, life as we know it is ending, and unspeakable Evil is afoot. Out of respect for them, I am begging everyone who reads this to take action. Call, email, write your entire congressional delegation. Hearings must be held! Call, email, write your favored media outlets and demand to know why this is not being reported. Organize grass-roots efforts to protest this abomination! But most of all, contact Reynolds Aluminum and tell them to beef up production of aluminum foil...it would seem that a lot of Starbucks customers have lost their hats.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Scary climate change...
As the Eyjafjallajokull volcano reminds us that Nature doesn't just mess with people in the third world, I'd like to direct people's attention to two very informative books dealing with climate change...and this would be real and documented climate change, not the Al Gore/James Hansen junk science silliness that everyone considers "climate change" these days. Presented for your edification: The Long Summer and Flood, Famines, and Emperors, both by Brian Fagan. Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at UC-Santa Barbara who has written extensively on the effect that the vagaries of climate have had on past civilizations. The two books I've cited are both very readable and, I'd say, reasonably accessible to the non-technical reader.
In both books, Fagan references anthropogenic global warming and makes the expected worrisome comments about a future of human-induced climate change. However, his careful cataloging of ten thousand years of climate changes provides a powerful argument for a more measured interpretation of recent climate "changes". Two general observations stand out in reading Fagan's books. First, all significant climate change since the end of the last Ice Age has been driven by changes in ocean and air currents. Second, and more significant, is how frequently the phrase "we don't know why.." appears in Fagan's descriptions. Fagan admits that the mechanisms that drive changes in ocean and air currents are poorly understood and this is a significant revelation in a time when climate "scientists" are making dire and, apparently, precise predictions on the effects of the average global temperature changing by a few tenths of a degree.
What is known about ocean and air currents is that they are driven by convection; warm air (or water) rises and cool air (or water) sinks. Temperature differences between the poles and the equator provide an engine for the movement of air and water on an inconceivably massive scale. Throw in some continents, island chains, ocean basins, and deep ocean trenches and you have a lot of quasi-stable ocean currents set up that defy modelling...and this fact points to the very heart of the intellectual dishonesty of the climate change gloom and doomers. Even if we assume that human activity has caused the average global temperature to rise (and let me stress that this is an "if" that puts us close to the realm of science fiction), we don't know how that is going to change the climate and we know so little about movement of air and water on a global scale that it is impossible to say that a global temperature rise would be a bad thing.
What Fagan does point out is where the very real danger of climate change lies. An astounding 70 percent of the world's population live in regions that would be affected by a significant El Nino event such as those that ended the Mayan civilization in Central America or drove the Anazasi out of the New Mexico deserts. Both of these cultures were dependent upon very intensive farming on a limited amount of available land. When an El Nino event triggered a multi-year drought, both cultures collapsed.
Fagan points out that with the earth's present population of 6 billion people, essentially all agriculture is as intensive as that feeding the Maya and Anazasi cultures and that literally hundreds of millions of people are currently dependent upon the agricultural output of marginal lands that would become untenable in a major El Nino event. As Floods, Famines, and Emperors makes clear, the shifting of trade winds and ocean currents in the central Pacific that characterizes an El Nino is a global event that affects weather around the entire globe in ways that are not clearly understood - again, let me stress the "not clearly understood" aspect here. A significant El Nino could cause agriculture to crash in places as far away as sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and China with the resultant famine and subsequent unrest destabilizing governments and economies around the world.
...and here lies the true crime of the scientists and bureaucrats who have built reputations, careers, and institutional empires on anthropogenic global warming. By squandering billions and billions of research dollars in their attempts to "prove" human-caused climate change, studies of the real and historically documented threats that climate change presents to humanity have been left largely under-funded. Fagan's books would suggest that it is only a matter of time - as in years, not decades or centuries - before we come to regret our ignorance.
In both books, Fagan references anthropogenic global warming and makes the expected worrisome comments about a future of human-induced climate change. However, his careful cataloging of ten thousand years of climate changes provides a powerful argument for a more measured interpretation of recent climate "changes". Two general observations stand out in reading Fagan's books. First, all significant climate change since the end of the last Ice Age has been driven by changes in ocean and air currents. Second, and more significant, is how frequently the phrase "we don't know why.." appears in Fagan's descriptions. Fagan admits that the mechanisms that drive changes in ocean and air currents are poorly understood and this is a significant revelation in a time when climate "scientists" are making dire and, apparently, precise predictions on the effects of the average global temperature changing by a few tenths of a degree.
What is known about ocean and air currents is that they are driven by convection; warm air (or water) rises and cool air (or water) sinks. Temperature differences between the poles and the equator provide an engine for the movement of air and water on an inconceivably massive scale. Throw in some continents, island chains, ocean basins, and deep ocean trenches and you have a lot of quasi-stable ocean currents set up that defy modelling...and this fact points to the very heart of the intellectual dishonesty of the climate change gloom and doomers. Even if we assume that human activity has caused the average global temperature to rise (and let me stress that this is an "if" that puts us close to the realm of science fiction), we don't know how that is going to change the climate and we know so little about movement of air and water on a global scale that it is impossible to say that a global temperature rise would be a bad thing.
What Fagan does point out is where the very real danger of climate change lies. An astounding 70 percent of the world's population live in regions that would be affected by a significant El Nino event such as those that ended the Mayan civilization in Central America or drove the Anazasi out of the New Mexico deserts. Both of these cultures were dependent upon very intensive farming on a limited amount of available land. When an El Nino event triggered a multi-year drought, both cultures collapsed.
Fagan points out that with the earth's present population of 6 billion people, essentially all agriculture is as intensive as that feeding the Maya and Anazasi cultures and that literally hundreds of millions of people are currently dependent upon the agricultural output of marginal lands that would become untenable in a major El Nino event. As Floods, Famines, and Emperors makes clear, the shifting of trade winds and ocean currents in the central Pacific that characterizes an El Nino is a global event that affects weather around the entire globe in ways that are not clearly understood - again, let me stress the "not clearly understood" aspect here. A significant El Nino could cause agriculture to crash in places as far away as sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and China with the resultant famine and subsequent unrest destabilizing governments and economies around the world.
...and here lies the true crime of the scientists and bureaucrats who have built reputations, careers, and institutional empires on anthropogenic global warming. By squandering billions and billions of research dollars in their attempts to "prove" human-caused climate change, studies of the real and historically documented threats that climate change presents to humanity have been left largely under-funded. Fagan's books would suggest that it is only a matter of time - as in years, not decades or centuries - before we come to regret our ignorance.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Who are these "scientists" in the Union of Concerned Scientists and what are they concerned about?
Because of these standards, Americans will drive vehicles that save them money at the pump, cut the country's oil dependence and produce a lot less global warming pollution.
Thus quoth Jim Kleisch, Senior Engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists referring, of course, to the recently mandated automotive fuel efficiency standards. In and of itself, Mr. Kleisch's statement is not particularly notable...walk into any wonk drinking establishment in Washington these days and you'll hear something to this effect two, maybe three, times before you've finished your first beer. However, it was Mr. Kleisch's title that caught my attention, "Senior Engineer" with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Impressive...and I'm left wondering as to what qualifies one to gain a "Senior" title at the UCS.
A Google search (72,100 hit's on "Jim Kleisch") later I find that Mr. Kleisch's official title is "Senior Analyst/Engineer" with the UCS and that he specializes in "clean vehicle technologies." Fair enough. A little more searching reveals that he has held the following positions:
*
Senior Vehicles Analyst
Union of Concerned Scientists
*
Senior Engineer
Union of Concerned Scientists
*
Research Associate
ACEEE (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy)
*
Vehicle Analyst
ACEEE (American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy)
*
Research Associate
American Councils
*
Principal Vehicle Analyst
American Councils
*
Researcher
American Councils
Wait...none of these jobs sounds particularly engineer-like. The UCS rounds out Mr. Kleisch's bio with "He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Ohio University, and a master's degree in environmental and energy policy from the University of Delaware" and helpfully adds that "Mr. Kleisch has been widely cited in the national media, including the Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Rolling Stone, Washington Post and has appeared on CNN, CNBC, and the BBC." No papers in refereed journals or issued patents, but Mr. Kleisch has been quoted by Rolling Stone magazine...sorry, Jimmy, your professional credentials are entirely not impressive.
What I'm not seeing here is anything "automotive" in Mr. Kleisch's background or anything even vaguely related to engineering. Yes, he does have an EE degree, but there's no evidence that he has ever engineered anything, electrical or otherwise. What he has done in his brief career -- looking at the picture in his bio, I'd put Mr. Kleisch in his mid-30's -- is be a policy drone, who probably considers recharging his Starbucks card on-line to be an engineering feat...and yet, the Union of Concerned Scientists drags Mr. Kleisch out for a quote supporting their "Clean Energy" agenda and slaps a "Senior Engineer" title on him to give his musings an aura of technical credibility. This sort of obfuscation is unforgivable. There are very real issues associated with the oil-based economy that is currently driving the industrialized world. Issues of sustainability, of transfer of wealth and political power, of emission of pollutants, but for the UCS to attempt to drive the conversation by inventing a faux expert to issue feel good statements on cue is intellectual dishonesty in its most cynical form.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Earthquake predicting toads?
A story has shown up in newspapers and web news sites over the past days about a report that toads have the ability to "predict" earthquakes. The report even showed up on the prestigious journal, Nature's blog. Commenter "karl" at the end of the Nature blog report captures the gist of my thoughts on this particular scientific amusement.
The source of this report of almost magical powers in toads is a paper published in the Journal of Zoology by a Rachel Grant who noted that the toads around L’Aquila, Italy stopped doing their normal toad stuff and cleared out of the area shortly before an earthquake there. Granted, this is an interesting observation, but one wonders why the reviewers for the Journal of Zoology did not return this paper to Ms. Grant with a three letter review: "WTF??"
One group of toads acting oddly before one earthquake is interesting, but as Ms. Grant herself admits, "purely anecdotal." The J.Zoo. (was we scientists like to abbreviate journal titles) paper does make a weak attempt at a causal explanation:
So how does something like this ever make the light of day? Here's my opinion: Ms. Grant and her team are studying the spawning behavior of common toads in Italy -- and why Italy? Don't common toads exist in Ms. Grant's native England? Call me cynical, but my boondoggle sensor is going off here. In any case... -- in the middle of their study, the toads clear out, which Ms. Grant understandably finds "annoying". The toad studiers go home with nothing to show for their efforts and then, boom! There's and earthquake back in the Italian toad swamp and, all of a sudden, Team Toad has something to write about...not much mind you, but it's better than admitting you couldn't find any toads to study. Paper written, Ms. Grant gets to add another line to her curriculum vitae -- and is one step closer to tenure -- and J.Zoo. gets to pad their next issue so they don't look like a loser journal than nobody reads or publishes in.
Has the body of knowledge we call "Science" been advanced? Maybe a wee tiny bit. This is a credible observation -- we hope -- and there might be a real, physical connection between the toads disappearing and the earthquake. Ignoring the ionospheric silliness, it's possible the toads were sensitive to very low frequency vibrations that were precursor to the fault slipping or were getting away from a release of radon gas -- or something -- prior to the quake. The way Science generally works in these matters is: 1) Make observation, 2) Form hypothesis, 3) Test hypothesis via experiment, 4) Compare experimental result with observation, and 5) Return to Step 2, as necessary. Jumping from the observation stage to publication is just a lazy person's way to pad their resume.
The source of this report of almost magical powers in toads is a paper published in the Journal of Zoology by a Rachel Grant who noted that the toads around L’Aquila, Italy stopped doing their normal toad stuff and cleared out of the area shortly before an earthquake there. Granted, this is an interesting observation, but one wonders why the reviewers for the Journal of Zoology did not return this paper to Ms. Grant with a three letter review: "WTF??"
One group of toads acting oddly before one earthquake is interesting, but as Ms. Grant herself admits, "purely anecdotal." The J.Zoo. (was we scientists like to abbreviate journal titles) paper does make a weak attempt at a causal explanation:
The team suspect the strange toad behaviour was triggered by pre-seismic perturbations in the ionosphere, which were detected by very low frequency radio sounding.As I said, weak...the ionosphere extends from 43 miles above the earth to 250 miles above the earth. Ms. Grant would speculate that stresses in the Earth's crust miles below the surface have some affect on the upper atmosphere that a male toad hopping around in a swamp, bent on finding female toads, is particularly sensitive to...I won't say this is utter nonsense, but I need a little more explanation for how this near magical communication takes place.
So how does something like this ever make the light of day? Here's my opinion: Ms. Grant and her team are studying the spawning behavior of common toads in Italy -- and why Italy? Don't common toads exist in Ms. Grant's native England? Call me cynical, but my boondoggle sensor is going off here. In any case... -- in the middle of their study, the toads clear out, which Ms. Grant understandably finds "annoying". The toad studiers go home with nothing to show for their efforts and then, boom! There's and earthquake back in the Italian toad swamp and, all of a sudden, Team Toad has something to write about...not much mind you, but it's better than admitting you couldn't find any toads to study. Paper written, Ms. Grant gets to add another line to her curriculum vitae -- and is one step closer to tenure -- and J.Zoo. gets to pad their next issue so they don't look like a loser journal than nobody reads or publishes in.
Has the body of knowledge we call "Science" been advanced? Maybe a wee tiny bit. This is a credible observation -- we hope -- and there might be a real, physical connection between the toads disappearing and the earthquake. Ignoring the ionospheric silliness, it's possible the toads were sensitive to very low frequency vibrations that were precursor to the fault slipping or were getting away from a release of radon gas -- or something -- prior to the quake. The way Science generally works in these matters is: 1) Make observation, 2) Form hypothesis, 3) Test hypothesis via experiment, 4) Compare experimental result with observation, and 5) Return to Step 2, as necessary. Jumping from the observation stage to publication is just a lazy person's way to pad their resume.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Fuzzy thinking apparently continues in Barcelona
Maria Cheng continues to report on the Barcelona breast cancer conference today: and the topic du jour is the effectiveness of breast cancer screening. In an article practically devoid of anything substantiating, the experts would seem to be arguing that 1) Too many women are being screened for breast cancer, 2) Too much screening is bad because of "false alarms and unneeded biopsies", 3) It really doesn't help the women being screened all that much, and 4) Patients need to be screened prior to being screened for breast cancer. Interestingly enough, there is no discussion reported as how this screening of the screenees would be done. Also absent is any substantiation of the statement that screening doesn't really help that much. I think I need the words "help" and "much" defined a little better here.
There is a statement in the article:
If your mother, wife, or daughter were one of the five, would you consider breast cancer screening "not much help"? There are roughly 60 million women in the US over the age of 40. If only 20% of them were being screened, this would be 60,000 lives saved. How in the name of God does this get called "not helping very much"?
But the telling statement comes towards the end of the article:
Political? Policies? Obviously, we are several steps away from a doctor advising his female patients, based on their lifestyle, family history, etc. whether they should have a mammogram when they turn 40. This is about money, plain and simple. Health care costs, among other entitlement programs, are driving the European economy into bankruptcy and the medical community meeting in Barcelona is trying to rationalize cutting costs.
In fairness, I am drawing conclusions based on Ms. Cheng's reporting of the Barcelona conference and obviously there is a lot more discussion and information being distributed that I don't have access to. If I am maligning the intent of the conferees, I apologize but will still hold Ms. Cheng to task for bad reporting.
In the interest of full disclosure, my mother died of ovarian cancer and my mother-in-law died of breast cancer. Do I want my wife and daughters to be screened? Absolutely. Would I pay for it myself? Without question. If medicine ever came to a point where they would be denied screening based on a bureaucrat's view as to what was an "acceptable" cost, what can I say? Aux barricades, chers concitoyens
There is a statement in the article:
U.S. researchers last year estimated five lives saved per thousand women screened.
If your mother, wife, or daughter were one of the five, would you consider breast cancer screening "not much help"? There are roughly 60 million women in the US over the age of 40. If only 20% of them were being screened, this would be 60,000 lives saved. How in the name of God does this get called "not helping very much"?
But the telling statement comes towards the end of the article:
Jorgensen (Karsten Jorgensen of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen) said screening has become more of a political issue than a medical one. Officials have spent so many years convincing women to get mammograms that it will be difficult to now change policies, especially with a very vocal and powerful breast cancer lobby.
Political? Policies? Obviously, we are several steps away from a doctor advising his female patients, based on their lifestyle, family history, etc. whether they should have a mammogram when they turn 40. This is about money, plain and simple. Health care costs, among other entitlement programs, are driving the European economy into bankruptcy and the medical community meeting in Barcelona is trying to rationalize cutting costs.
In fairness, I am drawing conclusions based on Ms. Cheng's reporting of the Barcelona conference and obviously there is a lot more discussion and information being distributed that I don't have access to. If I am maligning the intent of the conferees, I apologize but will still hold Ms. Cheng to task for bad reporting.
In the interest of full disclosure, my mother died of ovarian cancer and my mother-in-law died of breast cancer. Do I want my wife and daughters to be screened? Absolutely. Would I pay for it myself? Without question. If medicine ever came to a point where they would be denied screening based on a bureaucrat's view as to what was an "acceptable" cost, what can I say? Aux barricades, chers concitoyens
Friday, March 26, 2010
Breast cancer, diet, and exercise...I smell a rat
"Up to a third of breast cancer cases in Western countries could be avoided if women ate less and exercised more..." -- Associated Press
When stories like this show up on the front page of the paper, they always get my attention. I'm naturally a skeptic and am always suspicious when technical subjects get sensationalized. Normally, when I read something like this, I suspect statistical douchery. For example, suppose you search a database and find that the breast cancer mortality rate for women who don't exercise is 27 deaths per 100,000 and the mortality rate for women who exercise is 18 deaths per 100,000. In the world of cancer research where the competition for funding is fierce, you may rush a paper into publication that states that exercising can reduce breast cancer deaths by a third. However, suppose you do a little additional searching of the data base and sort the exercising and non-exercising groups by household income where you find that the death rate for breast cancer in both groups is much higher for low income households than high income households. You also find that, since high income households have more disposable income and more leisure time than lower incomes, a much greater percentage of exercisers belong to high income households. Consequently, your original exercise correlation was merely telling you that poor women have a higher breast cancer death rate than women who can afford more frequent doctor visits, regular screening, etc.
Purely statistical correlations such as the one I've hypothetically described above are entirely useless when it comes to reducing breast cancer rates. However, when they are used to identify mechanisms by which cancer cell growth is triggered, they can be a valuable tool. To continue the above example, suppose you used the exercising correlation to look into the hormone levels of exercisers and non-exercisers and found that the exercisers had lower levels of certain hormones that have been associated with cancer occurrences. This is useful information.
So...with this in mind, I went on the Internet to track down the source of the "one-third reduction" number. The report ended up being based on a talk given by Carlo La Vecchia at a conference in Barcelona. The source of La Vecchia's figures was cited to be a study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. If you go to the IARC website, you'll find that the figures come from a report (Volume 6) that was written in 2002 and is now out-of-print. Hmmm...data from an 8 year old report suddenly makes front page news. What the hell? First, understand that in any technical field, 8 years ago was ancient history. I am supposed to believe that a supposedly critical connection between diet and exercise and breast cancer was announced 8 years ago and that there have been no follow-up studies that have made more recent or updated data available? I think not. So what is going on here? Here are my best guesses:
1. Carlo La Vecchia wanted a boondoggle to the Barcelona conference, so he submitted an abstract for essentially a throw away talk using old data. Consequently, he gets the University of Milan to pay for his trip. Meanwhile, Maria Cheng, the AP reporter, is at the conference looking for something, anything, she can write a story on. La Vecchia mentions his 25 to 30 percent reduction in breast cancer number, Cheng grabs that, rounds it up to "one-third", makes a few calls to some breast cancer workers she knows who give her some broad general comments, and she's got an easy byline.
2. The story has an interesting quote by La Vecchia, "What can be achieved with screening has been achieved. We can't do much more. It's time to move on to other things." By "other things", the professor is obviously talking about preventing breast cancer through diet and exercise, which will, of course, require tens of millions of dollars in new funding to study...and as he has just established himself as the lead expert in this subject -- if only by dredging up some work probably done 10 years ago -- La Vecchia looks to be leader in the clubhouse as the recipient of a good chunk of that money.
3. A potentially darker interpretation of the timing of this story, since it is coming out of the Associated Press, who can't issue any story without injecting their political agenda into it, is that it is intimately connected to the recent health care debate. Anyone with a brain recognizes that the health care bill that just passed is going to result in higher taxes and reduced services -- if you don't believe this, please email and tell me about the rest of your life on Planet Pollyanna...I'll bet it's nice there. Taxes will go up, but tax increases are never very palatable to the American public, even during prosperous times. Any congress person that votes for a significant tax increase these days might as well go home and campaign for their successor. Reducing services is much easier to slip by the public, since they won't know they're missing them until they need them. Herein lies a possible subtext in the AP's story...if you're a fat woman, who drinks, doesn't exercise, and is diagnosed with breast cancer, then "I'm sorry, ma'am...you've brought this on yourself. We need to save our very expensive treatment for people who are more deserving. Why don't you go take a walk and quit eating Big Mac's?" The AP article mentions drinking (bad), exercise (good), and obesity (doubly bad)...I'm surprised they didn't go for the trifecta and throw in smoking.
When stories like this show up on the front page of the paper, they always get my attention. I'm naturally a skeptic and am always suspicious when technical subjects get sensationalized. Normally, when I read something like this, I suspect statistical douchery. For example, suppose you search a database and find that the breast cancer mortality rate for women who don't exercise is 27 deaths per 100,000 and the mortality rate for women who exercise is 18 deaths per 100,000. In the world of cancer research where the competition for funding is fierce, you may rush a paper into publication that states that exercising can reduce breast cancer deaths by a third. However, suppose you do a little additional searching of the data base and sort the exercising and non-exercising groups by household income where you find that the death rate for breast cancer in both groups is much higher for low income households than high income households. You also find that, since high income households have more disposable income and more leisure time than lower incomes, a much greater percentage of exercisers belong to high income households. Consequently, your original exercise correlation was merely telling you that poor women have a higher breast cancer death rate than women who can afford more frequent doctor visits, regular screening, etc.
Purely statistical correlations such as the one I've hypothetically described above are entirely useless when it comes to reducing breast cancer rates. However, when they are used to identify mechanisms by which cancer cell growth is triggered, they can be a valuable tool. To continue the above example, suppose you used the exercising correlation to look into the hormone levels of exercisers and non-exercisers and found that the exercisers had lower levels of certain hormones that have been associated with cancer occurrences. This is useful information.
So...with this in mind, I went on the Internet to track down the source of the "one-third reduction" number. The report ended up being based on a talk given by Carlo La Vecchia at a conference in Barcelona. The source of La Vecchia's figures was cited to be a study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. If you go to the IARC website, you'll find that the figures come from a report (Volume 6) that was written in 2002 and is now out-of-print. Hmmm...data from an 8 year old report suddenly makes front page news. What the hell? First, understand that in any technical field, 8 years ago was ancient history. I am supposed to believe that a supposedly critical connection between diet and exercise and breast cancer was announced 8 years ago and that there have been no follow-up studies that have made more recent or updated data available? I think not. So what is going on here? Here are my best guesses:
1. Carlo La Vecchia wanted a boondoggle to the Barcelona conference, so he submitted an abstract for essentially a throw away talk using old data. Consequently, he gets the University of Milan to pay for his trip. Meanwhile, Maria Cheng, the AP reporter, is at the conference looking for something, anything, she can write a story on. La Vecchia mentions his 25 to 30 percent reduction in breast cancer number, Cheng grabs that, rounds it up to "one-third", makes a few calls to some breast cancer workers she knows who give her some broad general comments, and she's got an easy byline.
2. The story has an interesting quote by La Vecchia, "What can be achieved with screening has been achieved. We can't do much more. It's time to move on to other things." By "other things", the professor is obviously talking about preventing breast cancer through diet and exercise, which will, of course, require tens of millions of dollars in new funding to study...and as he has just established himself as the lead expert in this subject -- if only by dredging up some work probably done 10 years ago -- La Vecchia looks to be leader in the clubhouse as the recipient of a good chunk of that money.
3. A potentially darker interpretation of the timing of this story, since it is coming out of the Associated Press, who can't issue any story without injecting their political agenda into it, is that it is intimately connected to the recent health care debate. Anyone with a brain recognizes that the health care bill that just passed is going to result in higher taxes and reduced services -- if you don't believe this, please email and tell me about the rest of your life on Planet Pollyanna...I'll bet it's nice there. Taxes will go up, but tax increases are never very palatable to the American public, even during prosperous times. Any congress person that votes for a significant tax increase these days might as well go home and campaign for their successor. Reducing services is much easier to slip by the public, since they won't know they're missing them until they need them. Herein lies a possible subtext in the AP's story...if you're a fat woman, who drinks, doesn't exercise, and is diagnosed with breast cancer, then "I'm sorry, ma'am...you've brought this on yourself. We need to save our very expensive treatment for people who are more deserving. Why don't you go take a walk and quit eating Big Mac's?" The AP article mentions drinking (bad), exercise (good), and obesity (doubly bad)...I'm surprised they didn't go for the trifecta and throw in smoking.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
China...thoughts from one who's been there and returned.
A common topic among many conservative commentators is the looming threat of China as an implacable enemy intent on the destruction of the United States and our way of life. However, to the likes of Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh, I have to say, "World communism as you knew it is dead. The harsh realities of the global marketplace drove a stake through the heart of that vampire in the late 80's." Is China an implacable enemy? Hardly. Are they our friend? Don't kid yourself...
To understand China today, you need to understand what really happened at Tienanmen Square. The impression that was left with the American public was that the powerful Communist government called in the full force of its military to brutally suppress a peaceful protest by Chinese students. A Chinese acquaintance who was a student at the time had a somewhat different story: The protest that was centered at Tienanmen Square was far more widespread than a collection of students and the military was called out only when the the government was faced with imminent collapse in what was quickly becoming nothing less than open rebellion in the populace. If we accept that this was the case, can Americans who moralize about the brutal government response at Tienanmen claim that our own government would respond any differently? I think not...
In any case, Tienanmen Square did serve as a wake up call for the Beijing government that economic reform was long overdue and, to their credit, radical and, literally, world-changing reform was made to happen in short order. The odd hybrid of socialism and capitalism, "planned capitalism" if you will, that exists today in China is the result of that reform. Nothing drove home to me the rapid and decisive nature of this change more than when I visited Beijing in late 1999 (ten years after Tienanmen Square) and found a McDonald's open for business across the street from Mao's Tomb. Ten years earlier, anyone standing at that spot would have been watching tanks running over students in the nearby square.
China has grown its economy over the past twenty years through the massive export of manufactured goods. It has, and still does, encourage foreign manufacturers to build plants in China as well as growing its own native manufacturing. This economic growth has provided for order of magnitude increases in the standard of living of the Chinese people, which of course, was the whole point of the post-Tienanmen economic reforms. However, this growth has not come without problems. There's an old joke that says, "Cocaine will make you a new man...and the first thing the new man wants is more cocaine." Prosperity is like that...once people get a little, they want more. Consequently, the Chinese government is faced with the dilemma of maintaining economic growth to feed the increasing demand for more "stuff" from the increasingly prosperous Chinese people.
Economic growth in China means continued export of manufactured goods on a massive scale, which in turn requires a healthy appetite for those goods in the world's dominant economy, i.e., the United States. A weak American economy threatens the economic health of China. China has lent hundreds of billions of dollars to the United States, not as part of a diabolical plot to destroy the U.S. economy, but as an almost desperate attempt to prop up the primary customer of Chinese manufactured goods. The lessons of Tienanmen Square are constantly on the minds of Chinese leaders. They stay in power only as long as the Chinese people are prosperous and economic growth continues.
China should be viewed as a fierce and determined economic competitor. The Cold War is over...capitalism won, but that is small consolation for the United States. Just as the most fervent Christian is the recent convert, China has not so much embraced capitalism as it has roped it, saddled up, and is riding it like a stolen horse. However, the economic growth that has stabilized Chinese society is not sustainable. Even now, wages in China are rising rapidly and I have spoken with Chinese factory owners who are seriously contemplating moving operations to Vietnam, among other places, to, ironically enough, take advantage of cheaper labor. The Chinese government has also started to recognize that their "growth at any cost" strategy has brought many areas of the country to the verge of environmental collapse - I've spent a lot of time in the industrial zone south of Shanghai and have yet to see anything resembling a blue sky and even tap water in downtown Shanghai is too polluted to drink. Correcting what can only be called "environmental atrocities" while necessary, will have a distinctly negative impact on China's global competitiveness. I don't know how the Chinese government will end up addressing the issue of economic sustainability, but I do know that whatever actions they take will dominate the world of Realpolitk for at least the next 20 years.
To understand China today, you need to understand what really happened at Tienanmen Square. The impression that was left with the American public was that the powerful Communist government called in the full force of its military to brutally suppress a peaceful protest by Chinese students. A Chinese acquaintance who was a student at the time had a somewhat different story: The protest that was centered at Tienanmen Square was far more widespread than a collection of students and the military was called out only when the the government was faced with imminent collapse in what was quickly becoming nothing less than open rebellion in the populace. If we accept that this was the case, can Americans who moralize about the brutal government response at Tienanmen claim that our own government would respond any differently? I think not...
In any case, Tienanmen Square did serve as a wake up call for the Beijing government that economic reform was long overdue and, to their credit, radical and, literally, world-changing reform was made to happen in short order. The odd hybrid of socialism and capitalism, "planned capitalism" if you will, that exists today in China is the result of that reform. Nothing drove home to me the rapid and decisive nature of this change more than when I visited Beijing in late 1999 (ten years after Tienanmen Square) and found a McDonald's open for business across the street from Mao's Tomb. Ten years earlier, anyone standing at that spot would have been watching tanks running over students in the nearby square.
China has grown its economy over the past twenty years through the massive export of manufactured goods. It has, and still does, encourage foreign manufacturers to build plants in China as well as growing its own native manufacturing. This economic growth has provided for order of magnitude increases in the standard of living of the Chinese people, which of course, was the whole point of the post-Tienanmen economic reforms. However, this growth has not come without problems. There's an old joke that says, "Cocaine will make you a new man...and the first thing the new man wants is more cocaine." Prosperity is like that...once people get a little, they want more. Consequently, the Chinese government is faced with the dilemma of maintaining economic growth to feed the increasing demand for more "stuff" from the increasingly prosperous Chinese people.
Economic growth in China means continued export of manufactured goods on a massive scale, which in turn requires a healthy appetite for those goods in the world's dominant economy, i.e., the United States. A weak American economy threatens the economic health of China. China has lent hundreds of billions of dollars to the United States, not as part of a diabolical plot to destroy the U.S. economy, but as an almost desperate attempt to prop up the primary customer of Chinese manufactured goods. The lessons of Tienanmen Square are constantly on the minds of Chinese leaders. They stay in power only as long as the Chinese people are prosperous and economic growth continues.
China should be viewed as a fierce and determined economic competitor. The Cold War is over...capitalism won, but that is small consolation for the United States. Just as the most fervent Christian is the recent convert, China has not so much embraced capitalism as it has roped it, saddled up, and is riding it like a stolen horse. However, the economic growth that has stabilized Chinese society is not sustainable. Even now, wages in China are rising rapidly and I have spoken with Chinese factory owners who are seriously contemplating moving operations to Vietnam, among other places, to, ironically enough, take advantage of cheaper labor. The Chinese government has also started to recognize that their "growth at any cost" strategy has brought many areas of the country to the verge of environmental collapse - I've spent a lot of time in the industrial zone south of Shanghai and have yet to see anything resembling a blue sky and even tap water in downtown Shanghai is too polluted to drink. Correcting what can only be called "environmental atrocities" while necessary, will have a distinctly negative impact on China's global competitiveness. I don't know how the Chinese government will end up addressing the issue of economic sustainability, but I do know that whatever actions they take will dominate the world of Realpolitk for at least the next 20 years.
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