Archive for category Politics
Vaccines, Autism, and Low-Information Voters
Posted by TonyLima in Current issues, Politics on March 4, 2013
Flu Vaccine
[Update March 12, 2013: Sarah A. Hoyt has written an autobiographical tale about the damage public schools are doing to children. Highly recommended.]
“Low-information voter” is the term applied to voters who really don’t bother investigating issues in any depth before they vote. I have argued elsewhere that lack of information is only half the problem. The other half is their apparent inability to process information in any meaningful way. They cannot discern the logic that if A causes B and B causes C then A must cause C.
In this article I’ll offer an example of one of these voters. I’ve transcribed about 15 minutes of a Science Friday episode made over two years ago. The complete transcription is at the end of this article, along with a complete citation and a few observations that are not transcribed directly. I have done my best to accurately transcribe the audio, but there may be errors remaining. If you spot any mistakes, please let me know so I can correct them. (As far as I can tell the audio of this segment is not available for downloading and no transcript seems to exist at ScienceFriday.com.) The subject under discussion was vaccines and autism. This article relates vaccines, autism, and low-information voters.
My Summary
One of the guests on Science Friday January 7, 2011 was Dr. Paul Offit, the author of Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All.
Leslie opens with a statement that includes this: “… I think he’s cherry-picking when he cites this one study that has been widely discredited when there are literally dozens of studies whose methodologies have been impeccable and have not been discredited.” She is referring to the discredited work by Andrew Wakefield that seemed to show such a relationship. (A summary of Wakefield’s “research” is in the following section.)
Dr. Offit replied by detailing the problems with Wakefield’s work. He then pointed to fourteen separate studies on three different continents, each including hundreds of thousands of children, that unanimously reported that vaccines don’t cause autism.
Ira Flatow then asked Leslie whether there was any amount of research that would change her mind. She replied yes, with disparaging references to “… the yahoos who just don’t look at scientific processes at all and people who blindly trust what clinicians tell them …” adding that there was “something between” the two groups. She then states that “… the vast number of immunizations that you’re requiring at such a young age really is taking a toll on the immune system. I think that’s just logic.”
Dr. Offit patiently replies that the number of immunological components in all 14 vaccines combined was 160. By contrast, each of the 100 trillion bacteria that our bodies host contain somewhere between 2,000 and 6,000 immunological factors. If the human immune system was really that fragile, the human race would have died out millennia ago. (There is additional talk about the mercury in preservatives, but today’s childhood vaccines no longer contain thimerosal, the preservative that includes ethyl mercury.)
Leslie replies, “I can’t accept what you’re saying. It just sounds like pap to me, it sounds like panacea. A two year old cannot accept this kind of chemical onslaught.” But, of course, two-year-olds have the same 100 trillion bacteria on their skin that all of us have. After a few more interruptions, the following exchange ensues:
Ira Flatow: “… Leslie, it doesn’t look like anything he’s going to tell you is going to change your mind.”
Leslie: “Well, I’m not hearing anything that sounds credible to me as an educated adult.”
Got that? Leslie was presented with a mountain of scientific evidence. She simply refused to believe it. It’s not a lack of information. It’s an inability to process information when it’s presented.
A Longer Summary
The guest on Science Friday was Dr. Paul Offit, the author of Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All.
Leslie opens with a statement that includes this: “… I think he’s cherry-picking when he cites this one study that has been widely discredited when there are literally dozens of studies whose methodologies have been impeccable and have not been discredited.” She is referring to the discredited work by Andrew Wakefield that seemed to show such a relationship. Wikipedia describes Mr. Wakefield’s “study” thus:
On 28 January 2010, a five-member statutory tribunal of the GMC found three dozen charges proved, including four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children. The panel ruled that Wakefield had “failed in his duties as a responsible consultant”, acted both against the interests of his patients, and “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in his published research. The Lancet immediately and fully retracted his 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC’s findings, noting that elements of the manuscript had been falsified. Wakefield was struck off the Medical Register in May 2010, with a statement identifying dishonest falsification in The Lancet research, and is barred from practising medicine in the UK.
In January 2011, an editorial accompanying an article by Brian Deer in BMJ identified Wakefield’s work as an “elaborate fraud”. In a follow-up article, Deer said that Wakefield had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and “litigation driven testing”. In November 2011, yet another report in BMJ revealed original raw data indicating that, contrary to Wakefield’s claims in The Lancet, children in his research did not have inflammatory bowel disease.
Wakefield’s study and public recommendations against the use of the combined MMR vaccine were linked to a steep decline in vaccination rates in the United Kingdom and a corresponding rise in measles cases, resulting in serious illness and fatalities. Wakefield has continued to defend his research and conclusions, saying there was no fraud, hoax or profit motive.
Leslie is willing to admit that the Wakefield paper is invalid. But she refers to the “dozens of studies whose methodologies have been impeccable and have not been discredited.” Of course she never gives a citation for any of them.
Dr. Offit replies with an explanation of the many fraudulent aspects of Wakefield’s paper. He then goes on to say that, “… if you want to answer the question, the way you answer that question is that you look at hundreds of thousands of children who did or didn’t get MMR vaccines to see whether the incidence of autism is greater in the vaccinated group. That’s been done by fourteen different groups of investigators on three different continents and the answers have been very clear and consistent and reproducible. So we can say with comfort that MMR vaccine does not cause autism.”
Ira Flatow then asks Leslie whether there is any amount of research that would change her mind. Leslie replies, “”Oh, absolutely. This is what I’m saying is that he’s presenting a false dichotomy. There is something between the yahoos who just don’t look at scientific processes at all and people who blindly trust what clinicians tell them, of which there are a number, many, many people. You know, getting 26 vaccines, in some cases before the age of two, is a devastating thing for a person’s immune system. I’m 49 and …”
Mr. Flatow attempts to interrupt the incessant flow of words without a great deal of success. When he finally gets her attention he asks her for evidence that the 26 treatments (actually 14 vaccines, some have multiple doses) have detrimental effects. She mentions the preservatives that use mercury (which has been removed from all childhood vaccines in the U.S.), then says “…the vast number of immunizations that you’re requiring at such a young age really is taking a toll on the immune system. I think that’s just logic.”
Dr. Offit replies that the critical issue is the number of immunological components in the 14 vaccines. Today there are 160 such components. And we know a lot about the human immune system. Each of us has about 100 trillion bacteria on our body. And each bacterium has between 2,000 and 6,000 immunological components. If our immune systems were really that fragile, human life would have been wiped out millennia ago.
Leslie replies, “I can’t accept what you’re saying. It just sounds like pap to me, it sounds like panacea. A two year old cannot accept this kind of chemical onslaught.” In other words, actual scientific data and facts — information — are irrelevant. Ira Flatow tells Leslie that it doesn’t look like anything Dr. Offit says will change her mind. She replies, “Well, I’m not hearing anything that sounds credible to me as an educated adult.”
Educated, perhaps, but completely unable or unwilling to appreciate science, the scientific method, or logic (despite her statement to the contrary).
Conclusion
It’s not just an information problem. It’s an information processing problem. Until we can figure out a way to get these folks to think, the country will remain in a lot of trouble.
Health Care Shift to Electronic Medical Records Led to Rent-Seeking
Posted by TonyLima in Economic policy, Politics, The Intersection of Economics and Technology on February 23, 2013
“We called it the Sunny von Bülow bill. These companies that should have been dead were being put on machines and kept alive for another few years,” said Jonathan Bush, co-founder of the cloud-based firm Athenahealth and a first cousin to former President George W. Bush. “The biggest players drew this incredible huddle around the rule-makers and the rules are ridiculously favorable to these companies and ridiculously unfavorable to society.”
Part of the American Recovery and Redevelopment Act (ARRA) was incentives for the health care industry to switch to electronic medical records. A recent New York Times article (Feb. 19, 2013) looked at what went into this $19 billion pie. They concluded that the health care shift to electronics medical records led to rent-seeking behavior by the “big three” suppliers of electronic medical records. The three companies were Cerner Corp., Allscripts and Epic Systems of Verona, Wis. The three lobbied heavily to have the $19 billion included in the bill. And, of course, the requirements for suppliers were oriented toward systems produced by these three. No problem? Oh, wait, these companies are old and produce what should be legacy systems. I’ve written before about Jonathan Bush of Athenahealthcare. Here’s what he has to say about this clause in ARRA →
But if the customers are happy, who cares? Well, it turns out the customers are not all that happy. Again, from the Times article:
The records systems sold by the biggest vendors have their fans, who argue that, among other things, the systems ease prescribing medications electronically. But these systems also have many critics, who contend that they can be difficult to use, cannot share patient information with other systems and are sometimes adding hours to the time physicians spend documenting patient care.
“On a really good day, you might be able to call the system mediocre, but most of the time, it’s lousy,” said Michael Callaham, the chairman of the department of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, which eight months ago turned on its $160 million digital records system from Epic. Michael Blum, the hospital’s chief medical information officer, said a majority of doctors there like the Epic system.
And, naturally, all that rent-seeking paid off:
Four years later, in December 2008, H. Stephen Lieber, chief executive of the group, wrote an open letter to President-elect Obama calling for a minimum government investment of $25 billion to help hospitals and physicians adopt electronic records. The industry ultimately got at least $19 billion in federal and state money.
In the months after that windfall arrived, sales climbed for leading vendors as hospitals and physicians scrambled to buy systems to meet tight timetables to collect the incentive dollars. At Allscripts, Mr. Tullman soon announced what looked like a game-changing deal: the acquisition of another records company, Eclipsys, for $1.3 billion.
“We are at the beginning of what we believe will be the fastest transformation of any industry in U.S. history,” Mr. Tullman said when the deal was announced.
Last spring, some of the Eclipsys board members left after a power struggle; Mr. Tullman left in December. He is now at a company he co-founded that focuses on solar energy — another area that, after Obama administration and Congress expanded government incentives in the 2009 stimulus bill, has been swept by a gold-rush mentality, too.
But Has It Paid Off For the Stockholders?
As a good economist, I believe that corporations should act in the best interests of their owners, the stockholders. And it appears that Cerner has done pretty well. Let’s look at stock prices and financial summaries. It happens, however, that Epic is privately owned. No financials from them. If you’re looking for information about them, their name is just Epic, not Epic Systems as they are called in the Times article. (Those who want the financial statements as Excel workbooks should click here to download a zip file containing three workbooks. Also, data and charts shown in this section are from Yahoo Finance.)
Jon Corzine Will Get Away With It With a Little Help From His Friends
Ms. O’Brien declined to cooperate with the investigation without receiving immunity from criminal prosecution. But the government is hesitating to grant her request, according to the people close to the case, fearing that doing so would set a bad example for future investigations.
A long story in today’s New York Times is headlined “MF Global’s Bankruptcy Nears a Happy Conclusion“ has some good news for former customers who have been waiting 15 months to find out whether they would ever see their money again. It now looks like they will get 100 percent of their funds back. Probably without interest, however. Since many of those accounts were in six figures, even at a low interest rate that’s a bit of a hit. For example, at a 2 percent interest rate, the loss on $100,000 would be about $2,500. Not exactly chicken feed (sorry).
Ms. O’Brien declined to cooperate with the investigation without receiving immunity from criminal prosecution. But the government is hesitating to grant her request, according to the people close to the case, fearing that doing so would set a bad example for future investigations.
My prediction: Jon Corzine will walk. And that’s yet another mark of shame for what’s left of the U.S. justice system.
The Unholy Trinity Driving Elections
Posted by TonyLima in Economic policy, Politics on October 31, 2012
The unholy trinity driving elections today is the teachers’ unions, Democratic politicians, and the media. Along the way, students are involved, although they are more victims than anything else. I know. I’ve taught economics at a public university (California State University, East Bay, Hayward, CA) for 3+ decades. I’ve seen the woeful declines in math capabilities and reading comprehension. The purpose of this essay is to show how the interactions among these four groups has gotten our voting system to the point it’s reached this year. (Naturally, as in all my blogs, I’m speaking only for myself and not for any organization I mention including, but not limited to, CSUEB, the CSU system, and the CFA.)
Begin with a basic fact: the Democratic party owes teachers’ unions a lot. Those unions contribute tens of millions of dollars to Democratic campaigns every year, even more in presidential election years. In turn, cities and states controlled by Democrats make sure the union is secure. Activities that support that goal include:
- resistance to charter schools and voucher programs;
- elaborate teacher credentialing programs that have everything to do with process and almost nothing to do with content;
- implicit or explicit support of drastic tenure decisions that prevent bad teachers — in some cases, convicted criminals — from being removed from classrooms.
I should know. I am a union member (California Faculty Association).* About half my union dues go toward political contributions. Our household has been inundated with mailers, phone calls, and e-mails from various teachers’ unions instructing us to vote for higher taxes, vote against measures that would restrict union political activity, and generally vote in ways that support the Democratic agenda: higher taxes, more spending, and no accountability.
The “news” media are complicit in all this. Did you know that most newspaper, radio, and television workers belong to a union? Listen carefully and you’ll hear the occasional disclaimer to that effect. Given their union membership, isn’t it a conflict of interest for them to cover union activities? Would you really expect them to be impartial?
Even if you held those unrealistic expectations, there’s another factor working here: the students. Freshmen who have graduated from a California high school in the top third of their class are supposed to be automatically admitted to the California State University system. Today’s freshmen are radically different from those I saw when I first began teaching at what was then California State University, Hayward. Reading comprehension has dropped unbelievably. Math skills are, in many cases, nonexistent. (Students are supposed to have successfully completed algebra before they enter the CSU. That requirement is one of the biggest jokes around these days.) And many students simply do not know how to study. The CSU schools do their best — on my campus, there are at least two centers that offer math tutoring, help with homework, and a vast array of assistance to students who have difficulty. But when students simply don’t attend class (also quite common), there’s not much anyone can do to help them.
These students are victims of the public education system. They know how to recycle. They are absolutely sure that global warming is caused by human activity. And they are certain that their K-12 teachers were grossly underpaid. But they cannot follow simple logic of the form “if A is the same as B and A implies C then B also implies C.” They don’t know how to do research. Many believe that Wikipedia and Google are all they need. They have not been taught how to think critically about issues and arguments — which is why they buy into Google and Wikipedia and also why they are so easily misled by dubious claims of facts and logic. You can see them today in this election. Every criticism of President Obama is met with “it’s Bush’s fault” or “Mitt Romney lies.” They have no more idea of how to formulate a logical argument than a three-toed sloth knows how to fly.
Algebra? Remember the words of President Obama in one of his appearances on Jay Leno’s show:
‘Jay Leno, reading question from viewer: “When you help your daughters with their homework, is there a a subject you struggle with?”
President Obama: “Well, the math stuff I was fine with up until about seventh grade. But Malia is now a freshman in high school and — I’m pretty lost. You know, it’s tough. Fortunately, they’re great students on their own and if something doesn’t work, I’ll call over to the Department of Energy and see if they have a physicist to come over.”‘
But don’t take my word for it. I know the link above goes to RealClearPolitics.com and many of you simply won’t believe that source. For your edification, here’s a link to a video of the full interview (hosted on my blog’s server, don’t worry about that):
So we have people with little subject matter knowledge reporting what they believe to be news to an audience that has been taught by another group with little subject matter knowledge, namely public school teachers. These are the Democratic voters: dumbed down by the education system, suckers for propaganda. The teachers’ unions, the media, and Democratic politicians should be proud of themselves. They have created a voting class that will support them no matter what because they cannot be swayed by facts, logic or (heaven forbid) mathematics. Nice job, folks.
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*I joined the union after a run-in with a university administrator. I’ve continued my membership so I could vote against most of their policies. In California, by state law CSU faculty are required to pay a “fair share” of union dues for all the benefits we get from union representation. This amount has historically been about half of regular dues.
Clinton for President 2016
Clinton for president 2016. I thought this up during a bout of insomnia last night. The question was, “What’s Bill Clinton up to?” That question has been raised by any number of pundits in the wake of several comments made by the former president during the recent campaign season. In one case Mr. Clinton apparently praised Mitt Romney, stating that Mr. Romney had a “stellar business career.” Next he suggested that extending the Bush tax cuts beyond the end of this year would be a good idea. Both these statements are off message to the Obama campaign. Mr. Clinton backed off a bit the following day, but the question remains: what the heck is going on?
Some people believe Bill is getting ready to promote a run by Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016. But Ms. Clinton has stated repeatedly that she intends to retire from politics after the 2012 election. And a run in 2016 is problematic no matter which way this November’s election goes. If Mr. Romney wins, Ms. Clinton would face him while he’s running for a second term. Challengers in situations like this are at a significant disadvantage, especially since Republicans are notoriously adept at winning second terms. (Since 1932, two Democratic presidents have won second terms: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. Republicans have four two-term presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon (won second term, then resigned), Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.) If President Obama wins, the Democratic nomination will be up for grabs in 2016, meaning Ms. Clinton would have to endure another round of primary fights. After 2008, she may not have the stomach for that grueling activity.
But here’s an interesting idea. Chelsea Clinton was born on February 27, 1980. She will be 35 in 2015, just in time for the 2016 election cycle. The Constitution says you have to be 35 years old to hold the office. But there’s no age limit on running for the office. Can you see a Clinton – Clinton ticket in 2016? My wife thinks it would be Hillary for president and Chelsea for vice-president. But I believe there’s an even more interesting possibility: Chelsea for president and Bill for veep.
Chelsea Clinton
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